Um… they are, and have been for almost 20 years, since the Wii. Or the N64 depending on how you look at it.
What did you think Virtual Console was? How about the NES and SNES mini? What about the “Nintendo Game Pass” or whatever they’re calling it?
Animal Crossing’s original Japan release had NES games in it, and so did the GC rerelease/psuedosequel we got internationally too.
Even better: During the Wii era, the Wiis at the Nintendo Store in New York City ran official Nintendo made software to load games off a connected hard drive, so you could play multiple of their new releases without workers having to switch discs.
It has always been about attempts to prevent piracy and keep control over how people access their games for Nintendo, and they are roughly 10 years behind the curve on modern tech trends.
The problem is that they had stuff like Virtual Console and then decide to pull the plug. Then rebrand as some other feature in an online service, which is yet another service that’s gonna be a wait and see on whether or when they’ll pull the plug again. Forcing people to pay for old stuff over and over again.
They should sell this kind off stuff independently from their consoles/handhelds, preferably something that runs on a PC or any platform.
The NES and SNES mini were great examples of how it could be done, except there too they decided to only make a limited amount, essentially the same as pulling the plug.
Nintendo’s truly an awful company. It’s baffling how often they get praised for their stuff, they only dangle some 15+ year old reskinned game and people forget all about it.
I think, like that post mentions as well, that prices were the biggest issue. The points system being a garbage system in the first place, easily a system I would instantly be turned off from, I absolutely hate buying currencies to buy something, instead of just outright seeing the actual prices in the store. But if you’d want to buy a small collection for a couple of decades old games it would add up quickly.
The problem with Nintendo’s always been the insane prices. I’m especially hesitant to buy anything digital or any services from Nintendo. Knowing they could decide to pull the plug any time again.
Probably after people learned that nintendo had no proper account system so you would lose your purchases if your console died and needed the hassle of sending it to them for them to transfer to a new console.
There is no way to legally buy their ROMs anymore. You can only rent them in perpetuity. When they did sell them, they didn’t forward port your purchases to their next device, which is hilariously stupid, and you know they’d take you to court for dumping those same ROMs to your PC to organize, customize, and play the way you like them. If they just sold these things DRM-free on a web site for me to put in Emulation Station, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
I hate to defend Nintendo, but they used their own Emulators in the NES and SNES Mini (Kachikachi and Canoe respectively). I would be surprised if they just yoinked one from the internet here.
Because I’ve worked with the marketing assholes who lead to these decisions, and if you don’t get why they make them and how to get them fired for those decisions, you’ll never change anything.
That’s the difference between being a child, and being effective.
These careers are everything to them, they will gladly fuck whoever they need to to survive, but if you make them more afraid of the community then they’ll actually try to listen.
There was a brief period back in the late 2000s/early 2010s when Google listened to people.
That died by the time I joined, but I worked with people from before and they clearly didn’t give a shit about the customers anymore, it was all internal politics for promotions, you’d never get in trouble for pissing off customers.
Make them afraid of you, make them fear doing anything to piss you off, otherwise they’ll sell you out for their bosses and shareholders every time.
I'd say it started on at least Nintendo 64. The original Japan-only Animal Crossing game for N64 had playable, emulated Famicom (NES) games. Nintendo even ran a special offer to get an N64 Controller Pak with Ice Climber pre-loaded which you could plug into your controller like a game cartridge and play inside Animal Crossing.
And similarly, all 4 of these are not the real deal. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for more games like this and I hope they’re good, but I will wait until Kurvitz and Rostov to be at the helm again before getting too excited.
If nothing else though, Argo Tuulik’s blog post for Summer Eternal is worth a read. I love his writing style, and that post is unreasonably funny to me, but you can still tell there is a lot of meaning behind what he says. I suppose things hit hardest when presented in ridiculous over the top metaphor.
Oh yeah, for sure. Don’t get me wrong, I hope these are good. I liked John Henry Irons, Superboy, and Eradicator as well, lol. Just not the original, and need to be able to stand on their own. I desperately want more games like DE but what I don’t want is a bunch of bad actors churning out bad clones sold on someone else’s good reputation. Not that I’m accusing any of these games of that, just that given ZA/UM’s current situation, it’s hard not to worry.
If GOG are such a freedom heroes why do they rely on megacorp Windows OS? That’s what I like about steam - it makes gaming on linux dumb easy. And not just on linux, their “package” is ridiculously good - mods, cummunity, reviews, friends, non stop sales, mobile app (although I hate they removed chat to standalone app), and much, much more.
I’m not shitting on GOG. I love those guys, they brought back so much memories with reviving long forgotten games, I have hundreds of purchases there. But… it just needs a lite more polish (pun intended).
Not sire how it’s now, but couple years ago that “new galaxy” thing felt like it was precisely crafted to NOT run on linux. I tried multiple ways to run it, but all of them were unstable, crashing and very laggy. The best one was through Bottles but still… Heroic came and was instantly way ahead.
Yeah. I intentionally buy my games on Steam for ethical reasons because Valve contributes to a positive gaming ecosystem by making things run seamlessly on Linux.
GOG contributes to a negative gaming ecosystem by making Windows the “easy” option and not making use of Proton (or similar tech). Hopefully they fix that one day, but they don’t seem to care.
I’d take a guess that from their perspective, putting all that time + money into developing and supporting a Linux version isn’t worth it when probably ~3% of the user base is using it.
These articles are basically just advertising for GoG.
They have the same issues as steam does regarding only selling licenses, or not having inheritable or transferable accounts.
DRM free is great, but as a service they aren’t fundamentally different from steam. They just like to market themselves like they are.
This has been posted a million times already, but I am still going to repeat it. Yes you are right, in their own legal docs they also only talk about licenses.
Difference for the consumer however is that you get the installation files which are supposed to work offline. Meaning if you take care to store that, it will not be gone ever, no matter if GOG goes down. With Steam this gets more complicated and may only work for some games.
I get that. DRM free is great and better. I just don’t like the advertisement that casts it as “you own the game”, or entire articles built around posts by their marketing department.
It feels very ambulance-chaser-y.
Steam should have taken the opportunity to recommend a gamer to GOG, mentioning that it’s only a license unfortunately. Or offer installers that can’t be taken away.
Yeah. And also choice not as wide as Steam exactly because of DRM free. Can’t buy monhunt or any of Capcom’s game on GOG. But if you want to play old game then GOG is the place to go, they make sure everything run.
I like steam as a user but it’s still proprietary software and I’m slightly concerned about what is going to happen when Gabe Newell steps down as president and ceo of Valve.
As long as you understand the terms of your agreement with Steam as a platform, everything is fine. Physical media for games are outdated anyway, especially with frequent updates, patches, and DLC releases. Regarding older titles that are no longer supported, well, as the saying goes: “If buying isn’t owing…”
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