[Wii] Virtual Console Rip-off

Originally Posted by Nukkus

Nintendo sent me a reply stating that any games bought for the virtual console are locked to the console's serial number, and are not transferable or refundable, and that I would have to purchase them again.

The games you are buying are simply compressed ROMs with a DRM protection on it, as such these files can't be transfered since the DRM check would fail nor modified since it would break the hash check. But they can be re-created (aka re-transfered), thus generating a new DRMed ROM, Nintendo won't do it 'cause they want to rip you all they can just like every other company in this industry.

Originally Posted by Nukkus

They told me that I'm not buying the games, instead I am paying for the privilege to play them, and that if i have to exchange my system for a new one, that privilege is revoked.

Everytime I hear/read this I crack up to the non-sense it is. I'm paying for this sandwich, but I don't own it, I simply paid for the previlege of eating it

Originally Posted by Nukkus

And here I thought Nintendo was an honest company.

LMAO like there's such thing as an honest company in this industry. Next thing you'll tell me that Google does no evil!

Originally Posted by Solis

Personally I think the VC is a rip-off in pretty much every way.

VC will ultimately fail simply because you can play these games for free on the PC, free always beats paid for. And if that's not enough, you can play them on PC with much more options, without any restriction and with better quality, plus it's free! Free I say.

Originally Posted by ramoth

People talking about "fair" pricing really bugs me. The prices are totally reasonable, IMO.

"Fair" pricing is determined by other offering in the "market", since the other offering are free and even have better quality, free is the only fair price for VC games. As simple as that.

Originally Posted by ramoth

The other thing is people talking about is the licensing restrictions. Sorry, but this is not Nintendo being "dishonest". This is something that's pervasive throught the software industry. You don't own software. You pay for the right to license it. Look it up, it's clearly spelled out in all the EULAs. Do you know what EULA stands for? End User License Agreement. Yup. You're purchasing a license to use.

Nintendo not wanting VC downloads to be transferrable is perfectly reasonable. This is how things work on XBL as well, and how things work in general. Again, remember, you're purchasing a single user license to play the game. You don't own it.

People have been cursing Microsoft and others in the software industry for years regarding the EULAs and strange licenses that say that you pay for products but it's not yours, then suddenly Nintendo does the same thing in a noticable way and it's alright.
I say noticable way because the same license applyes to games, but people tend to associate the price they pay for a game to own the phisical game disk, disk that can be lended (althrough the license doesn't allow it, so much for the good will sharing teached in pre-schools), sold or offered. Take that away and people won't see any reason to pay for stuff and then having no right to do whatever they want it that file, and infact there isn't, it's just plain digital new world rip off.

Originally Posted by ramoth

Honestly, I think people have unrealistic expectations, especially after having easy access via ROMs to all these old games.

The only people with unrealistic expectation here is Nintendo who expects people to pay for stuff they can get for free, better and non restricted.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Infernal Monkey

People can download music for free too, yet iTunes music store is thriving.

Laugh My Ass OUT!!!

Do you have any ideia of how many terabytes of musics are traded each month? And I say terabytes to go with low numbers because the real number may go over the petabytes!! What are a few misarable millions of downloads on iTunes? Nothing, zero, nada, completely nothing, probably not even 0.0001% of the music downloads.

Sure that Nintendo may be able to get money from the scraps left by those who don't download the entire SNES + MD + N64 Romset, but how many are these? Not many and defenitely not me.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by ramoth

Yet, Apple makes millions of dollars on this, continues to attract more and more people, and are showing steady, healthy growth. You're completely missing the point here. A lot of people said that if the music was there for free, NOBODY would pay for it online, ever. Yet, clearly millions of people are downloading music, movies, TV shows from iTunes. All of these things were available for free online. So, I'm not sure what your point is other than trolling and typing poorly.

On wikipedia there a link to an article stating that as of 2004 (we are almost in 2007 now and the net keeps growing) that P2P traffic ammounts to 10 petabytes of data, let's assume that only 2 petabytes are music. Now what is a few millions when compared to 2 petabytes? In my book it's nobody, but whatever you say.

Originally Posted by ramoth

Here's my speculation as to why people like iTunes:

I dunno, but I know why people like the other alternative better, 'cause it's free.

Originally Posted by ramoth

Anyway, going back to Nintendo, I think this also applies to the VC: of course, the games are still exactly the same, but... on an emulator, you're using the keyboard (or a joypad if you feel like dealing with drivers and poorly made pads). VC, you get to use a high quality controller made by Nintendo. Plus, you get to play the games on your TV, just like they were supposed to be -- something always felt weird about playing a SNES game on the computer, to me. Didn't feel natural, somehow.

