big F Posted August 18, 2018 Report Share Posted August 18, 2018 (edited) Nintendo has successfully brought down two websites that were hosting old Nintendo Roms for Nes ans SNes games. It seems this may be in part to Nintendo wanting to clear competition for a planned release of official retro roms for their current console. I can see it from their point ( I used to work for them in the 90's) but as the games mostly in question are in some cases approaching 30 years old, you have to ask why. They already made millions back in the day, the retro rom market cant be that lucrative surely. I know 80's and 90's retro is cool but a lot of the retro rom market is a nostagia thing for us old farts who were there when it was current, and want to remember our spotty teenage years. Link below for a more indepth report. https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/22/17600008/nintendo-roms-lawsuit-cease-desist Edited August 18, 2018 by big F 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neighbor Posted August 18, 2018 Report Share Posted August 18, 2018 How was that, what were you doing at big N, very interesting how thigs work in such a big company, can you go into details? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wikati Posted August 18, 2018 Report Share Posted August 18, 2018 6 hours ago, big F said: Nintendo has successfully brought down two websites that were hosting old Nintendo Roms for Nes ans SNes games. It seems this may be in part to Nintendo wanting to clear competition for a planned release of official retro roms for their current console. I can see it from their point ( I used to work for them in the 90's) but as the games mostly in question are in some cases approaching 30 years old, you have to ask why. They already made millions back in the day, the retro rom market cant be that lucrative surely. I know 80's and 90's retro is cool but a lot of the retro rom market is a nostagia thing for us old farts who were there when it was current, and want to remember our spotty teenage years. Link below for a more indepth report. https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/22/17600008/nintendo-roms-lawsuit-cease-desist not that lucrative?? NES CLASSIC SALES On April 28, 2017, Nintendo revealed that 2.3 million consoles were sold in total.[17] Following the rerelease of the console, Nintendo had sold about 1.3 million additional units through June 30, 2018 SNES CLASSIC SALES The SNES Mini sold 368,913 copies within its first four days on sale in Japan.[31] By the end of October 2017, it had sold more than 2 million units worldwide.[32] By its fiscal year 2017 report, ending March 31, 2018, the SNES Classic had sold more than 5 million units. ANY AND ALL ORIGINAL FANS LOOK BACK WITH NOSTALGIA ALMOST 30 YEARS Do you realize how powerful that force is? Retro gaming has unlimited power and potential in todays market. The humbling fact is its been nearly mastered by what was once a fringe culture of folks. I'm of the opinion that this isn't going to be entirely eradicated, but the accessibility factor is way to high... You can literally go from "i wanna play smb 3", all the way to... "oh, i cant decide which game to play because i have the entire set"... in a couple of google searches. I dont think its the lost potential by what has already happened. They lost control of the market 20+ years ago, this has been aeons in the making, and its not the first crack down. The lost dollars are insanely huge... but guess why??? Because of nintendo....... Reference the above sales numbers from Wikipedia. The world would be a different place if they made retro gaming available. have a look at what spotify and netflix have accomplished. (all business models have consequences) Why do we have to continue buying and re-buying our fricken freakin games and all the while you sit on your throne and squash development of OUR FAVORITE FREAKING STORY ---------------->>>> CRIMSON ECHOES Nintendo has an opportunity to revolutionize gaming. Step your game up, waltz into town like the fricken sherrif, pirate the pirates, steal all their work and infrastructure, put your name on it, and continue to pimp out humanity into the sunset. GAME OVER.7.99/month with a console release, piped right into your entire collection of roms, have a nice day. QUICK EDIT: This is being fueled by a frustrated company that cant get to the solution fast enough. Legal intervention always SCREAMS futility. Be warned: a desperate entity will take desperate measures. Be very worried. https://www.ebay.ca/usr/xchriscoolmodx?_trksid=p2047675.l2559https://www.ebay.ca/usr/blackbalt08?_trksid=p2047675.l2559https://www.ebay.ca/usr/volks-jager?_trksid=p2047675.l2559 ^^^^^^^^^CHECKOUT THE TRANSACTION HISTORY AND DO THE MATH^^^^^^^ How many counts of straight up theft has been committed by individuals alone. