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Amazon Marketplace sellers who deal in new, used, and refurbished Nintendo products woke up to a peculiar notice yesterday: without warning, Amazon was telling third-party sellers that they could no longer list Nintendo products of any kind without seeking approval. The policy change seems to affect both Nintendo games and Nintendo hardware like 3DS handhelds. The process, common in e-commerce, is known as brand gating, but it’s unclear exactly when the deal was struck or what the terms are.
The deal, which appears similar to the ones Amazon struck with Apple and other brands in the past, has the effect of kicking off all but the largest third-party sellers from an e-commerce platform, ostensibly as a tool for counting down on…