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Post by mrmolecule on Aug 4, 2010 9:51:43 GMT -5
One of the things I've always hated about the Big N (even back when I was a big fanboy) is how the Big N treated ROMs. In the late 1990s, when ROMs were getting to be pretty popular, Nintendo started to try to shut down ROM sites. What Nintendo should have realized is that there was still interest in these old NES games, and they can get more money off of it. Activision, Sega, Atari, and others were launching commercial emulators of their own, and Nintendo should've picked up on that. Pack some 10 ROMs, a NES emulator, and maybe a history section into a jewel case, and watch them fly off the shelves. The great success leads to multiple more volumes. Suddenly, ROMs are a perfectly legitimate business. Just like that. Why didn't Nintendo ever take advantage of this?
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Post by TV Eye on Aug 4, 2010 10:32:29 GMT -5
Well, roms are technically a way of stealing games without being caught. Sure, I love emulators as much as the next guy, but if you could play a game for free or be forced to buy it in a compilation, which would you choose?
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Post by mrmolecule on Aug 4, 2010 10:51:43 GMT -5
I'm not saying it would work now, but if Nintendo had figured out to snag a market in it in the very early days, they could've successfully gotten ROMs back into their hands.
However, licensed games would be cut out of that. You'll never see DuckTales or the original Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! on VC.
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Post by Johans Nidorino on Aug 4, 2010 10:55:06 GMT -5
The idea is an official emulator for PC? Some would probably download an illegal copy of the official emulator anyway ^_^'
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Post by wanderingshadow on Aug 4, 2010 11:43:20 GMT -5
However, licensed games would be cut out of that. You'll never see DuckTales or the original Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! on VC. The Punch-Out!! with Mr. Dream is good enough for me. I do wish we could get those Capcom/Disney games, though. |
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Post by cheatmaster30 on Aug 4, 2010 12:37:43 GMT -5
I think personally legal emulation via a Nintendo provided service would do far better if the emulators had the same features of the PC ones. You know, save states, rewinds, movie recording, etc rather than just playing them normally. The lack of those features, especially the recording of screens is probably why many games do get played as ROMs, and I think Nintendo could have done so much better to address it (how else can you record a DS/GBA/GB screen?)
Maybe Nintendo should realise that many people use ROMs for certain games not because they're free but because they often allow you to do more and better things than the actual game? Heck, ROM hacking is pretty much entirely the only reason I've ever used a ROM of a game in my life, and it's a game I own a physical copy of anyway. Build a better mousetrap?
I like the idea in the first post though. It's certainly accurate to say before the Virtual Console that the difficulty of accessing and setting up old Nintendo consoles and games is probably why so many people ended up using ROMs and what not.
I think if Nintendo personally just made a way for people to use the same features in an official emulation service as in a free emulator using illegal ROMs has, then they'd probably have killed the interest in ROMs from anyone other than the 'too cheap to buy the games' crowd.
Of course, there's also this point... if people are pirating a game more, then there's probably something (in many cases, not price alone) that's interested them that your official products aren't offering. Basically, find out why lots of people are downloading ROMs of games they already own legally, and you'll often find what you're not offering as a company. It's like the point in the first post, and it's why things like ROM hacking actually exist.
That's just my thoughts on this.
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Post by Fryguy64 on Aug 4, 2010 16:17:39 GMT -5
What, you mean like in 2001 when they packed in classic games with Animal Crossing, or 2002 when they released the NES Classics e-Reader cards, or 2004 when they released the Famicom Mini collections, or 2006 when they launched their Virtual Console service?
And inside Japan Nintendo was still selling pre-loaded memory carts for Famicom Disk System, Game Boy and Super Famicom until 2002. So they actually DID have a revenue stream from their old games... just not outside of Japan.
Nintendo now has the biggest back-catalogue of games available, and have even extended it to other publishers and other systems. So you can't ask why they have never taken advantage of it. They are probably now the biggest distribution channel for classic games in the world, outside of illegal channels.
And your post suggests that Nintendo closing down ROM distribution sites was somehow causing them to lose a valuable revenue stream, which is ludicrous.
