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[ninge]

I can see your point, but yeah - exactly that.. if the price is cheap enough then i dont see a problem, look at it more as a rental than a purchase is my guess.

Sure it would be GREAT to own those titles forever for a nominal purchase price but that would almost be corporate suicide for nintendo - talk about selling the farm. I think you'll be able to pay to play any game on the rev but i honestly dont see them allowing you to keep it forever, it just doesnt make sense from a business perspective.

It would have to be cheap tho -l i wouldnt have a problem paying a couple of $ to play an old NES or SNES game and maybed $4-5 for n64 games at the most but anything more than that it wouldnt work. It needs to be impulse and throw-away prices

 

[Ristamar]

I like the iTunes model personally, but if your not for it, heres another idea:

What if they designed the Virtual Console like it's own gaming entity?

Imagine, if you will, logging in, and you select a character (i.e. Mario) and you walk around this massive Mario 64 like castle.

Just like the castle in Mario 64, the world is full if mirros/paintings you can jump into.

Each "window" is a "portal" to a game lobby you can play. And the key to get into the portal is - 99 cents!

So you don't actually BUY or OWN the game, your basically paying to get access to the game, i.e., jumping into the portal.

Ya know, the entrance to the castle is the "Mario Franchises," turn a corner, and you find "Metroid Franchise" in the castle dungeon. Or something.

Hey, that makes playing old games even funner! Playing games is now playing a game!

And then as the services grows, add more "worlds" or "rooms" to the castle, where more games can be placed. And you pay to enter the game world. I don't know, maybe 99 cents gets you access to the game once, maybe it permenatly unlocks the door to you forever?

Anyway, at least that sounds fun

The novelty of running around a virtual environment simply to play old games would wear off quickly. No one wants to spend a minute or more traversing a pointless 3D environment if they can alternatively boot the same game from a menu in 10 seconds or less.

 

[DDayton]

I still don't see this "milking" phenomenom that everyone keeps pointing to. The NES/N64 Zelda games were rereleased once or twice as FREE items. Nintendo dropped FREE games into their preview discs. The eReader titles were cheap items sold as an excuse to sell the eReader -- the Famicom/NES games were never made available in Japan, anyway. The NES games in Animal Crossing were freebies.

Your only "true" example of this "milking" is the NES/Famicom GBA rereleases, and those were a limited release promotional scheme. Any and all other releases were heavily modified updates.

I really find it hard to believe that Nintendo is paranoid folks would only buy the original Super Mario Bros. -once-.

 

[John Harker]

The novelty of running around a virtual environment simply to play old games would wear off quickly. No one wants to spend a minute or more traversing a pointless 3D environment if they can alternatively boot the same game from a menu in 10 seconds or less.

yea, but thats why there is a Warp Pipe right in the front that takes you instantly to the game you want too

 

[ninge]

The novelty of running around a virtual environment simply to play old games would wear off quickly. No one wants to spend a minute or more traversing a pointless 3D environment if they can alternatively boot the same game from a menu in 10 seconds or less.

This man speaks the truth!

 

[Oblivion]

I can see your point, but yeah - exactly that.. if the price is cheap enough then i dont see a problem, look at it more as a rental than a purchase is my guess.

Sure it would be GREAT to own those titles forever for a nominal purchase price but that would almost be corporate suicide for nintendo - talk about selling the farm. I think you'll be able to pay to play any game on the rev but i honestly dont see them allowing you to keep it forever, it just doesnt make sense from a business perspective.

It would have to be cheap tho -l i wouldnt have a problem paying a couple of $ to play an old NES or SNES game and maybed $4-5 for n64 games at the most but anything more than that it wouldnt work. It needs to be impulse and throw-away prices

Zuh? I fail to see the problem. Nintendo would be selling games that they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

 

[Forgotten Ancient]

I still don't get the argument that it would be suicide to offer their back catalog for a one-time purchase. This is a completely new revenue stream for Nintendo. People will still be crazy enough to purchase Retro games in the future if it comes in a package. People will still buy classic games for their GBA/DS/GBA2.

