CamHostage
Member
It's really just to sell two different versions of the product, most consumers will not double dip, but a few will and that gets you a nice bit of extra money.
I don't know if there are statistics on this, but I feel like this isn't as much a financial winfall in consumers double-dipping as cynics read into it? Sure, some people do it, (and once you have something as powerful as Pokemon, those numbers are significant,) also some people are fooled by it, but you're not just talking two copies of the game, you're also talking two game systems and 2X the grinding and all that unnerving roster maintenance and the potential of brand burn-out for having been swindled to buy the same thing twice...
I would actually guess that the financial benefit comes more in there being two SKUs on the pegs, for twice the visibility. Digitally, you run the risk of splitting your numbers and lowering your analytic presence, but physically, stores are going to have to stock both products (plus when you're talking ordering by crates, the idea of simply decreasing your quantities 1/2 for one and 1/2 for the other is unlikely to be practiced, so you're kind of sneaking some quantity of product through to stores.)
I also think there's a psychological effect in having multiple products, that there's prestige or at least awareness via there simply being twice the presence. "Let me see, there's 1,2 3DS games called 'Monster Hunter' here at this store, and 1,2,3, wow 4 games called 'Yo-Kai Watch', this thing must be really popular!" Same number of games, but MH has two games (nvm Stories for now) and Yo-Kai Watch has two games but one split into three versions. Your kids are probably smart enough not to ask for all three Yo-Kai Watch games (partly because they got burned by a Pokemon series eating up their allowance money in the past, leaving them with an extra cartridge they never used when they could have bought something else instead,) but they still think it's a major game because it's so prevalent, even though they know deep down that nobody plays Yo-Kai Watch on their playground.
Anyway, that's how I see the economics of it. It's still cynical, but cynical in a different way than most people think about it...