I use a USB Logitech Precision and it's by far better than any other offering in the PC and console market when it comes to digital pads and it doesn't require any drivers or installation, it's just plug and play. For 3D games I use the MS Xbox 360 controller that was the same quality as a console pad (since it's indeed a console pad). And yeah, playing on a monitor sure feels wrong, after all the superior color gamut and overscan adjustment, the fine control over the image displayed, the progressive display and the digital input will defenitely ruin the SNES experience.

Originally Posted by ramoth

So basically, stop trolling.

Ok I get it, I'm trolling and you aren't, sorry about that.

Originally Posted by DarkMageOzzie

You're assuming way too much. The amount of people that don't even know what a ROM is, even among gamers outweigh those that do. There are plenty of people who play games and have the internet and are either highly computer illirate or just plain stupid.

You have a point there, while normally gamers are not computer illiterate alot of them can be when it comes to emulation. I'll give you that.

Originally Posted by DarkMageOzzie

Also even people who do know about ROMs may choose not to use them simply because of the fact that they're illegal and not everyone is willing to download something illegaly just because it's free even if they know there is practically no way they will get caught.

You think too highly of the people don't you? Or maybe it's just me that think too low of them, regardless of what that I belive that everyone who knows about ROMs and likes old games uses them, it would be silly not to.

Originally Posted by DarkMageOzzie

The only reliable ROM site I know of already has been forced to remove everything involving Mario or Final Fantasy among other things.

The 2 I know just keep growing, one of them even bragged about having an uptime of over an 1 year, but they ask a donation for access to bigger ROMsets.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by ArrowHead

LMAO. Yeah, as if emulators on PC are perfect, let alone better than the original hardware.

Actually I think your expectation that so many people will know about emulation and where to get ROMs is the unrealistic one. Not to mention your mistaken notion that ROMs are somehow better than the originals.

Anyway, I figure all it will take is a little customer backlash or a little bad press and Nintendo will make it their policy to transfer VC games when repairing/replacing Wiis. Or it might even already be their policy and they're just not talking about it.

1. What you get on VC is the same ROMs you get on any ROMs page, the only diference is the VC ROMs have DRM on it and you pay for that.

2. Emulators on PC are not perfect, but so aren't Nintendo's, and when in doubt I'll go with what I know it's good. I dunno about SNES or SNES emulators that much but I know about Megadrive and when it comes to it nothing beats Kega and Steve Snake, not only he's been working on Megadrive emulation for 10 years as he's also a game programmer with a long carrier and actually was part of teams that coded Megadrive retail games.

Now let me see, will I go with a trusted developer with 10 years of emu experience plus even more real world game coding or will I go with god knows who or how or when coded the VC MD emulator? ... Tough choice.
As for SNES I'll leave it alone since I dunno much about it, but I do know that SNES emu's are open source and that weights a lot on my book.


EDIT:

Originally Posted by Megalixir

I don't think this is a matter of free roms vs. paying for downloadable content. I think this is a matter of people like to pay for old games they can't get even if they're able to use roms.

Humm?

Originally Posted by surasshu

A few million dollars, kid. How much money does your P2P traffic make you?

2x Humm?

Could you guys explain yourselfs better? I really don't understand what you said.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Infernal Monkey

Is it really so hard for you to understand that some people actually like paying for video games? =|

When you can get them for free and better, yes it is. For example, I like turkey even if I have to pay for it, but if I can get turkey with the same quality for free I like it even more and will never buy any turkey again, I'll just eat the free one 'cause it's free. Wouldn't you do the same?

Originally Posted by surasshu

What I meant was:

Pay service (ie. iTunes): Makes millions of dollars.
Free service (ie. Soulseek): Makes approximately 0 dollars.

Can you see why Nintendo would go for the first option? Or, why would any serious company even consider the second?

Of course I can see why Nintendo goes with the first option, what I can't see is why anybody would go with it. Check my free turkey analogy up here.

Originally Posted by surasshu

Also, 10 petabytes of data sounds like a lot, but when you break it down, it's not that impressive. If every P2P dude moves 100MB of data each year (not that much, you would agree I'm sure), you would need 10 million people to achieve 10 petabytes of data traffic each year. This is the same amount of people that have an iTunes account, according to Apple (other estimates are 200 million and 100 million users).

How many user are registered is irrelevant, how many songs were downloaded is, iTunes sold so far 1,5 billion of songs, at average 5Mb per song it's 8Pb and took them 3 years to reach this number, meanwhile only god knows how many songs have been downloaded during these 3 years on the P2P networks. Anyway let's say they are even 'cause since P2P is decentralized no one really knows how much has been download, these 10Pb was a estimate of how much was available to download on all P2P networks in 2004 (or so they say).