Outside of the few titles Nintendo has supposedly milked over the years, Nintendo has made zero profit on their old games.

 

[Link]

I agree it should be set up like an iTunes-style service. I wouldn't want to pay any kind of subscription fee, mostly because I'd feel completely ripped off if I didn't get around to playing any of the downloads for a month or two.

I also think they should offer demos of new games for download at a small price. Not only would this get more people aware of a game, but also help out sales. Not to mention giving gamers an alternative to Blockbuster that ends up putting the money right into Nintendo's pocket.

 

[Taker666]

Nintendo still has other places to go.

Once the download service has been running well you can expect them to start on their own range of plug and play joypads containing 5 or 6 games. NES classics, SNES classics, N64 classics, Mario Bros, Zelda, Pokemon.

 

[littlewig]

Nintendo could always make a new development team that is solely responsible for uploading new games on to the service.

There job could range from adding new levels to old games, updating graphics, making remixed version of games, to making completely new games.

That would make a subscription based model seem more attractive, give people a reason to stick with the service, instead of abandonning it once they download all the games they want.

 

[Naked Snake]

I really doubt Nintendo will give away the Mario platformers (from SMB up to Yoshi's Island) for 99 cents each considering they sold like hotcakes for $20 and $30 on GBA. For other lesser popular titles yeah maybe, but not the Marios (aka Nintendo's golden egg laying chick)

 

[UltraMarioMan]

If this takes off whats to stop companys from making new games for it? How much would an NES or SNES game cost to make now? Capcom could make 20 new NES Megaman's! Or Nintendo Startropics 3!

 

[The Faceless Master]

i don't see any reason why they can't offer both a subscription service with monthly expiring checkouts and a pay-per-title 'forever usage' checkout... i hate to use the music analogy, but several music sites offer both...

i know personally, i won't pay for either...

 

[DCharlie]

Revolution to be _very_ cheap, to have all this download goodness AND the ability to transfer the downloaded games to GBA2 flash memory for playing on the go.

FTW!

 

[Forgotten Ancient]

i don't see any reason why they can't offer both a subscription service with monthly expiring checkouts and a pay-per-title 'forever usage' checkout... i hate to use the music analogy, but several music sites offer both...

i know personally, i won't pay for either...

Yup, that could be an option. It's kind of like my Rhapsody service. Stream any number of songs you want for a subscription fee, but pay an additional 79 or 99 cents for anything you wanna keep.

As long as you don't have to subscribe to buy, I like it. It'll give people who aren't familiar with the older games a chance to sample everything and the possibility to keep only what they want.

 

[Link]

I'm also thinking of a "free download with game purchase" type of situation. Buy Mario 128, get SMB free!

 

[monkeyrun]

Revolution to be _very_ cheap, to have all this download goodness AND the ability to transfer the downloaded games to GBA2 flash memory for playing on the go.

FTW!

excellent

 

[Link]

I don't see them letting you download them to carts to play on the go. They know people will pay for the same game again just for the portability factor. GBA sales are proof enough of that.

 

[xsarien]

I don't see them letting you download them to carts to play on the go. They know people will pay for the same game again just for the portability factor. GBA sales are proof enough of that.

I didn't see them having a full-fledged online service offered at no charge either. I think all bets are off with Nintendo now.

 

[Spike]

Haven't read through the thread just yet, but I'll respond anyways. Sorry if I'm repeating any info.

Nintendo is going down the points route, supposedly, as Iwata mentioned that around the time the controller was unveiled. They also said that their games would come with points included, so you could get a couple of downloads that way.

 

[byproduct]

If Nintendo goes for a renting/subscription service they wont get a cent out of me.

Their best option is to offer people a choice - buy or subscribe. No reason why they can't.

 

[rawk]

I bet it will work like steam. My DS online account is already tied to my mynintendo account. Why wouldn't they do something like this for revolution?