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big F Posted August 18, 2018 Author Report Share Posted August 18, 2018 (edited) I know the market can potentially be massive, as stated above a netflix style model, could be a good cash cow. Its likely though the whole ilegal download bit will still be there, afterall its not been ever removed in the history of gaming, but the console vendors could make coin from it. As far as my time at Nintendo I worked for the division that repaired the consoles and games that were sent in by the retail outlets and customers, so in my time there I worked on the Nes the SNes and the OGGameBoy. On top of that we had a small part of the RnD in the same building and would often see titles months before anything was near retail. Mostly when they were still at the port stage to translate it to Engrish, often the carts were just open boards with serial ports. So very likely in that stage highly copyable by todays standards. Saw the colour game boy prototype years before it came out, at that time the larger than final release screen cost thousands to make. It was so cool to see Mario in colour albeit 16 colours, over the mono we were all familiar with at the time. I wasn't alowed to play it but was shown it being played, it had its own minder. 2.3 million of the classic rebooted console sold, LOL thats tiny compaired to the original release, the factories ran 24/7 and still couldnt keep up with demand. Of the popular Nes and GB games we had stacks of them palleted up on 1metre by 1metre pallets which were shipped out on a daily fleet of trucks, as our warehouse space was used for Emea distribution. That would have been 10 of thousands a day of several titles at the peak of popularity / Christmas Edited August 18, 2018 by big F 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neighbor Posted August 18, 2018 Report Share Posted August 18, 2018 38 minutes ago, big F said: Damn, that's cool Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
306XBOX Posted August 18, 2018 Report Share Posted August 18, 2018 I agree with everything both Big F and Wikati said. With Nintendo confirming there won't be a VC for the switch, that leads me to believe that whatever IP they're trying to protect will be released on a classic console system or more likely as part of Switch Online. The problem I foresee is a matter that only time will tell -- Will there be individual games released for download or is it basically a streaming service for the games? The website for Switch Online says there will be 20 titles available (all the staple Mario games of course) and you can play them anytime anywhere. How they implement that we'll have to see when it's released. Of course they say the ubiquitous "more to be released in the future" I'm purely speculating and honestly haven't done that much research on this but i'm guessing it's going to be the typical "you can play the as long as you're an online subscriber" the same way that Playstation does it with their free game per month. Personally I'd rather pay a dollar here or there to purchase an individual title (and in most cases this would be at least the 2nd time purchasing it). That way I'd own the Rom and could do with it as I see fit. I'd even be ok if they threw some DRM on there to stop the pirates from distributing the ROM that I bought. For people like me who are not serious collectors, aside from forking out $500 how else am I going to enjoy Bonk's Adventure on the NES. Even the NES and SNES classics that Nintendo graciously produced without a stock means of adding/removing sofware... what happened with those? Nintendo held back production (claiming there were manufacturing issues/shortage of parts) only to artificially inflating demand. Then the ones that were purchased were snatched up bu hardware scapers charging 5 times retail to the foolish few who have never heard of a raspberry pi and emuparadise. The used market is frankly disgusting but completionism being what it is for collectors I can understand it to a point. People who illegially download ROMs aren't collectors. They're average people who occasionally want to play an old game for nostalgia's sake. The developers don't make money from sales of used games nor does Nintendo. It's all just a big mess when companies get up in arms about piracy 20+ years later. Just because you CAN shut down a website that's distributing ROM's doesnt mean you should or HAVE to. It's just a bully tactic. Every console Nintendo's released has had some form of anti-piracy. Smart people figured out how to allow for homebrew and ROM's to be played on them. With the exception of the Wii U, I don't think many people even pirated any of their games while the consoles were still current. It's only after that generation sales have died that people seem to get interested in modding and picking up the units on the used market. I watched a really well done youtube vid about this where the presenter went through all the sales figures and it showed that if anything, the ROM's and console modding HELP sales of the next generation. The same as mp3 downloads hurt record sales but improved concert sales. It's all to do with industries not understanding what the market wants and sticking to old distribution and marketing ways. