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Businesses Nintendo Games

Nintendo Puts Business In Brazil On Hiatus 111

jones_supa writes: Nintendo has announced that it will end distribution of its consoles and games in Brazil. In a statement, Nintendo attributed the move to high import duties, which makes doing feasible business difficult. The company could avoid those duties with a local manufacturing operation, but has chosen not to establish one, presumably for the costs involved. In a statement e-mailed to Polygon, Nintendo of America said that the company's distributor for Latin America would no longer send products to Brazil, but it would continue to distribute Nintendo goods to other parts of South America. Nintendo will also keep monitoring the evolution of the business environment in Brazil and evaluate how to best serve Brazilian customers in the future.
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Nintendo Puts Business In Brazil On Hiatus

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  • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @12:58AM (#48785309)

    Environment for electronics and just about anything else. http://www.insidesources.com/c... [insidesources.com] . The problem is this doesn't serve them well. Trying to recreate the rest of the worlds industries internally just insures they have many second rate products, or have to pay hefty premiums for the tools they need to get things done. Really surprising after all these years they haven't tried to emulate more successful models, ala Japan, Singapore or Taiwan and encourage their industries to pursue ventures where they can have a competitive advantage.

    • by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @01:10AM (#48785349) Journal

      Kind of hard to debate to go more free when your neighbors are vastly more poor with zero taxes. Wouldn't it be easier to go Uruguay or Venezuela?

      The US too lost and still the middle class never has recovered from NAFTA. Wages have not increased in 20 years regardless of inflation! The US can argue it will benefit CEOs and lobbyists as the companies are at least owned here. Not true for Brazil so cutting taxes would only cut your revenue as nothing is based there.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        You've never tried importing electronics into Brazil before have you? Over 50% in tariffs must be paid.

        • You've never tried importing electronics into Brazil before have you? Over 50% in tariffs must be paid.

          But get rid of them and you loose anyway as you can't produce as cheap as our neighbors

          • by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @02:17AM (#48785517)

            It doesn't matter if the taxes and tariffs in Brazil are set at 0%, 50%, 100% or even 1000%, it wont do a thing to encourage electronic manufacturing in the country. In fact, I suspect there is nothing that the Brazilian government could do that would get electronic manufacturers to build product there short of dropping wages and other costs low enough to make building there (instead of building in super-low-labor-cost countries like China) viable.

            • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

              Easy, peasy, drop all patents on products they want to be manufactured locally, go partners with manufacturers from China that have very small patent portfolios and you are done, screw the US and the patently corrupted USPTO. Now when it comes to primary resources, you can bullshit till your blue in the face but if you don't have enough, you simply will never have enough. Unless like the US you invade countries, murder the local populations and the pretend to sell those resources to US corporations who the

              • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

                by Koby77 ( 992785 )
                I was thinking of a similar experiment -- if a company refuses to sell a product in your country, then it loses all copyright / trademark / patent protection. Locals would then be free to open up shop and start making the hardware or copying the software. I'm not sure if this would work, but I'd be interested in seeing the result nonetheless.
                • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @03:14AM (#48785713)

                  I was thinking of a similar experiment -- if a company refuses to sell a product in your country, then it loses all copyright / trademark / patent protection. Locals would then be free to open up shop and start making the hardware or copying the software. I'm not sure if this would work, but I'd be interested in seeing the result nonetheless.

                  Ok let me get this straight.

                  1. Put into place a law that lets you steal the patents of products not being sold in your country
                  2. Raise Tariffs on said products to the point they can't be sold
                  3. ....
                  4. Hope your military is sufficient to deter retaliation from the countries you have been robbing ?

                  Now admittedly a military response maybe a little much. At the very least you can certainly expect the other nations to go after your assets abroad, pursue economic retaliation, hell they could issues letters of mark and reprisal against your merchant shipping.
                   

                  • I love the escalation of the argument.
                    You can't steal patents, because its not a trade secret.

                    • You seem to be confused.
                      Patents are property, and hence can be treated like any other property.

                    • Patents are whatever the owning country decides they are to it - poke the bear and the bear probably won't take kindly. Just how well will your country work without access to the international banking system?

