At an investors briefing meeting this morning, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has announced that New Super Mario Bros 2 will be the first Nintendo game to be sold not only at retail but also through digital download through the eShop. The game will be downloaded to the Nintendo 3DS systems SD card. Looks like you might need to buy a bigger one!

New Super Mario Bros. 2 and other digital download games will also be able to be purchased digitally at retail. You’ll be able to pay for the game and download them at stores. Whether or not that will happen outside of Japan at this stage isn’t announced. The logistics of this wouldn’t be cheap.

Satoru Iwata also told investors that game shelf life is getting shorter and with games available digitally it’ll help Nintendo by not having tons of inventory sitting around if something doesn’t sell that well.

As for pricing Iwata has said he doesn’t think there will be a big price difference between retail and digital. This is due to two things, firstly that the retailer can sell the game digitally and that retailers will set the price.

The investor briefing is still on going and we will update this story with any more news.