“Neither of these answers seem to address the question of why the games could not also be part of the Switch Online’s GBA collection… or why the games are priced at $20 each…”
Nintendo:
You ain’t going to jail for downloading a GBA game. And it is much cheaper than 20 dollars (except if you really want to play it on a switch for some reason)
Even if you really want to play on Switch there are CFW options that enable GBA emulation.
Yeah but those require either an specific type of Switch or a modchip (which does cost a little AND requires soldering)
Removed by mod
“We think it’ll be fun.”
Nintendo: “What are you gonna do about? Not buy it?”
Nintendo is only doing this because people let Nintendo fuck them in the ass without even a kiss and a reach around. And then they say “thank you senpai”
LOL I just downloaded the roms and used an emulator. There’s no way I’d re-buy for the Nintendo Switch, only because I am against their current practices. Until they abandon their virtual card system, I don’t think breaking my boycott is a smart move.
“Cause we love money, lol, fuck you poors.” - Nintendo
I know lemmy really has a strong sentiment against Nintendo, but for me personally, I am happy about this. I think its fair to download and emulate games when there is no legal version being offered anywhere. I would also say that being offered through subscription only doesn’t change that either. But if there is a version for sale by Nintendo, I am happy to buy that instead. I don’t think piracy is justified just because you are angry at a company. If I can purchase a copy on my modern system, that is the way I’m gonna go.
I feel like people who were never gonna buy it no matter what the price tag was just want something to be mad at.
I think this is all too common of a sentiment around here. A lot of people end up turning it into gatekeeping and it just gets old.
When I had a Wii, I bought games I had played and wanted to play on the NES when I was younger. Now I have nothing to show for it. Never again. At least with Steam, GOG, or pirating, the power is in my hands to keep those games for as long as I can. Nintendo doesn’t give me that option in any legal manner.
So you were never gonna buy it no matter what the price tag was.
You’re right, because I’ve literally done it before with them and have nothing to show for it. So which of us is the fool?
Well if you’re replying me just to tell me you were never going to buy it, you’re proving my point.
I feel like people who were never gonna buy it no matter what the price tag was just want something to be mad at.
So if no one responds, it’s because they have no rebuttal, but if they do, they’re proving your point. Quite the big brain theory there. My point was that it had nothing to do with the price tag, except that the value proposition isn’t there when they can just stop giving you access whenever it becomes inconvenient for them. Moreover, while I have regrets about buying stuff on the Wii store, I’m not angry at them. So it just sounds like you’re saying I’m not much of a customer for a restaurant that I don’t go to anymore just because I got food poisoning a few times. Must be me and not them. And you sound like you’re defending a shitty company because people say their product isn’t worth buying.
If you respond to tell me that you were never gonna buy it, you prove my point.
It’s just kind of tiring how every post about anything Nintendo does ever has the exactly same whining every time, especially when you’re not actually whining about FRLG here at all, you’re just whining to whine. You just want something to be mad at.
You see where they said “I bought games”? It means they bought it.
They were never gonna buy this game.
No need to attack me for stating an opinion. You could try discussing the topic instead of contributing nothing to the conversation.
If a company shows no respect for its consumers by nickel and diming them for everything, then there is no reason to show a company respect by purchasing its products.
If they re-released their entire back catalogue at reasonable prices—not locking them behind a subscription—with a commitment to letting users transfer them to future consoles without an upgrade fee, then things would be different.
I’m curious, what is a reasonable price to you for these games? Because as far as I’m concerned, buying both games for the price of buying one of them 20 years ago feels pretty reasonable. I agree that they drip feed the fuck out of us on actually providing a way to play these games. But releasing these games in a way that you can bring forward to additional systems, and not putting them behind a subscription is a move that should be prasied. I just think it’s a step in the right direction. I’ll take the ability to own one game on my modern system over owning zero.
Unlike physical cartridges, a digital, emulated copy of FireRed has no resale or collector’s value. The lack of physical copes for virtual console games also means each copy sold costs Nintendo nothing beyond the initial emulator development cost, which would be minuscule on a per-game basis.
Considering those factors, and the Switch having a higher install base than prior systems (over ten times Wii U unit sales), maintaining the Wii U and 3DS price points is the most reasonable means for Nintendo to monetize their back catalogue in a way that makes piracy less enticing for many people: $3 per GB, $4 per GBC, $5 per NES, $7-8 per GBA, $8 per SNES, $10 per N64, and $20 per Wii.
