Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (launches Dec. 27)
If the question is of maintaining the games’ value, the current way Nintendo doing it is bad. The value of a game is not what Nintendo says it is, it is what gamers say it is. Anyone can easily download the entire collection of NES games off any computer and play them. This brings the value of the games down to nothing. Remaking the game and selling it for a high price or selling the old games at a snail’s pace with no account system isn’t adding value. It is sending more and more people to download roms.
Nintendo needs to compete. Currently, the piracy experience for old games is MUCH BETTER than what Nintendo offers. On the Wii’s Virtual Console, notice how dark the NES games are? Who filtered that?
GoG successfully got people to pay for games they were downloading for free. How did they do that? By offering a better experience in the value. GoG does things like offer the manuals and soundtracks of the games you buy. Nintendo doesn’t do shit.
I’ve been looking around in the emulation world, and I’m seeing that the 8-bit, 16-bit, Gameboy, arcade and N64 emulation is ancient news. Now it seems Gamecube, Wii, DS, PlayStation 1, and the Sega Saturn are being emulated.
Nintendo has a choice. They can either sell their old games for money or just lose to the pirates. Currently, Nintendo chooses to lose to the pirates. They must compete value to value to the pirates. And the way to do that is to offer the games account bound. I suggest with manuals, original box art, and even extracted sound tracks. If Nintendo is going go through the fuss of making a TViiiiiiiiiii, why not allow us to turn the game console into a video game music jukebox by having it play through the soundtracks of the games we own? Why not put up the Nintendo Power and old strategy guides for these old games? Nintendo has so many options, but they choose none of them. This is not a serious company.
I didn’t realize how essential the Virtual Console was to my Wii experience. The complete lack of it on the Wii U makes me not want to buy a Wii U.