REPORT - Nintendo's Unbeatable Level: Brazil

For Nintendo, the Brazilian market is turning out to be harder to win than the pirate-ship level in "Super Mario Bros. 3."

Reggie Fils-Aime, president of the Japanese company's American unit, singled out Brazil as a potentially important growth area for Nintendo's business in the future. While Mexico is the game maker's biggest market in Latin America, "Brazil has huge potential," Fils-Aime said in an interview at Bloomberg's office in San Francisco yesterday.

But Nintendo keeps stumbling over the same hurdle as many other consumer-electronics companies trying to crack the world's second-biggest emerging economy. Brazilian import fees are very expensive, and that drives the prices way up. For example, Brazil is the most expensive country in the world to buy an iPhone 5 at 2,299 real ($1,045), according to Bloomberg Rankings. Nintendo's consoles, too, typically sell for more than $1,000 each in Brazil, which is more than three times the price in the U.S.