They don’t even “lose money” in either scenario. They just don’t make new money.
Businesses consider those the same thing unfortunately :/
I’d argue they consider not making new money worse, losing money means tax write offs.
The argument is the suppression of titles is to control the brand. Its indirect nonsense.
I used copies of old Nintendo games and they don’t get a single cut. I don’t see them shutting down those stores that sell them. Fuck Nintendo greed.
Nintendo: “How about you don’t play those old games and buy our new games instead.”
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Damn, what do we do now when we see an UnexpectedBillWurtz? Joking aside, I almost typed an r/ on reflex. It’s weird how hard it is to break some habits.
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I’ll buy your new games AND play the old games! You get the exact same amount of money either way!
They don’t even lose money, they just don’t earn any.
Yup. And it wasn’t money they would have gotten anyway so big N gets mad about nothing.
As is tradition.
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History has shown that if you make it easy to access something, people will generally prefer to access it legally rather than using piracy, because most people are willing to pay for something if they have the option and if it’s relatively affordable. Trying to stop piracy doesn’t help sales, let alone hypothetical future sales, so trying to stop roms of older games won’t help them make more profit when they relaunch/re-release older games on newer consoles. So it’s still pointless. Not to mention that people playing those older games in the meantime keeps them in the public consciousness longer and so more people are likely to know about them, hear about them, and want to buy them when they’re available through official channels.
There was a point in time before HBO {Now,Max} where HBO was only available through a cable subscription add on. HBO shows were always the most pirated shows because of how difficult it was to watch, while avoiding spoilers. An old The Oatmeal comic sums up the experience best.
Found the bootlicker!
Would buying used games also undermine their efforts to capitalize on relaunching a franchise?
That’s a good “what if” there, but no.
The mental gymnastics you people play to justify copyright infringement is amazing.
I don’t need mental gymnastics. All I need are ROMs.
This is why pirating games that aren’t available to be bought anymore is never wrong
Yeah, say I want an old need for speed game, either buy a disk for a high price that I can’t put in my disk drive-less PC or pirate it…
Hmm I wonder which one I will choose
big imo: pirating AAA games at all is never wrong
Aye!
OPs example also applies to games they never intend to release on PC. It’s not like I was going to buy a Switch anyway.
Limited subscriptions can go to hell as well. Sure, I could pay $50/yr for a Switch Online + Expansion Pack (not featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series) so I can temporarily play GBA games and lose access to them forever when the service is eventually discontinued… or I could just emulate them on my smartphone/jailbroken consoles for free.
Agreed. Really though, the ultimate goal should be to enact legal protections for older video games, same as any other historically significant cultural artefacts.
Only reason games don’t become public domain is because of IP license. So just in case the rights holder wants to revisit a mothballed IP decades after the last time it was relevant, the entire catalog of that IP is off limits
they dont really “lose” money regardless
they just dont gain money, which they could have gained… if emulation wasn’t super fucking easy and also fuck nintendo
Nintendo is run by old Japanese men who don’t understand technology. They still use faxes ffs when conducting business-critical decisions.
You. Sound like a nice and smart person. Can you send me your 78 character friend code so I can enter it with a controller to add you?
Omg lmao yes this feature is so clunky and antiquated
If you don’t want to climb a mountain and part the sea for them, are you really friends with them? - Old Japanese dudes probably
I assume there’s an old Japanese proverb for everything, and they are only used when you don’t want to do something, but is a more polite way than just saying “No” or “I’m not fixing that”
You’re supposed to wait until they re-release it on a new console with the same graphics for $70, then pay for it then, dummy.
Todd Howard, is that you?
I’m sooo tired of hearing about bad companies being shitty to their consumers and then watching thousands post about how wholesome and sweet Nintendo is and sharing their new animal crossing themed butthole tattoo to honor them.
Stop paying these pricks and just pirate their stuff.
The problem is that only one person choosing to pirate the games because they think the company doesn’t deserve their money can’t offset the fanboy who buys two collection edition games just because
We have to rally around the blackest flag. It’s a numbers game.
How did you know about my nook’s cranny tattoo??
I’m tired of people bitch and complain about not being able to play old Nintendo games, and at the same time make fun of Skyrim for being purchasable on any system you want.
For a company who brags about not going to have issue even if they’re not making even a penny for years to come, they sure trying their best to get every penny they can.
No, they’re actually not. They leave a ton of money on the table every time they release a new console and then don’t sell their old games on it.
Big Ninten doesn’t want you to play Paper Mario TTYD. You should be playing Origami King, it’s new and exciting while TTYD is old and obsolete. They are both Paper Mario, they are basically the same game anyway but only until we want to suggest it’s a brand new upgrade to the previous game
I could pirate Origami King, but I don’t want to play it even for free. You bet I have TTYD, though.
TTYD is one of my favorite games of all time and I made the mistake of playing Origami King.
It was a mix of disappointment, despair, resignation… I’ve truly never felt so insulted by a game. They stomped on my childlike joy and wonder like a vat of grapes in Napa Valley. Sickening
Doesn’t lose them money, the used game woudn’t make them money anyway which is why they lobbied to try and make reselling used games require a royalty or be illegal for years before everything became digital.
As for emulation they lie and call emulation itself illegal (the copies may be but emulation itself is not) because then they can’t pull a disney and “vault” old games on their digital storefronts and make you buy it again when they decide to just up shut down the previous server when they launch the next console.
They don’t want us to own the things we pay for. They want us to rent them while not realizing it.
They don’t want us to own the things we pay for.
The real answer right there.
