Comment by sotix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sotix | Hacker News Reader

Yuzu got me to start buying Nintendo games again. Two weeks ago I coincidentally decided to mod my Switch and extract all of my games to play on my steam deck because I hadn't touched my switch since getting a steam deck. Everything I am now running on my steam deck comes from my personal switch. I have been having so much fun and loving how my games look on an OLED screen. I also appreciate that I didn't have to generate any waste since I continue to only have my two devices rather than buying a new OLED switch. I was about to go on a shopping spree on the Nintendo store to buy more games even though I haven't bought a switch game in 2 years. This is disappointing to hear.

The interesting thing to me is the Wii U was sort of like youtube premium. Everyone complains about youtube ads yey refuses to pay for the ad-free experience. Similarly, I see people complain about not being able to buy old Nintendo games, but the Wii U eShop provided an abundance of retro games for purchase. Most of the retro games I play come from my Wii U. Nintendo has disappointingly made it more and more difficult over the years to buy their older games, but I suppose when it was easy to do, nobody did it unfortunately. All of this would be solved if Nintendo simply sold their games and we were allowed to play it on whatever hardware we want. But I understand why Nintendo doesn't want that and also that many people seem to not want to actually pay for the games they play.

> But I understand why Nintendo doesn't want that

This part I really don't understand. Nintendo has clearly got the technology at play to run everything at least prior to the GameCube on the Switch, ready to roll... but the only way to access those games is to pay for a subscription service which is already kind of annoying, only to then get a drip-feed of a few games every few months, selected by... somebody, no idea who, with no real consistency as to what makes the cut and what doesn't. It's, by all accounts, completely fucking arbitrary.

I love the Switch, it's IMO, the best console Nintendo's turned out in actual decades, and if I was given the option I would buy the shit out of a large library of games from previous Nintendo consoles, and given how many 3rd party projects have made playing those games on all manner of shit, chiefly desktop PCs, a possible thing, I struggle to really sympathize with Nintendo here. And again: the groundwork for this is already laid. I don't know how much work goes between, for example, taking a SNES title like Super Mario RPG and putting it on the Switch's virtual SNES console, but given that their virtual SNES has essentially the same features that every bog standard SNES emulator has had for over 10 years... you'll have to forgive me if I don't think it's much? If any?

I would absolutely understand if they want to playtest each game, make sure it's optimized, make sure there's no graphical oddities, etc. etc. but like... you can do that. I could do that. And hell, if a game made it through with some big glitch, give me the option to send your devs a fuckin email about it in-game with a dump of the memory at the time it happened so they can fix it.

But no, instead, peacemeal releases of games, on a subscription service only, that range from absolutely S-tier iconic to... what the fuck is this in terms of cultural significance. Instead of just a bloody storefront, and let me pick what I want, and pay a reasonable price for it. I'd bet anything if they charged like $9.99 per game for the entire library of NES, SNES, and N64 titles, they'd be absolutely swimming in money.

Like... the big corpos have never understood, this is what gave Steam the position they have now. Piracy is work. Hacking consoles is work. Installing and playing cracked games is work (and risk!). I don't want to work, I want to fucking play Donkey Kong. Give me a legal way to give you a reasonable amount of money so I can play Donkey Kong! And then I get Donkey Kong and you get money! It's the dictionary definition of a win/win scenario.

> Piracy is work. Hacking consoles is work. Installing and playing cracked games is work (and risk!). I don't want to work, I want to fucking play Donkey Kong

It takes work on the side of companies like Nintendo to make piracy inconvenient. If Nintendo and others didn't spend their resources locking down their consoles and squashing any form of piracy that gets too convenient then the easiest way to play any game would be to pirate it via some community-maintained all-in-one cross-platform game installer and launcher with every game ever dumped available. Then Nintendo would have no hope of competing with convenience. At a minimum they would need some sort of payment and accounting system which would introduce friction compared to a free piracy frontend. So naturally, Nintendo is not interested in engaging in a convenience competition. They want to use the law to maintain total control of how their games can be played, and then use that granted monopoly to make as much money from them as they can. Why sell an older game for a reasonable price if you're the only game in town and can instead use it as leverage to get people to give you money regularly for the privilege of playing it? Even better, bundle the game they want with a bunch that they don't and several that they kinda-sorta want to play at some point maybe? The more you can dilute and confuse the value of a purchase the more you can make off it. Ideally you reach a point where subscribers feel some nebulous obligation to pay you regularly, and the actual service you provide only serves as to assuage cognitive dissonance should a subscriber consider cancelling. "Oh, but I played Earthbound for a few hours last week, and maybe I'll want to get back to that at some point, so I guess I'll keep my subscription"

> It takes work on the side of companies like Nintendo to make piracy inconvenient. ... So naturally, Nintendo is not interested in engaging in a convenience competition.

Oh, sure, but 9/10ths of that is already done. The eShop already exists and distributes purchased DRM-locked content to their hardware. That's my point: all the pieces for this already exist and are implemented. The only problem is the business side that insists on doing this so bizarrely.

> Why sell an older game for a reasonable price if you're the only game in town and can instead use it as leverage to get people to give you money regularly for the privilege of playing it?

I mean, without access to their data I can't say this for sure, but I feel like a monthly subscription for these games is substantially less money than just selling them as is. It feels distinctly like a loss-leader for Nintendo's subscription thing so they can buff the numbers of subscribers.

> Even better, bundle the game they want with a bunch that they don't and several that they kinda-sorta want to play at some point maybe? The more you can dilute and confuse the value of a purchase the more you can make off it.

I really don't think that rule is as hard and fast as you're making it sound. The bundle maybe, sure. But what's the value proposition for all the games not available at all, purchase or subscription? That's my real beef is the arbitrary and often nonsensical selection process.

> Ideally you reach a point where subscribers feel some nebulous obligation to pay you regularly, and the actual service you provide only serves as to assuage cognitive dissonance should a subscriber consider cancelling. "Oh, but I played Earthbound for a few hours last week, and maybe I'll want to get back to that at some point, so I guess I'll keep my subscription"

But again: just price the Earthbound game according to the work required to bring it to the new storefront. Then you're already in the black without needing to sell a subscription in the first place. And sure you aren't continuing to make money off of it, but who's to say you'll continue doing that with the subscription? People find them irritating and no matter what psychological shit you try and pull on them, at some point it's not bad odds they're just going to go "I don't need this" and cancel.

> I'd bet anything if they charged like $9.99 per game for the entire library of NES, SNES, and N64 titles, they'd be absolutely swimming in money.

This is more or less how it worked on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS so I would assume that they weren't swimming in money if they decided to change it now.

It wasn't the entire library, of course, but that probably is never going to happen anyways due to licensing issues that pirates don't have to worry about.

But in no world can I buy a retro game on arbitrary platform X and then also play it on arbitrary platforms P, Q or R.

You can do this right now. For example, I have bought retro games from gog and humble that included multiple builds for different systems and platforms, and no restrictions on where you run them - just that you don't distribute them.

You missed the 'arbitrary platform' part of 5he original comment.

We all know steam exists that wasnt what OP meant.

If arbitrary platform X is one that sells DRM free games, then the comment holds true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com