                    • Some people are on a crusade against using the word "steal" [gnu.org] to refer to copyright infringement, patent infringement, or trademark infringement. Larceny, copyright infringement, patent infringement, and trademark infringement are defined in separate areas of law, and they aren't even crimes under the same circumstances. A judge agreed that the term "theft" misleads jurors [torrentfreak.com].

                    • No they aren't. Using word 'property' in this case is misnomer. Patent a temporary state granted monopoly. You can't steal a monopoly. Only encroach on it.
                    • The patent is only a piece of paper granting you, within a particular jurisdiction, exclusive rights to control the production of a particular implementation of an idea - something which by it's nature cannot be owned at all.

                    • ...but using the word 'property' as in 'Intellectual Property' leads to an Intellectual Property Tax! And this tax is to be collected after 10 years, for the 10 years previous and the 10 years following from the owner (unless owner withdraws any and all property rights and the 'property' becomes public domain).
                    • A deed is only a piece of paper granting you within a certain jurisdiction the rights to control a piece of land.
                      Any physical item is only yours to the extent that you can defend it from being taken away.
                      Your person is only yours to the extent you can defend it,.

                      Extending your reasoning there is no such thing as property

                    • Not at all - the entire basis of the patent system is that you give away the complete details of your design for free in exchange for a limited-time injunction against unlicensed manufacturing by other people *in your jurisdiction*. The value of a patent internationally has pretty much always been shaky - if you don't want people in Brazil manufactuing your widget, go get a Brazilian patent. Ditto every other nation on the planet. Generally they won't be able to export unlicensed goods to a nation that r

                    • The patent is only a piece of paper granting you, within a particular jurisdiction, exclusive rights to control the production of a particular implementation of an idea - something which by it's nature cannot be owned at all.

                      A contract is also just a piece of paper (or verbal agreement), but contract law exists.

                      The debate about whether patents and copyrights should be called "intellectual property" at all is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant. Just because the offence you commit isn't 'stealing a piece of physical property' doesn't mean it's not illegal.

                      A lot of people here argue that there are two sorts of laws, natural and artificial. In fact, all laws are artificial. If you're alone on a desert island the concept

                    • The Law of Gravity would disagree. As would the Law of the Jungle. Natural law, in my experience, generally refers to the rights and responsibilities we would possess even if there were no government to enforce them. And no, neither life nor property are protected by them. An important point missed by many who call for "less government interference" - without government protection of property wealth accumulation is *severely* limited, so if you're going to protect property rights "fairly" you need to als

                  • by sjames ( 1099 )

                    How is it stealing patents? Unless they were actually patented IN Brazil and the requirements of the patent are maintained, there is nothing to steal.

                    The word you're looking for is recognize. As in Brazil recognizing foreign patents. By what right do you demand a sovereign nation recognize foreign patents?

                    • You mean other than the fact they are obligated by treaties they entered into ? And their withdrawl would hurt their own citizens with patents ?

                      http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en... [wipo.int]

                    • by sjames ( 1099 )

                      It's their choice to withdraw or not. The number of Brazilians owning patents is probably dwarfed by the number suffering because of them.

                    • And it would be nowhere near the amount suffering caused by the retaliatory tariffs provoked by such actions. Unless you think it's reasonable to tell people to rob grocery stores when they are in economic difficulty how can you consider this reasonable ?

                      But I must say, it'squite the pleasure to see Communist Mercantilists who don't understand how funny they are.

                    • by sjames ( 1099 )

                      I didn't say it was a great idea, I just said it's not stealing.

                      As for the grocery store, if it is a question of shoplift or starve, the sane response is to shoplift. Apparently you expect people to nobly watch their family die of starvation.

                      You capitalists who think tough times is when you can only order 3 pounds of the finest caviar are honestly too screwed up to find funny.

                    • It's theft. You're appropriating other people's work for your own use without compensating them or their consent.

                      As for the grocery store, if it is a question of shoplift or starve, the sane response is to shoplift. Apparently you expect people to nobly watch their family die of starvation.

                      Really because there is no other way ?

                      You capitalists who think tough times is when you can only order 3 pounds of the finest caviar are honestly too screwed up to find funny.

                      Just call me the laughing capitalist .

