It looks as though video game giant Nintendo has fired the first shot across the bow of the digital download war. For a few months now, rumors have been swirling that the new consoles from Sony and Microsoft will either have no disc drive at all, or will start offering digital copies of their games on launch day. Well now we get news that the latter is exactly what Nintendo plans to do. On the heels of a glaring loss in profits at the tune of $350+ million, going forward, all in house games (first party) will be available day one as a digital download. Also Nintendo will not set the prices for the titles, they will leave that up to the retailers!

The service will originally launch for the 3DS with the title “New Super Mario Bros 2,” and shortly there after they will offer it to the Wii U as soon as it comes out.

“For our digital business to grow drastically,” president Satoru Iwata said, “it is imperative for us to expand the exposure of the digital download products to potential consumers.” This is something that developers have been getting on Nintendo about in recent years. They do not advertise their download service or online gaming service very well, and they have a hard cap on how big of a file you can have.

Even in the face of such a huge loss in profits for a fiscal year, Iwata still refuses do look into the possibility of porting games to mobile phone systems. Imagine the vast truckloads of money they would make by even putting Super Mario Bros. on the App Store? They would destroy Angry Birds!