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That’s functionally the same thing when what you own is digital and limited to a specific service.
I’m almost convinced Nintendo wants to erase the legacy of PM:TYD. Like it’s definitely the game that took the most chances with the Mario universe, and in the Japanese version especially, it pushed the limits of what was acceptable in media at the time, and would probably be a difficult game to navigate rereleasing in today’s climate. Probably the same reasons we likely won’t see an official Mother 3 localization either.
Can you educate me on what the differences were with the Japanese version that made it push the limits?
They’re probably referring to Vivian being trans.
In the American release, the other two ghost sisters just call her ugly a lot. In the OG Japanese, it was more explicit that they were actually misgendering her, iirc.
Bingo. The issue Nintendo faces is they’re going to anger someone depending on how they handle it. Like they faced backlash when they hinted that Shiver from Splatoon 3 might be nonbinary, and later clarified that she wasn’t. Same when they advertised that you selected your character’s appearance rather than gender in Pokemon Legends, Scarlett in Violet (despite the fact the characters are still referred to as men/women in game).
What complicates PMTYD and Mother 3 even more so is even though they include gender nonconforming characters, the way they are depicted in game aren’t exactly flattering by today’s standards. No matter how they decide to go about rereleasing these games they’re going to anger someone.
If nintendo keeps the PMTYD localization as is, or change Mother 3, it’s going to cause backlash because nintendo is more or less removing trans and gnc characters out of a game that originally had them. Likewise, if they decide to changePMTYD to include Vivi’s original trans plot, or release Mother 3 unchanged, They will facebacklash from people who take offense to LGBTQ people being in any form of media, especially in family entertainment which is Nintendo’s bread and butter. Even that aside, they might face backlash for how these characters are depicted and handled, because these were early 2000s games made by Japanese developers who used unflattering Japanese stereotypes for queer characters. Then you would have people who would want no changes to the localization because they just want to play the PMTYD from their childhood, and they would also be dragged into this complicated and heated debate.
Either way, Nintendo would be walking into a minefield no matter how they decide to release these games, and have probably elected to simply keep them vaulted. Maybe there will come a time where they will be able to rerelease/localize them with little controversy, but as things are right now, it’s a little dicey, especially for games they don’t even know will be profitable.
I think it’s okay for people that take offense at LGBT in media to be mad, oh no, some bigots got angy? How about we ignore them like we should
Agreed, but sadly to a profit driven company like Nintendo, they are still customers, and the anti LGBTQ lobby in the US is still very powerful, and they would definitely makes things miserable for Nintendo if they decided to go “lol, bigots stay mad XD”
You’re definitely seeing this with Disney, which has become the whipping boy of the republican party and are actively being legislated against due to their stance on LGBTQ inclusion. Nintendo being a foreign company who has a history of being targeted by conservatives in the past (as a video game company and a Japanese company) probably wants to avoid any controversy it can.
Ah right, I forgot Vivian isn’t trans in the US version, she is in French, which is what I’m most familiar with.
As evil as Disney is as a company, it’s been awesome to see them stick to their guns and unapologetically keep including LGBT+ characters in their movies and shows. You can be cynical and argue they’re doing it for money and PR, but we really need more big companies to follow their lead and plant their feet. I’d love for Nintendo to do the same, though I’m not sure I’ll even live to see that, sadly.
Japan is overall making good progress in that regard these past few years, but Nintendo is another story. I can’t think of a single company more paranoid about protecting their IP, and that’s really the root for a lot of their shortcomings.
Aside from the dialogue being darker than the US localization, Vivi is trans in the Japanese PMTYD. I go into detail on what roadblocks nintendo faces rereleasing it and Mother 3 in a reply to @testfactor
Second.
Remember the Disney Vault?
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When Nintendo started Virtual Console, I was really impressed, because instead of fighting emulation, they embraced it and made money off of it. All of these old games were just potential profit that they were sitting on. On top of that, they even managed to get games from non-Nintendo consoles onto VC!
Then, they discontinued it, and I’m sitting here, scratching my head and trying to figure out why. Nintendo is a strange company. They have an undeniably awesome product and very talented and creative developers, but also pretty bone-headed management.
They have brilliant, and creative game designers who love their work. They also have managers and lawyers who hate their fans with the passion of 1000 supernovae, and the wrath of 3000 women besmirched.
Pirating games is kinda a pain in the ass these days and I don’t even bother on PC
But I will pirate as much from Nintendo as possible. From their price fixing in the 80s and 90s to hostility towards people who want to buy games to people not even being able to get games they’ve paid for…
Fuck Nintendo
They could easily set up a permanent library of ALL previous titles for sale along with emulators for each new console they release. Nintendo could re-sell you every game they have ever made every time they drop new hardware, but nope, just a big fuck you.
I know this is a pipedream, but I hope behind the scenes this is what they’re doing. It’s probably impossible to secure the rights from game companies which are no longer in business, but if they’re able add third party titles to the Nintendo Switch Online membership, and have it include games up to the Wii U era, that would be a pretty good subscription model.
I think they key would be centering it around a good online multiplayer lobby system to play the multiplayer version of these old games. This is a value add that you don’t get via emulation. The current system of needing to be friends first is a big hurdle to play most of these games in NSO.
Also disassociate the name from the console. Don’t call it Nintendo Switch Online and call it Nintendo+ or some shit. Have this service be available on all platforms and easy for anyone to use without Nintendo hardware.
But who am I kidding, this is Nintendo, they’re not going to do any of this and just sit on their stacks of cash and make The new New Super Mario Bros. exclusively for the Nintendo Switch 2