                    • by sjames ( 1099 )

                      Simply re-asserting it won't make it true. You're declining to extend special treatment to an intangible that only exists because of a boon from the government. That boon is supposed to advance the useful arts and sciences. If it fails at that purpose, the government should stop handing out special gifts.

                      In this case, they would be mostly declining to recognize a boon handed out by some other government.

                      Wherethehellisthatistan may think that one of their citizens is so special that only he should be allowed

                    • Simply re-asserting it won't make it true. You're declining to extend special treatment to an intangible that only exists because of a boon from the government. That boon is supposed to advance the useful arts and sciences. If it fails at that purpose, the government should stop handing out special gifts

                      Yes, in other words it's no different than any other kind of property right or right in general.

                      Wherethehellisthatistan may think that one of their citizens is so special that only he should be allowed to make anything wheel-like but why should I care?, I don't live there!

                      Well I suppose that attitude works very well for people that don't make anything that others might want to copy, or benefit in any way from the people that do. Personally I can't think of any nation on earth that is so intellectually bereft that this would be good for them.

                    • by sjames ( 1099 )

                      There are good philosophical arguments for real property and possessions. Things that one no longer has if someone else takes them. Those do not extend to ideas where copying doesn't remove the property from the originator. If you have a baseball and take it, you are minus one baseball. I have stolen from you. If I make one of my own, you lose nothing but the unjustifiable glee at knowing I don't have a baseball. I make my own baseball, you still have a baseball. If you have a lit candle and I light mine fr

              • You forgot the Elders of Zion in there.

                • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

                  You forgot BRIC, Brazil, Russia, India, China, that's half the worlds population and basically that's just a beginning. Yep, the US as the bumbling three legged attack dog of the Israeli government is coming to an end and it's conservative Americans who are by far the most sick of it, they will be a real price to pay and Israel will most definitely end up paying it. Cranky Americans lose all self control when they are used and betrayed and they certainly have a lot to lose control over when it comes to the

              • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

                Then good luck buying *any* sort of technology from anybody. "Hey let us buy your fancy chip fabrication machine so we can produce cheap knockoffs." Not gonna happen. So now you end up having to design and build everything yourself, as a country.

                The closest thing we have to this situation is North Korea - and look at how great their standard of living is.

                • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

                  The closest we have to that is China and products used internally rather than exported and oh look, now the worlds leading economy. There is a reason I nominated China as the partner, they would not have one qualm about doing it and they would recognise Brazil's right to have the laws it democratically wants within it's own country.

          • by aliquis ( 678370 )

            Can't they produce what they are good at instead? Beef and porn or something?

            Though I think beef is stupid and maybe the world should give them money to preserve the rain forest and then just let it be as such.

            Tourism and huge "this was earth"-wild life&nature preserve?

          • You're not supposed to produce everything as cheap as your neighbors, it's actually bad thing to do that. Even if your neighbor produces literally everything below the cost of domestic production, so long as the two entities have different opportunity costs for different goods, it's still more beneficial to outsource stuff and trade. Economists call this comparative advantage [wikipedia.org] and it's a mathematical theorem.

            • My point was there is no comparative advantage. All you do is cut revenue and gain nothing. Brazil is in a rock and a hard place. I guess tourism and oranges might be its only comparative advantage.

              In the 21st century you are supposed to produce cheaper as we race to the bottom are go out of business. This is why we mine the ore here ship it to China for smelting and then ship it back. It is very cheap.

              So Brazil will give a discount with the tariff if they produce locally. I guess it is blackmail.

              • How in the world does comparative advantage not exist in a place like Brazil? To say there's no comparative advantage is so statistically improbable you may as well get hit by an asteroid. A million times.

                You know what comparative advantage is, right? If it takes me $5 to produce an apple and $4 to produce an orange, and it takes you $2 to produce an apple and $1 to produce an orange; that's comparative advantage: Even though you produce both fruits by far and away cheaper than I do, you produce oranges at

                • by sjames ( 1099 )

                  But if the only way your people earn money to buy those fruits at all is being paid wages to produce them, you all starve if you allow that trade.

                  • What part of beneficial for both of us don't you understand? Both parties will be able to eat more total food. The less productive group will still be eating less, but more than if they didn't trade at all.