Given that each emulated console only requires that a Switch emulator be developed for it once (something Nintendo has already done for NSO) to support hundreds of paid titles, there’s no need to increase prices when the games will sell several times more than they had any chance to on the Wii U.
Given how many games NSO includes, they could continue offering them that way for people who prefer renting their library. Consumers want meaningful options; pricing a GBA game at $20 is not that.
Fair enough, I would personally prefer those price points too. I agree that this isn’t a particularly meaningful option. But it is significantly more meaningful than what existed before it. I think the big disparity on the pricing is a symptom of everything having a subscription nowadays. Not justifying it, just acknowledging it. They probably tell themselves that $20 for one game is fair becuase they could have charged $20/month if they added it to NSO. It does feel high, but just the added value of not having to pay a subscription every month or year to play this game feels significant to me. I recognize that’s a bit dystopian, but it feels like a tiny breath of fresh air in this gaming landscape.
If a company shows no respect for its consumers by nickel and diming them for everything, then there is no reason to show a company respect by purchasing its products.
Sure, but there is a difference between not giving them money, and not giving them money but getting their product anyway.
“I don’t like your product or practices, so I’m not going to purchase it” is not the same as “I like your product but not your practices, so I’m going to pirate it.”
Video games are not exactly a vital good like food.
Blind consumer loyalty only incentivizes Nintendo to further raise prices and make their products less consumer friendly.
Piracy simply demonstrates a problem with supply; if Nintendo wants to solve it, the solution isn’t trying to cuts heads off of a hydra, but rather adjust prices to capture unrealized market potential.
I did not say anything about blind consumer loyalty, so that comment feels strange in the context of this conversation.
Piracy is justified because I already own those games, and they’re not backwards compatible. I’m not going to pay for the same game multiple times.
Kinda wild to claim that a purchase of a game 20 years ago justifies pirating a game now. It’s not like no one had to do any work to get it going on Switch. They had to make GBA features connect between Switch systems. But you play how you wanna play. I just don’t like all the gatekeeping a lot of people do about people buying a copy.
Do you work for the billion dollar company? Weird fucking take you have portraying them as a victim
I mean there are smaller people who work at the billion dollar company. You think the devs who ported this release at Nintendo are billionaires? Just because you hate a brand doesn’t mean everything that they do is exclusively handled by greedy mustache-twirling villains. The games industry is full of regular people who deserve to get paid just as much as anyone else does. I’m not going to justify fucking those people over by pretending they don’t exist while I steal from a faceless brand. A handful of greedy assholes making decisions at the top aren’t the only people who are impacted.
The devs already got paid. The money spent buying this game just goes to the higher ups who spent 0 time actually working on the game.
Thinking that pirating a $20 game from Nintendo is fucking someone over is a wild take. Stop treating international giga corporations like people
It’s moreso that if I made something and worked hard on it, I wouldn’t think people were justified in stealing it just because they think the company I work for is shitty. I want to pay those people for something they made that I enjoyed. I don’t see Nintendo as a person, but I do see the people at Nintendo as people. At the end of the day, your $20 boycott isn’t going to make or break it for those people. But they do deserve my money when they create something I enjoy in my opinion. You are welcome to disagree and not buy it all you want.
The work was already done, and the people who worked on it have already been paid. Nobody’s getting royalties here.
You were right in your first comment, but this is plainly false. Not pirating, mind, but making copies of what you already own is legal, at least in US and most of Europe.
Copying what you already own is another thing entirely. If it’s from your own copy, do whatever you want.
I do whatever I want regardless. That you go out of your way to defend the multi-billion company from copyright theft is pointless, when nowadays agents like Meta have been reported stealing millions of copyrighted materials and nothing happened.
piracy is always justified
Probably not from indie developers
Even from indie devs. Many have said that if you don’t have the money to buy their game to get it and play it anyway. More eyes on it and word of mouth and whatnot.
$5 for a whole generation of games would be fair…and this certainly isn’t. Wario is the true representative of Nintendo.
Nintendo thinks their customers are fucking dumb morons
You know there are Nintendo fans and then there are Pokemon fans. They have a reputation of not really being into games but being into everything Pokemon.
