If the majority of shops somehow marks down the prices then the MSRP becomes more expensive than the actual price. As a customer you can shop around and I don't think I ever bought a Japanese game at the MSRP. Amazon always has discounts of 10~18% and convenience stores do too. Bic Camera may not price it quite that low but they have a point card system as do most smaller shops. You will simply not pay MSRP, even on first day (unless you don't care for your money). After that bargains may increase even.
If you compare actual prices then Sony's lower download prices simply adjust for the retail reductions and Nintendo is missing this. Sony's pricing is anything but aggressive in Japan, Nintendo's is bordering on anti-advertising.
It's the VERY FIRST RETAIL GAME available via digital download from Nintendo. There was bound to be hiccups and it's not like the pricing structure is set in stone. Let's not over-react.
NSMB2's DD sales account for 5% of the total sales of the game, according to Iwata, and 20% of Oni Training's total sales. Those are respectable numbers for the beginning of the service, considering the pricing model.
There's a theory I have as to what's going to happen moving forward. It's my belief that Nintendo will change its retailer policies so that, after the first run of the game, retailers are no longer obligated to stock them as they have been in the past (which is part of what accounts for the long tail on 1st-party sales)
After the 2 month period after release, availability becomes a bigger selling point for a game than who has the cheapest price. Newer games come out and take the shelf space of these games. Retailers would rather give space on the shelf to the new hotness than something they're obligated to carry and have less incentive to discount a game they're obligated to sell. So by taking away the obligation, where are those customers going to buy the game?
So basically what I'm saying is that Nintendo's DD strategy is to give retailers the big sales numbers and letting them move on from those titles, where Nintendo will take a bigger piece of the pie on long-tail sales throughout the remaining duration of the hardware's lifespan.
They could also do the budget Player's Choice sales exclusively online, and such a strategy would be within their power to make happen, as retailers have less to gain from those budget titles than they do from newer releases.
It's just a theory though, so I dunno.