                    There is no situation in which it's bad to permit people to trade. Again, mathematical theorem.

                    • by sjames ( 1099 )

                      Not if they have no money they won't. You get that? No money = no food. No job growing food = no money.

                      Again, friction-less spherical cows.

                      Lets say the import is allowed such that local production becomes un-economical. Where do the people no longer working get their income for food? Don't say other production because the current situation based on economic mis-matches is that most all production is cheaper elsewhere.

                      Don't say it will equalize, because it will do so at poverty levels and long after people h

                    • The theorem doesn't require money. You could be trading apples for money, apples for butter for oranges, apples directly for oranges, doesn't matter. If three's comparative advantage, people trade. Period.

                      If people aren't trading, that doesn't mean the theorem is wrong; it means one of the conditions isn't being satisfied.

                    • by sjames ( 1099 )

                      Substitute any useful good you'd care to for money but remember, MOST people's primary useful good to trade is money from a job. No job = no money = nothing to trade.

                      The level of need won't change the foreign price. But given free time and know-how, the people in need might grow their own = no trade.

            • by sjames ( 1099 )

              And like most economic theorems, it assumes spherical friction free cows. You still have to give your citizens some way to make a living. Widgets costing $1.00 that your people can afford trump widgets costing $0.10 that they can't.

      • by jittles ( 1613415 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @08:39AM (#48786521)

        Wouldn't it be easier to go Uruguay or Venezuela?

        I've lived in Venezuela. It is not a poor country. The people are poor, but they have huge oil reserves, diamonds, gold and many other natural resources. They used to be the largest oil exporter to the US until Hugo Chavez started diverting that oil to Cuba for free. Venezuela also charges import duties on all products (with some exception in the state of Nueva Esparta, which is mostly duty free). They also charge an income tax that most people do their best to avoid ever paying.

        The real problem with Venezuela is corruption. When I lived there, I did not keep an ID on me at all times, even though it was required by law. I kept my passport in a safety deposit box because it was cheaper to pay the fines for not having proper ID than it was to pay the bribes to get my passport back from the National Guard when they would do one of their regular shakedowns. If you were a mere janitor for the state-run oil company (PDVSA), you were probably set for life. If you didn't have some important friends or family, you probably couldn't get a job for PDVSA.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There are no local industry to be protected. Brazil has almost no electronic industry, and absolutely no computer/videogame/high-tec industry.

      The whole protection excuse is meant only to justify absurd taxes, that goes directly to the pockets of politicians. While most import taxes in EUA are about 3%, the default rate for imports in Brazil are about 80%.

      And it doesn't get better if you put a local subsidiary, you still have an absurd amount of local taxes. Except if you're a friend of the government, you h

      • There are no local industry to be protected. Brazil has almost no electronic industry, and absolutely no computer/videogame/high-tec industry.

        Yet the whole protectionism thing ended up with Lua getting invented. So I guess it did help improve the world a little bit.

    • I read parts of the article. And it doesn't make any sense.
      Why would cutting tariffs do anything? Thats only going to make the out sourcing of products worse, and the best part is that tariffs forces company to do weird things. Which may end up with supply chains and local jobs, for no other reason that profit.
      On the top of that, 17% sales tax is fucking nothing.

      "High ITC prices leads to reduced consumption" and why is this bad again? Even the next segment talking about establishments going digital or repla

      • and the best part is that tariffs forces company to do weird things.

        If you think forcing companies to destroy wealth is going to be beneficial to an economy, I don't think I can help you out trying to explain this.

        • by C0R1D4N ( 970153 )
          Spend wealth on the local economy and infrastructure is not "destroying it". Wealth is supposed to be moved around to keep the economy going. Not horded like these companies are all run by fucking Smaug.
          • It's funny because whenever people say things like that I hear Gollum going "mine mine mine my precious". Aside from things like a bonfire of the vanities or wars there are few better ways to destroy a countries wealth than forcing the economy into inefficiency and non competitiveness

      • Domestic production and imports are very closely linked with one another. If you put ANY artificial restrictions on one, it negatively impacts the other by a near equal amount. This has been shown to be true time and time again.