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by RABicle

Lol not the same thing.
A better anaolgy would be, in order to get the free turkey, you have to vote for the free turkey charity at 3 differet "top charity" websites and then be forced to sit through hentai and offered services you don't want before eating your turkey. But wait, it doesn't stop there. Sometimes your turkey may not even get delivered, the turkey dlivery truck might crash en route. Who knows? Maybe your turkey will fall apart or be hacked up as you eat it? Not only that but you're forbidden from using a knife and fork, instead you must use chopsticks to devour your turkey.

That sure is a good one. But if you know the right places you can get your stuff without voting or any other kind of assle, the trick here is to know where to get your turkey :P

Anyway, I just readed a article saying Wii outputs the VC games at 240p. That's very intresting, it would do those dithering effects flawlessly, a thing that's not possible on monitors or Xbox/PC TV-Out without tricks, Kega does it by software but doesn't look as good as a real TV. Unfortunly the Megadrive sound emulation apparently is crappy, I guess Kega wins the first round.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Megalixir

Downloading licensed songs is illegal and is equal to stealing an item from a store.

Downloading songs is not stealing, it's copyright infringement, copyright comes from the words copy + rights that means, rights to copy, that is who detain what right to copy the content and how. When you download stuff you are abusing your right to copy stuff, you are NOT stealing. This statement just proves how the media industry has totaly distorted the law in the minds of the poor impressionable youngsters. So dude copyright infrigement is not stealing.

Originally Posted by RABicle

Yeah I have one. It's terrible. The fucking dpad doesn't even work. Can you even imagine playing Snes games with a joystick? It's a sin.

Get a USB Logitech Precision pad, costs 13€ and works like a charm.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Lukage

You have something that you're supposed to pay for. You didn't pay for it. Not only is it stealing, but it's additionally breaking laws and warranting fines. If you're so keen on your piracy, give us your information so we can submit it to the RIAA.

Someone needs a dictionary:

Verb
to steal (third-person singular simple present steals, present participle stealing, simple past stole, past participle stolen)

(transitive) To illegally, or without the owner's permission, take possession of something by surreptitiously taking or carrying it away.

(intransitive) To be involved in illegally taking possession of by surreptitiously taking or carrying away; to commit theft.

Did you took some kind of possesion from someone when you downloaded you music/movies? I don't think so.



Noun
copyright (uncountable and countable. plural: copyrights)
(uncountable) The right by law to be the entity which determines who may publish, copy and distribute a piece of writing, music, picture or other work of authorship.
(countable) Such an exclusive right as it pertains to one or more specific works.

When you downloaded your music/movies did you ignored that you don't have the right to do it? You sure did but that's not stealing.
(both entries taken from Wiktionary.org)


See kids at home? Copyright violation is not stealing. Whenever someone tries to tell this to you be suspicous, you never know when the media corporations are about :-P

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by deadally

You praise the ability to configure this shit all the way you'd like it, but I don't understand half the shit that goes on, and I can never get the sound and video just right.

And I think they are not configurable enough, on the Xbox Megadrive emulator you can take fine tunning one step futher by having per game settings, you can for example overclock the emulated CPU on a specific game to overcome in-game slowdowns, disable sprite limiter in games with a lot of stuff on screen, have different keys configs and even specific image filters on each game for optimal image (particulary usefull on games that rely too much on dithering). And there's even more options that I'm not mentioning, it's just awsome.


Anyway I have a few questions for those who used VC here, where do the emulators come from? I mean when you buy a say, Megadrive game for the first time, what happens? Does the Wii download the emulator and then the ROM? Does it just download the ROM and the emulator is built-in into each ROM (per game emulator)? Or is the emulator built-in the Wii and each game has a specific profile?
What about the configuration? What settings are available to change? Can you do controller remapping (force button changes)? What about image and sound settings like sprite limiters or CPU overclock on MD emulator (awsomely usefull setting)? Also what region (Jap/US/Eur) are the ROMs from?
What about the credits/about screen? Does these emulators have any credits to them? Do you see any known emu author credited in the emulators? Are there any known PC emulation quirks showing on VC emulation?

That's sure is a lot of questions, if anyone can be nice and anwser some of them it would be great.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by RABicle

The emulators are built into the Wii. They arn't made by known emulator authors, they're made by Nintendo because believe it or not, they are pretty good at reverse engineering their own systems.

So they can't be updated? That sounds wierd... any other specific details?

There's nowhere I can't reach.