I learned about this when I read the book "Console Wars"
Nintendo has always been all about artificial scarcity and increasing their products' value that way, ever since the early 80s
If Nintendo put out a subscription service with 3500 games, it would de-value all those games in the long run even though it might earn more revenue for the next few years.
When you think of "Playing a long game" when applied to a tech company, you probably think "longer than the next year". Maybe you think "the next 5 years".
Nintendo was founded in 1889. They are for sure playing a long game measured in decades. They definitely don't obey the same "laws of physics" other console manufacturers seem beholden to.
It's unwise to think Nintendo is acting out of ignorance.
> It's unwise to think Nintendo is acting out of ignorance.
Their repeated failures in the online space makes me think it's at least a little bit of both greed and ignorance. They just don't seem to "get" anything once the internet gets involved. When it was all playing cards and game cartridges they didn't have to worry about building a sensible online account system that could handle purchases and game content being accessible worldwide and supported from one Nintendo console/device to the next.
The world, the internet, and the expectations of players have changed and Nintendo seems to have lagged behind. It might all be some super well planned and calculated move by savvy Nintendo execs to piss off their customers and deliver a shitty experience in order to maximize profits, but I doubt it.
I play a lot of SSBU online and it works well. Rollback netcode would be a huge improvement, but the game is definitely playable. Online play clearly isn't a focus for Nintendo, but it's hard to argue with their success. Perhaps their focus on building self-contained experiences is part of their secret sauce.
Honestly the fact that you don't have many complaints after less than five years is a good sign, but tell us again in 10 or 15 years how well your online SSBU games are going.
I'd actually be okay with it if Nintendo just came out and said that online wasn't something they were interested in. I'm one of those people who is perfectly happy with physical media, single player, and local multiplayer.
It would have spared them a ton of trouble with things like the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Service, DRM, friend codes, eShop, Randnet, Nintendo Network, DLC, WiiConnect24, the wii shop, even Pokemon home/bank, etc. and they could have just kept on delivering gaming experiences that worked for players no matter what servers were offline, kept on working for decades as long as you had a disk/cart and the right console, you'd never have to worry about your purchases being pulled out from under you, and all of it could be lent/traded/resold/handed down freely.
Very few consoles, let alone games, last 15 years. Requiring an online experience to work well for 15 years, while nice, is not a realistic requirement for a majority of games.
> Very few consoles, let alone games, last 15 years
The PS3 is older than 15 years! The oldest console in my home right now is an Atari 2600 and that's 45 years old and works just fine, as does its games.
Same with the Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, One of two original gameboys, most of the rest of the gameboy and DS lines, SNES, N64, Gamecube, the PS1, one of two PS2s (disk read issues on the larger one), and the PS3. all their games still work.
Honestly, the consoles and games that don't still work are the exception. One original gameboy has a blank line along one side the screen (still pretty playable), The NES still works fine, but some of the games don't save anymore (battery needs replacing), same problem with some of the later gameboy carts. If some of the SNES games have that problem I haven't run into it yet. Several controllers, joysticks, and DDR pads have died over the years and had to be replaced though.
I have a harder time getting PC games to work (on modern hardware) than I do getting console games to work. I expect I'll be able to hand most of this stuff down and the kids will be able to do the same for their own kids with many of them before they stop working. With maintenance (which I've never done for any of them) they could last longer. The PS2 with disk read errors and the dead batteries are totally repairable.
I suspect that the PS3 and PS5 will die sooner than most of the older consoles. They really don't make them like they used to. I blame higher running temperatures, lead-free solder, and cheap capacitors.
Nintendo is a public company and wants what its shareholders want. That's why they had to ditch the WiiU entirely when they briefly stopped being profitable.
Shareholders want long term growth? I don’t see how being public makes Nintendo’s strategy any less true or any less good. It is generally profitable and does work as a strategy to increase stock value.
Nintendo being generally profitable seems like short-termism to me - Microsoft sells the Xbox at a loss to generate later sales, Amazon avoided profit for years and years. Nintendo doesn't sell anything at a loss.
Anyway, they're not family-owned like they used to be, so I don't think comparing them to when they were a private company is all that useful.
There is also the issue that most of those 3500 are never going to played for more than 5 minutes and will just be there as a curiosity.