        If they removed their tariffs, they'd suddenly find that they have the means of acquiring capital. That wouldn't fix their economic problems overnight, or even over a few years, but would absolutely benefit long-term growth.

        In the developed world, mercantilism ended with the great de

    • by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @04:42AM (#48785951)

      The problem is this doesn't serve them well. Trying to recreate the rest of the worlds industries internally just insures they have many second rate products, or have to pay hefty premiums for the tools they need to get things done. Really surprising after all these years they haven't tried to emulate more successful models, ala Japan, Singapore or Taiwan and encourage their industries to pursue ventures where they can have a competitive advantage.

      And yet, day after day, post after post, we see people here on /. advocate that US at least be able to manufacturer everything locally, to reduce dependency on foreign tech, to reduce brain-drain to foreign manufacturing, etc, etc, etc.

      Then we see a country try and do that. And we tell them its wrong...

      I realize /. is of course many people and many opinions... but I wonder how many people were reading your post nodding; while simultaneously thinking the US should be producing more locally, despite the competitive advantages of outsourcing the manufacturing (which is precisely is why we do it.)

      • That's actually a good example. It's an issue that is very confused for most people.

        First problem with that, is confusing protectionism with wanting a healthy manufacturing sector. The two aren't the same thing. In the case of the U.S. there were quite a few things that hurt manufacturing here and it's doubtful that protectionism would bring it back. In Brazil's case they have had 40+ years of protectionism and it hasn't helped their manufacturing.

        Personally I would like the U.S. to have a healthier manufac

        • In Brazil's case they have had 40+ years of protectionism and it hasn't helped their manufacturing.

          That's a gross misconception, to say the least. It has managed to attract lots of auto manufacturers, especially in the last decade, coupled with a global recession and a boom in purchasing power. Even Foxconn has brazilian factories for serving the local market, which is saying something.

          • As compared to other countries ?

          • I have to ask what makes you think protectionism would even have that effect ?

            I am curious and before you answer don't read down

            Remember when a nation buys an import it pays with it's currency or the exporter's currency. In the case of the foreign reserve, it had to sell something to acquire that reserve, in the case of it's currency the exporting party has to spend their currency on something. Either way, if you raise tariffs you are imposing taxes on doing business which results in less business and slows

            • On the flip side Brazil frequently has a positive balance of trade, something the US hasn't had in a long time. In fact many of the countries with highly positive balances of trade are protectionist in outlook. Not to say that's necessarily the best policy but it is something to think about.
        • Personally I would like the U.S. to have a healthier manufacturing sector, I am just pretty sure protectionism would be about the worst way for us to achieve that goal.

          The most effective way is for your working class to accept the same level of wages as are paid in China. Unfortunately that defeats the whole purpose of the exercise, as the reason most North Americans and Europeans can afford to buy so much stuff is that an hour of their time is more valuable than an hour of the time of the guys making the stuff. Domestic production means most of your consumer base have an hour that is no more valuable than an hour of the time of your workers, so they can't buy as much stu

          • The most effective way is for your working class to accept the same level of wages as are paid in China.

            Well that certainly is a way, and it would be effective, in about the same way using nuclear weapons for urban renewal would be effective.

            • Sorry, that's free market economics. You either restrict the market (protectionism) or labour goes where it's cheapest. The only thing approaching middle ground is worker protection laws that apply to imports -- if you weren't allowed to buy from companies that have worse employee rights policies than are applicable in your country, Foxconn would go out of business overnight. Alternatively, if not having laws protecting workers' rights in your country meant import tarriffs that compensated for the unfair co
              • Really that is the only way ?

                Hmmm the only way.

                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]

                So that as a concept for making your labor force effectively more competitive globally doesn't exist for you ?

                People seem to forget when they bring up a company Foxconn, that they actually do a rather exceptional job meeting the customers needs and producing a quality product. This is one of the reasons U.S. is buying from China and not Mexico post NAFTA

                • People seem to forget when they bring up a company Foxconn, that they actually do a rather exceptional job meeting the customers needs and producing a quality product.

                  They do indeed. And many people believe that they are less abusive of their staff than their local competitors in China. Foxconn continues to get targeted due to their high profile, in the hope that as Foxconn moves, so will the rest of China follow.

