So a regular plebe can theoretically get about 26 (stealing their buddy's cards + club nintendo + 3 magazines).  The other announced ones are from events that you have to live near.  The other "hundreds" surely can't be in those events, can they? 

Are they going to gauge the popularity of the game, then start selling the cards separately if it's a success?

I wonder if the Gamestop Gameplay sessions will be for Puerto Rico too, i want more cards but i don't live in the states.  :-\

Very unlikely. AR Cards are too easy to duplicate to make selling them even remotely viable in today's world. Nintendo is undoubtedly aware of this and is counting on the AR images being traded freely across the Internet. That's probably why they're making so many-- to make impossible to go to any one place to get them all at once. The point behind this is to encourage people to go out in search of the images to scan, it was never about the physical cards. This is nothing new, Nintendo already used this same basic strategy before (albeit, on a much smaller scale) with the AR images for Pokédex 3D.

I'm absolutely astounded over how many people don't seem to be figuring this out on their own. Are people really that slow, or do they just think Nintendo is?

I'm astounded that some people don't understand the demand for printed physical cards, even though multiple posters here have stated that they enjoy collecting cards, find real value in having physical copies that don't have to be printed out using privately owned equipment, and find NoAs baffling decision NOT to take our money both silly and frustrating.


Just because you like the idea of collecting "virtual cards" (ie: scanned images of actual cards) doesn't mean that other people do.  More importantly, it doesn't mean that other people won't willingly and happily pay Nintendo more cash than those cards are actually worth.


Anyway, retort all you want.  I'm sure you will.  This has all been discussed before ad nauseum in the other thread:
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=37172.0

What you seem to be missing is that it costs money to market and sell physical stock. You can't mass produce and sell something at retail if there isn't a mainstream enough demand for it. My point wasn't that there wouldn't be ANYONE willing to pay for these physical cards (that's what eBay is for), just not enough to make commercial sales remotely viable since they'll be so easily duplicated.

Also keep in mind, the decision to sell isn't solely Nintendo's to make either. Nintendo can manufacture as many cards as they wish, but in order to sell at retail they're going to need retailers to participate as well, which they won't be willing to take the risk to do if they know the cards will be easily counterfeited. Not to mention, Nintendo would be hurting their reputation by even attempting to sell them anyways, since most of those who would end up buying them would be doing so unaware they could ALSO get them for free on the Internet, and once they found out, would feel like Nintendo cheated them. There's no logical reason to expect Nintendo to sell these cards.

My point has always been that most people on here making posts complaining how Nintendo is limiting the distribution by not selling them, don't seem to either be realizing that these cards' entire functionality can be easily reproduced and inevitably will be distributed across the Internet for free, or just naively think that Nintendo doesn't realize that fact.

I think you're hung up over the choice of words I used in an earlier post, where I emphasized the paper would be worthless-- again, I was referring to functionality. It's probably my own fault for coming off condescending, so I don't blame you for being defensive and eager to disprove me. But that doesn't change the fact that there's no realistic chance of Nintendo ever selling these at retail-- they aren't even charging reward coins for the cards they're giving away through Club Nintendo.

@Bman87301 Amazon Germany are selling packs of 24 cards seperately, so you sir, are the slow one.

Actually, those are meant to be part of a pre-order bonus. I guess Amazon Germany must have a surplus of stock they need to get rid of if they're also selling them off separately. But that's apparently Amazon Germany's choice, not NOE's. They're not for sale anywhere else so it seems that NOE at least intended them to be free and aren't selling them themselves, so my point is still valid.

I wonder if they'll ship to US.


I can't seem to find them on Amazon AR.