You can't control piracy. iTunes didn't stop music piracy, it just provided an easy, cheap and legal way to sell music without having to go to a store. That meant all the people who were only pirating music because what they wanted wasn't readily available gave up. Sloth beats greed.
Virtual Console and similar services are an attempt to do this for games. Of course 500 Wii Points is too much for some NES games, and yet people will spend that on games that have aged well or hold some nostalgic value. Nobody values Urban Champion, so maybe a variable pricing structure rather than a by-system price would have been a better option... like DSiWare.
But they have done everything you say they haven't. They could have done it earlier, sure, but they didn't have an online enabled console until this generation, and that's an important factor. And they weren't going to distribute their games on PC, as then you come straight back to square 1... extensive piracy.
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Post by mrmolecule on Aug 4, 2010 16:35:28 GMT -5
What, you mean like in 2001 when they packed in classic games with Animal Crossing, or 2002 when they released the NES Classics e-Reader cards, or 2004 when they released the Famicom Mini collections, or 2006 when they launched their Virtual Console service? I'm talking about on home computers, not the ones for other Nintendo consoles. Are you talking about the Virtual Console being the biggest distribution of classic games? Isn't GameTap legal, though? * allegedly Exactly! What iTunes does is provide an easy way to buy DRM-free music. That's what Nintendo should do with ROMs. |
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Post by Dances in Undergarments on Aug 4, 2010 16:51:37 GMT -5
Have I woken up in a bizarro world where the Virtual Console isnt exactly this? Yes, its not for PCs, but I'd wager thats because the games are made with consoles in mind, designed for console controllers, etc, etc, which means building them for PC doesn 't make much sense.
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Post by Fryguy64 on Aug 4, 2010 16:56:16 GMT -5
I'm talking about on home computers, not the ones for other Nintendo consoles. You think Nintendo should have released their own emulator for PC and allowed for their NES library (for example) to be entirely downloadable (IP restrictions allowing). So essentially, you wanted them to do the Virtual Console, but on PC, and 10 years ago. And you wanted them to do it in such a way that you could transfer games to other devices running (presumably) the licensed Nintendo NES emulator. So, for example, you download Super Mario Bros. onto your NES emulator on PC, copy it to an SD Card, for example, and plug that in to your GameCube or GBA running the licensed NES emulator despite GameCube and GBA having limited or no internet capability. Maybe they should have come built in? Maybe they could have futureproofed it by chucking in a SNES and N64 emulator too. But wait, emulators are constantly improved and updated when software that emulates different hardware is created, such as allowing for chips from different companies. So they would need an internet connection, or else you could only play the emulator on PC. But then the Wii came out which was internet enabled as it became a viable prospect, so they can build in an emulator and update it as they see fit. But they DID do this... they just didn't let you transfer it between machines. It sounds to me that your problem is nothing to do with Nintendo's relationship with ROMs, but Nintendo making software tied to a system. A form of licensing that means I can't transfer VC games to my DS and play them on the move. And this is a topic we covered elsewhere. Are you talking about the Virtual Console being the biggest distribution of classic games? Isn't GameTap legal, though? If it's got more games on it, then GameTap is the biggest legal distribution channel for classic games. I don't know the exact figures for either service worldwide, so I can't comment. But VC is pretty damn huge. iTunes didn't start DRM free, they put their prices up when they removed DRM, and now it's all settling down again. Although movies and apps still have DRM to prevent copying. Why? Because they couldn't stop people copying music for their friends onto multiple formats. If DRM stopped them, they just downloaded from somewhere else. And they had to do a lot of negotiation with music publishers to do that. I think you're not living in the real world. I don't think you understand any of the issues you're putting forward, and you're asking for a past that didn't happen. It baffles me. |
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Post by Nester the Lark on Aug 4, 2010 17:15:07 GMT -5
Perhaps the problem is that some gamers have a seriously screwed up sense of self-entitlement.
For example...
"I bought Super Mario Bros. on my NES 20 years ago, so Nintendo owes me a new free version of it every time it's re-released on a new platform."
...or...
"Nintendo has the nerve to charge me for their products, so I'm just going to download them illegally because I deserve them for free."
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