                  But Foxconn produce incredible quality, and they have to be congratulated on being able to guarantee that quality even as their staff fall asleep at their stations due to overwork and lack of sleep.

    • Q: Why is starting a comment in the Subject: line incredibly irritating?
  • Must suck to have just received a new Nintendo for the holidays, then have Nintendo cut you off from the supply of new games.
    • by Arkiel ( 741871 )
      Do they not make blank media for whatever the Wii-U uses? Because piracy in Brazil is prolific. Getting the hardware is the main barrier to entry.
      • by jonwil ( 467024 )

        I have no idea if the Wii U has been fully hacked but I know for the Wii you can download disk images from the internet, use any of the various exploits out there and easily play pirated games, you dont need optical disks (blank or otherwise)

      • There's currently no way to play pirated games on a Wii-U. The original Wii's copy protection was circumvented (very quickly), as was the 360's (if you didn't mind losing online functionality). PS3 piracy was possible for certain titles on consoles with certain firmware revisions, but was generally a huge pain in the ass, so it never really took off. The copy protection mechanisms on the PS4 and Xbox One are currently intact.

        However, those in Brazil who have bought consoles already do apparently have the op

        • but a few minutes with google seems to indicate that they [Nintendo] treat the whole of the Americas as a single region for locking purposes.

          That is moronic. The whole point of region locking is that you can adjust prices to fit the local disposable income. Having Bolivia (GDP per capita $2700) in the same region as the USA ($53001) makes a mockery of the whole thing.

          • by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @08:41AM (#48786529) Journal

            Agreed it's moronic. But this is Nintendo we're talking about. Region locking isn't about the money; it's about a combination of their messed-up corporate structure (the various international companies are only loosely integrated) and nasty control-freakery. They have a long history of liking to say "title X does not fit with our irrationally conceived stereotype of region Y, so we won't release it there, or will cut it to hell first". Region locking is one of the tools they use for that.

            The whole "region locking for differential pricing" thing at least had a simple motive behind it ("more money"), but it doesn't work all that well (markets where you need to sell cheap tend to have too much piracy to be worth it anyway). Most people who region lock for that reason are moving away from it now (Sony and MS have ditched it entirely).

          • Region locking isn't always about differential pricing. It could also be about the publisher of an adaptation respecting the rights of an upstream author. For example, a video game adaptation of a novel whose author died between 50 and 70 years ago is legal in Canada but not in the European Union because copyright terms differ. So is a film that uses a piece of music whose author died between 50 and 70 years ago. Or an upstream author or publisher may have already sold exclusive rights in other regions to o

            • The copyright terms thing still makes N America/S America a rather hetergenous "region", as does the upstream rights thing.
  • by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <bertNO@SPAMslashdot.firenzee.com> on Sunday January 11, 2015 @04:58AM (#48785995) Homepage

    evaluate how to best serve Brazilian customers in the future.

    Only they won't have any brazilian customers, they will cede the whole market to microsoft and sony... Any existing customers they did have will be angered as they're now unable to buy any games, and will end up going to a competitor and/or modding their console to play pirated games.

  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday January 11, 2015 @07:35AM (#48786345) Homepage Journal

    The company could avoid those duties with a local manufacturing operation, but has chosen not to establish one, presumably for the costs involved.

    No, it's for the chaos involved. Brazil is ridiculous. People get kidnapped off the streets for a paltry few hundred dollars' ransom. I wouldn't open a factory there if it were guaranteed to spontaneously generate gold nuggets. It's not like it's that big a market anyway, their economy is terribly, horribly uneven.

    • No, it's for the chaos involved. Brazil is ridiculous. People get kidnapped off the streets for a paltry few hundred dollars' ransom.

      A decade ago, the travel advice for visitors to Amsterdam was to carry a €10 note within easy reach. Low-order mugging was big business and if you handed over a reasonable sized note, the mugger would walk away without harming you, and without demanding a wallet. This meant that there was a lot of crimes that were officially classified as "violent", but not a lot of violence. If the mugger hasn't hurt anyone, he's not facing a long sentence, and most were happy to stay that way. Furthermore, the police

    • by Zaatxe ( 939368 )

      People get kidnapped off the streets for a paltry few hundred dollars' ransom.