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big F Posted August 18, 2018 Author Report Share Posted August 18, 2018 (edited) When I was in Japan I was talking to one of the many second hand game store managers he was telling me how many of his fellow shop owners were hearing that the console manufacturers and software houses were really interested in eradication of the second hand market, as they saw it as loosing them money. Ironically in Japan chipped consoles were widely seen as bad sport and it was much more regular to see people with say a japan issue console and then a european one and then also the us version so they could play all the games. One shop in Shinjuku that i used to buy playstation games in had a waiting list for Uk Ps2 consoles, and couldnt sell the japanese ones. At the time I could buy a second hand Uk ps2 mint retail for £30 and the same thing as a japan version for £120. The store manager said if i could hook him up with uk ones he would give me jap ones as a straight swap limited editions inc, also a list of uk titles that he would take as many copies I could buy in Blighty and ship over. Never did get the deal set up as the local stores got sus about me wanting to buy all the stock, shipping wouldnt have been an issue as i have friends over there and had relatives working for DHL. Bonkers thing was as the OGxbox tanked over there xbox stuff was practically given away, I bough boxes of hardware and just posted it to my Uk address, and gave lots of it away to friends and as swaps for games and car parts. Sad thing was if they had actually made the classic reboots able to say connect to old carts to eaither verify ownership or play natively the old games. A simple you own it heres the encrypted version from Nintendo servers, straight to the SD memory or such, would have opened up the whole market. MS did to a certain level take this aproach with 360 games on the XBone, it could have been so much more though, than just a few titles that you need to insert the 360 disc to prove ownership to then download the XBoned version. Edited August 18, 2018 by big F Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neighbor Posted August 19, 2018 Report Share Posted August 19, 2018 10 hours ago, 306XBOX said: or more likely as part of Switch Online Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
306XBOX Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 Yeah if the entire Nintendo catalog was available as part of switch online that would be massive. Even if you only got a few games like they're going to do at least on launch, but gave the option to PURCHASE the ROM that would be huge as well. This "well you can play it while you're paying your sub fee" nonsense is just a glorified renting and is not what I personally want (and i believe a lot of other people who play ROM's). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neighbor Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 (edited) true, atleast they could make some encryption for each rom so it will be available to play on that particular account that made the purchase, it's crazy how Nintendo loses money because they incommodate the users but not giving them a decent service of Virtual Console with FULL library, are there any technical issues which would stop them from publishing whole library of NES. SNES, GBA, GBC and all that? Maybe it's because of Intellectual Property and Nintendo don't want to mess with money split process between them and game developers? Edited August 20, 2018 by neighbor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psnap777 Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 Yes I think it's most likely due to licensing that they don't release the entire library of any of their systems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neighbor Posted August 21, 2018 Report Share Posted August 21, 2018 (edited) in this case Nintendo gives no choice to the consumer who wants to play some rare expensive games. Edited August 21, 2018 by neighbor 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big F Posted August 21, 2018 Author Report Share Posted August 21, 2018 That is it in a nut shell. The reason for the whole Classic Roms downloading black market in the first place can be summed up thus:- Original game no longer available, or hardware is unobtainable as was specialist systems -ie Arcade cabinets. Games originally released to a limited market through small numbers or teritorial releases in specific languages. Games just nolonger available retail and uncommon on the second hand markets. As above but available but just so highly priced that most gamers cant or wont pay the prices asked. Gamers given an easy way to run games on one platform that doesnt require massive knowledge on hardware or software tweaking. No need for a games/livingroom full of games consoles as would be the case for native hardware and disc/cart use. Irronically its our need to "gotta have them all" that drives up prices of "rarer" titles and fuels the Roms market..... Classic Chicken and the Egg syndrome. I suspect most of the beef the games and console co's have is with the out and out pirating of still in retail titles as that is where they see their hard earned cash being ripped off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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