Nintendo recently announced its intentions on focusing on the sale of its games via digital means, as opposed to the traditional “packaged goods” convention.

Revealed to have recently posted an annual loss close to $534 million, the videogame platform maker intends to change its stance in the non-clear distinction of the availability of digital and/or physical purchase options for game titles.

Come August, Nintendo will allow publishers the capacity to feature downloadable versions of packaged games, a move that many have been quick to say “It’s about time”, but one which leaves Nintendo in a deadlock between simplifying the sale of its products to its customers and keeping retailers of their products happy.

Nintendo, like Sony and Microsoft some years back, is at a point where the digital distribution of their products is at wits end with traditional-storage, media-based sales modes.

Like Sony and Microsoft back then, Nintendo is locked in facilitating the transition of going digital, without necessarily crippling its relationship with “physical game” selling organizations and entities, given the inevitable fact that online/digital sales is well on its way into becoming a norm.

The reported annual loss announcement comes after Nintendo’s financials becoming a matter of public record. It is Nintendo’s first year in the red, since.

With game developers, game titles and their price being a recent “hot topic” in the gaming arena, Nintendo’s plans for the future says much about the changes in the signs of the times.

As digital becomes more and more prevalent, the kingmakers of yesterday are becoming moot points in defining industry leaders from industry trailers.