There are the classics still worth playing, and the cult titles that hit some nostalgia button for a significant number of people. Beyond those it's just not worth it for Nintendo to even format a jpeg of the box art.
Personally I prefer a curated list with the scans of the manual and some history behind the game like they provide now. Otherwise you are in decision paralysis looking at 1000s of titles with no clue which is worth your time.
Them trying to ring out more money on top of the base Switch Online subscription for N64 games is my main issue. If they had not done that I would likely have subscribed again. The drip feed is a little too slow also, but I don't have the free time anyway so it's not a deal breaker.
As it stands I'll wait for my Steam Deck and not be able to decide which ROM to play on there ;)
I think my whittled-down NES ROMs dir that included probably a dozen games that aren't very good but have strong nostalgia value for me, plus a couple Japanese games in unofficial translation, ended up being around 80 entries. I'd probably cut that down to about 50 if I were setting something up for someone who wasn't around back then. SNES comes off a little better but my curated-for-others list would probably be around 70-80, including quite a few translated games.
Part of it's because a lot of "greats" have better versions elsewhere (arcade, for games like Mortal Kombat, Gameboy Advance in a lot of cases especially for RPGs, et c.) and part of it's because there was just a lot of crap on them (I think the NES had over 1,000 distinct games).
I think Nintendo knows that people don’t actually care that much about playing game boy games. They are boring and unpleasant by todays standards but they hold a strong nostalgia factor. So they drip out bits of content and sell it at a high price while a subscription service would just remind everyone how little they care about playing very old games.
And also de-value the newer games and/or remakes, I for one tend to buy "The newest zelda" if I'm itching for any zelda game, but if I had easy access to 10 older zelda titles that'd be it
This checks out. Nintendo really only seems interested in using their back catalogue to create a value offering when they are struggling to sell hardware. Hence why a lot of first party GameCube and Wii U games got reissued in $20 "Players Choice" SKUs late in their respective console's lifecyles while they Wii and Switch launch titles have remained full price.
I believe Disney did this with its films over the 80s and 90s. People built collections of these VHS tapes in big plastic boxes, it was a thing for an "old" film to get a release.
Good example. It doesn't really make sense logically to collect these (i.e., vs. just renting them). But I think I understand emotionally why people would want to collect things like this.
Availability. I stopped buying video discs when Netflix's streaming catalog felt like it was going to expand to everything, and well also when Netflix by mail seemed good (and that really did have almost everything), but once you hit enough things that you saw and wanted to watch later that weren't there when you wanted to watch... You start collecting them, so you know you'll have them.
> Availability. I stopped buying video discs when Netflix's streaming catalog felt like it was going to expand to everything
And just think, now it's smaller than ever.
I went over my Amazon Prime Video watch history recently; almost nothing on it is still available. They even managed to somehow lose the rights to a decades-old low-profile Chinese film.
> If Nintendo put out a subscription service with 3500 games, it would de-value all those games in the long run even though it might earn more revenue for the next few years.
It also might expand the fan base loyalty to their valuable IP franchises.
I know there's a bunch of Nintendo nerds on HN that would play emulated games on their switch but how many switch owners actually want to play old games? There's a lot of kids out there that like playing new games that have modern graphics and gameplay. There are plenty of handheld or console devices out there that can emulate old games but none of them ever sell that well. Nintendo has spent some resources developing the emulators but it likely died when they realized it wouldn't sell that well and that many games would be unavailable unless Nintendo felt like relicensing games from publishers that are owned by competitors.
I remember the games had to be ordered via catalog (toys r us, jc penney) and took 6+ months to arrive.
Blockbuster ate their lunch with rentals. BB and Hollywood Video went to town on this with the SNES with guaranteed in stock new games for rental.
On the switch Nintendo charges insane prices for re-released (read- emulated and poorly). If you want to play their shitty emulation of an N64 game it's like $70 US/year.
Publishers want to get to the point they charge us per minute played or per boot.
I'm over Nintendo, and I once cherished my complete collection of Nintendo Power mags with all alternate covers.
Nintendo has always been all about artificial scarcity and increasing their products' value that way, ever since the early 80s
If Nintendo put out a subscription service with 3500 games, it would de-value all those games in the long run even though it might earn more revenue for the next few years.