[Wii] Virtual Console Rip-off

Originally Posted by Timberhomo

Grail has a point. I don't see Nintendo having any problems with longevity. I still have a launch GameCube that works fine.

I still have a launch N64 that works fine. I know people with working SNESes and NESes.

People talking about "fair" pricing really bugs me. The prices are totally reasonable, IMO. $12 for Super Mario 64? That's pretty sweet, since I can play that game for hours and hours. I think people expecting VC to be a good way to "sample" old games are going to be disappointed. The VC really is a place to re-live and re-play the classics from eras past. Assuming you play the games for a decent ammount of time, and not just 5 minutes, it's a great value.

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.

Also, even at the current prices, I doubt it's terribly profitable for Nintendo. It costs money to maintain servers, buy bandwidth, pay programmers, etc. The problem with distributing things over the 'nte is that as popularity increases, costs can go up quite quickly.

Honestly, I think people have unrealistic expectations, especially after having easy access via ROMs to all these old games. Think about if you couldn't play these games on the computer, and had to drag out an NES to play them, or couldn't even find the cartridge to buy if you didn't get it back in the 80s or 90s when the games were out. If you take ROMs out of the picture, I think the VC pricing really seems quite reasonable.

God, I sound like such a Nintendo appolgist But that's the way I see it: I don't think the VC is overpriced.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by GoldfishX

Really? I would think taking all the packaging and production costs out would leave them with pure profit for every game sold. I assume they're already planning on fixing the other aspects by means of other revenue. I mean, imagine if one of the FTP owners here got $5 for every album downloaded...

Now imagine if he had millions of people downloading from him. Servers and programmers and bandwidth all cost money. Remember, these games were originally selling for 40 or 50 dollars.

Originally Posted by GoldfishX

But the non-transferring thing does sound kind of lame...I was assuming it would be more like the games would be linked to an account and if you needed to, you could grab them again. That would make more sense...Maybe link the account with a serial number and have the two be transferable if need be.

You can delete the game and re-download it at your leisure, which is way more than the iTunes Store allows. In theory, you could buy everything on VC, even though you couldn't store it all on the Wii at once.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by devilmaycry

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.

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.

Here's my speculation as to why people like iTunes: Consistent quality. You know that you're going to get 128kbps AAC (which sounds pretty sweet) when you download from iTunes. When you download music from less than legal sources, you often get stuff that's in 128kbps MP3 (ugh) or, even if it's at a decent bitrate for MP3, it might have skips and be poorly encoded. And let's not even talk about tagging.

Same reason for TV shows. The quality of the encode you get from iTunes is stellar -- 480p h.264. Delicious. Many TV ripping groups are doing 320p XviD. I haven't bought a feature length movie from iTunes, but they're also in 480p h.264.

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.

So basically, stop trolling.

Double Post:

Originally Posted by GoldfishX

True, but the cost of materials (the carts), shipping, marketing and overall developing/testing expenses are taken out of the equation, so you're left with pure profit on games that made back their development costs many years ago. Which...is smart business, if I do say so myself.

It's a very smart business, defintely. You have free content, and your only costs are distribution.

Originally Posted by GoldfishX

I'm sure if Nintendo has a full network in place, they can handle the upload requirements and still make out in the greens every month by plenty. I'm sure they thought this through and compensated for that.

It wouldn't surprise me if the money they make from the VC is helping to alllow them to set up this network in place in the first place. They haven't done anything on this scale before with online gaming. Online gaming on the DS is a bit different, the cost of starting that up can be recouped from licensing fees from games. Setting up a huge network for millions of online gamers on home consoles is going to cost a ton more money in initial capital than setting up one for people who occasionally play online with their DS.

My main point above was that the VC isn't Nintendo's big money maker, nor is it their loss leader -- that would be the console. The general model for console manufacturers is that you sell the console at cost or take a loss and make the money and profit on licensing fees for people who make games (and on 1st party titles, the markup that normally gets passed on for the licensing fee turns into straight profit).

Originally Posted by GoldfishX

Sorry, what I meant was transfer to another console (in the event something happens). I meant make it so you can transfer another serial number to your account.

If something happens to it and you send it to Nintendo, I've heard (and it's been mentioned in this thread) that they will take care of that and set you up with a transfer.

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

Originally Posted by JazzFlight

What's even funnier is that Nintendo doesn't take a loss on their console sales, they make a profit.

It was only Microsoft and Sony this gen that are losing money on their hardware sales.

I assumed they sold them at cost. Go Nintendo.

(Also, the original Xbox was a loss for MS)

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