      This is past. Now they just call random phone numbers and say something like "I got your daughter here with me, if you want to see her well again transfer 2000 bucks to this account". All this using smuggled cell phones, in the comfort of the penitentiary they are in!

      My father once got one of those calls and since he didn't know where my sister was, he was scared. He KNEW that 99.9% of those ransom calls are fake, but when that's about your kid and you are not 100% they are ok, you fall prone to this fea

  • by Guppy ( 12314 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @07:47AM (#48786379)

    In a statement e-mailed to Polygon, Nintendo of America said that the company's distributor for Latin America would no longer send products to Brazil, but it would continue to distribute Nintendo goods to other parts of South America.

    So in other words, Nintendo's legitimate subsidiary cannot compete with gray-market smugglers who evade the tariff to bring in consoles and games from the neighboring countries.

    So they're just going to pull out and let the smugglers be their de-facto distribution channel.

    • There are a lot of shades of gray.
      For years, Sony ignored Brazil in regards to the Playstation market. There was no PS2 nor PS3 officially sold nor supported by Sony in the country, no way to select Brazil when creating a PSN account, no Sony warranty nor repair centers, Nothing.
      Nevertheless, nobody cared, and most people didn't even notice (until they tried to register a PSN account and had to resource to hacks to be able to register one as being in the US and makw Sony accept a Brazilian international cre

    • This is the real reason, they (as others before them) close shop here because the offical cannot compete with smugglers and people buying offshore. They probably won't lose one single sale, as it will be promptly replaced by gray market produce, and at a cheaper price, great deal for the consumer, except there is no warranty, but would be no different than before as consumer right here are a far cry from what is practiced in the US.
      I don't by most of my electronics locally and so does anyone else, for exa
  • I can understand (Score:4, Informative)

    by mseeger ( 40923 ) on Sunday January 11, 2015 @09:07AM (#48786613)

    I am working for a small (65 employees) company in Europe that serves customers with locations around the world. Of those locations that we have to deal with, Brazil is the worst nightmare.

    Money (taxes, customs duties) is a solvable problem: it just costs the customer more. But getting definitive answers about the process, reliable delivery schedules or any kind of planning dependability is extremely hard. Due to the bureaucratic overhead, nobody there wants to deal with it.

    I would rather skip the business than ruining our reputation through uncontrollable external influence.

    • Re: I can understand (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I live in Brazil for work on a longterm assignment.

      It is a disorganized shit hole. The beauracracy is just as you described, a giant shit show. Nobody knows what the rules are, at the same time they seem to be constantly changed, and nothing can be completed quickly/effectively/efficienty.

      My process for obtaining a badge in the USA for plant access involved an email, an appointment, and me showing up for that appointment. Two days and I have a functional badge.

      For Brazil? A month, a myriad of paperwork, a p

      • by Anonymous Coward

        When Brazilians come to the USA, frequently they'll bring empty suitcases

        http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/08/14/211737003/brazilians-flood-to-u-s-on-massive-shopping-sprees I know when my Brazilian friends visit they always take a lot of electronics back with them. Brazilians politicians don't want a better economy, they want to maintain their riches and suppress the people.

        In the Senate and in the Favella, there's filth everywhere in Brazil. It's sad because I love the Brazilian people.

      • mod the parent up (sadly I have no more points)

        It is sad but true, we pay huge amounts of taxes (almost 35% of GDP this year) and have no quality in government services.
        This bureaucracy infects even the private organizations, that suppose to be more nimble than the publlic sector but are just as bad, because no one trusts their employees (rightly so, unfortunetly).
        And politicians don't want to change anything, because they get wealthy in the chaos, big companies also (only those can navigate the pape
  • Brazil has a longstanding special relationship with Japan. For generations, Japanese have treated Brazil as a frontier for settlement, with a long list of accompanying trade deals. Having a comeant the size of Nintendo pull out is a major blow to the old relationship.

    • Brazil has a longstanding special relationship with Japan.

      A lot of Japanese went to Brazil. But, facing a negative birth rate, Japan repatriated a lot of those people.

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