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Comment by ribosometronome | Hacker News Reader

Everybody understands the value of crossplay and portability of 'stuff'. It's just not particularly valuable when you're in a dominant position.

All of these companies have had pretty shitty, anti-customer attitudes. Microsoft popularized pay-for-online services with Xbox Gold and now it's standard to have to pay a monthly fee to play your console games online. Conservely, crossplay would be the standard now is Microsoft has jumped on board when Sony was supporting it last generation. Nintendo hasn't been able to maintain a reasonable level of presense-across-device, creating a massive headache when changing devises or getting a new console and having to repurchase things you shouldn't have to. I can't really see the justification for not buying a Sony product but continuing to support Xbox or Nintendo given all of their attitudes over the years.

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I believe the Xbox Live criticism is unfair. The reason the service gained popularity is because it added value. Because XBL centralized the online gaming experience, a lot of benefits were realized including centralizing your multiplayer experience (community and content), and not having to maintain multiple subscriptions for different game services. That is and was worth the premium, atleast for me personally. For Nintendo, I think your criticism is valid, but only first party games. In the case of Sony, they are blocking (what seems to be) Epic's intention of allowing cross platform. And this is different since it's a policy choice, rather than having to invest development hours or something.

It also took some value that used to be free away. It was expected before Xbox Gold that you be able to play games you bought online.

> Because XBL centralized the online gaming experience

Gamespy and Steam's multiplayer system already did that for free.

> a lot of benefits were realized including centralizing your multiplayer experience (community and content)

Again, same thing.

> not having to maintain multiple subscriptions for different game services

I never needed to ever, except for MMOs, which I was still required to pay for on XBL at the time.

> That is and was worth the premium

No it wasn't, the fact you had to play multiplayer hosted on your own console, hosted on your own internet connection, by software you already bought is ridiculous. They offered "free updates", community features and other services completely free. But, multiplayer, the only thing most of us wanted and none of this "value add", you had to pay.

I'm confused. What's Nintendo's attitude? Not being successful in the market?

I get the whole 'dominant position' argument. It just seems dumb to me to behave like this when you're in a dominant position. Seems that big corporations learn the same lesson over and over again - in the meantime customers are left holding the bag.

BTW, full disclosure: I'm a Nintendo Switch fanboi, so take everything that comes out of my keyboard with a pinch of salt.

As a fellow Switch fanboy: Nintendo's online purchasing systems have (until the Switch) been extremely weird. Purchases on the eShop (or equivalent) on Wii, DSi, 3DS, and (IIRC) Wii U weren't tied to an account, they were tied to a console. If your console died, you couldn't just buy another one and automatically get all your games back, you'd have to call Nintendo customer support and get them to move your licenses over. The Switch fixed that but has the new problem that save data can't be backed up (until their paid online service starts in a couple months).

Not just this, but the other mystifying bit is that titles had to be repurchased for different types of devices. Not only did you have to physically migrate your games between consoles, but like, virtual console titles might be available for both 3DS and Wii platforms, but you'd have to buy them separately on each. And the Switch doesn't have "virtual console" persay yet, but will sell some legacy titles, like the new Donkey Kong release under the "arcade archives" label.

In most other companies, like Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, etc., if you buy a title, you can play it on any platform that supports it. The fact that Nintendo players can't accumulate a library of legacy Nintendo titles and play them on any Nintendo console they port it to demonstrates Nintendo has a strong interest in repackaging and reselling the same games over and over again.

The one notable exception to this was that you were given a decently steep discount on "upgrading" Wii VC titles to their essentially identical Wii U versions, like 80% off or so. Still, it really shouldn't have been paid at all.

sure. from a technical point of view their approach sucked (and the market "punished them" for this, right?) but at least at a philosophical (how things should work) they did the right thing in helping you move your licenses over.

Sony isn't in a dominant position. If I were to buy a new console Sony isn't even a contender.

What? Last time I looked the PS4 was outselling the Xbox 1 by a 2:1 ratio and the switch was selling about a 10th of that. Sony doesn't care about cross play because it doesn't benefit them. Your personal feelings aside, Sony has absolutely dominated this latest round of the console wars. It wasn't even close.

I really don't care about their sales numbers. Personally I don't consider them a contender for myself.

Because Sony doesn't support proper cross play, among many other reasons they are out.

I guess the point was that right now, they have the most consoles and games out there. That being said I think they have repeatedly pissed off enough people that they will not be seriously considered when the time to buy a new console comes.

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