Yes, yes they do. And many are considering that they’re doing this.
Well… I mean, do you remember the height of Pokémon Go?
A 2017 study estimated that in the first 148 days following its July 2016 launch, Pokémon Go was linked to 256 traffic-related deaths and over 100,000 accidents in the US due to distracted driving. These incidents, caused by users playing while driving or walking, also led to significant injuries and billions in economic damages.
I remember when there wasn’t much more to worry about besides a surge of people going outside with their phones.
Those were the days.
Pokemon go to the polls
As much as I think nintendo and the pokemon company are evil shits, I do believe overall pokemon go was net positive for humanity.
The physical health benefit from all those people walking around, and the mental health benefits from said populations being more social and friendly with others won’t ever show a statistic for lives saved, but I think it’s reasonable to assume lives will be saved from extra exercise and positive social interactions.
I do agree, but it’s too bad they ran both that game and the goodwill generated by it into the ground.
At least they added the speedometer so if you go too fast the game doesn’t work.
Made playing the game on public transit impossible though :/
Or as a passenger in a car
Because they are? How many YouTubers are playing The Hot New Thing from Nintendo right now, because they bought it? They are the ones perpetuating this shit. It’s all a feedback loop meant to suck as much money out of the public as they can.
I can go and find at least 6 YouTubers that I subscribe to that almost always play the newest of the new thing so it’s featured on their channel. RTGame, Mo1stCr1t1kal/Penguinz0, Game Grumps, IronPineapple, VideogameDunkey, OboeShoes, hell even General Sam as much as I love his style and humor.
Game Grumps got in trouble from what I remember using emulators on old games haha.
I actually forgot that Game Grumps only play the newest of the new when it’s from a particular series or something.
Why did they get in trouble? Was it with Nintendo or the fans? I kinda remember some “controversy” over them using emulators instead of original hardware, but imo that’s bullshit. Sometimes old hardware isn’t better, and all kinds of things can go wrong with it.
I wish I remembered…Im spacing right now and search isnt coming up with anything. I just remember there was a small stink because some game or another was too expensive? And they just emulated it but showed one of the screens? Its been many years.
Yeah, seems about right for some of the purists out there. There’s a whole fucking subreddit dedicated to talking shit about them. It’s honestly sad.
Like it’s one thing to have a semi-parasocial relationship and call it “hanging out with your friends” but it’s another entirely to dedicate time out of your life to get upset and angry over a goddamn YouTube channel.
Then they know their audience. Source: Nintendo customer
You mean the same people who in the same breath complain about the state of Pokémon and immediately follow up by saying they’re going to buy it anyway? Those people? 😅
I stopped buying Nintendo products when the brought down the rom sites. I don’t care what they make I will never buy another Nintendo ip or product for the rest of my life.
Pokemon died with Black version.
I’m not really buying JP IP anymore since they don’t have public domain. Let their culture die with them.
Time to pirate FR to play on my phone just as a tiny middle finger to nintendo, who can’t do shit against me in Brazil 🇧🇷 🖕
Oh, let me also play more Palworld, who’s having to fight bullshit patents
I haven’t bought anything from Nintendo since the 3DS. They just can’t hold my interest anymore, and I really hate what they’ve done to Pokémon. They know it, but they just don’t care because people will keep buying it regardless.
You know it’s bad when Konami can release GBA roms for a better deal at the exact same price (talking about the Castlevania Advanced Collection).
I would have loved like a Mario all Stars of retro Pokemon games. They don’t even have to get fancy with it. Give me like Gen 1-5 and we’re good. Or hell, even just Gen 1-3 and I’d be happy.
The ROM hack Pokemon Unbound is what you’re looking for.
I always thought it would be cool to have a pack of the games that allows trading between the versions, or at least tracking of the pokedex across versions. I’m not crazy enough to play every single version, but if they had every version of every game for several gens, with a central pokedex, it would let the super fans try to completely fill out the dex.
OMG, a Pokemon All Stars would be amazing. But I do want them to get fancy with it: with every new game that starts, make me start with a starter as usual, but once I get access to trading, let me pull Pokemon that are below the soft level cap out of my boxes.
Now that you mention fancy features, i wouldn’t mind if they did some stuff with QOL changes. I know some people hate it but i’d love to have the Modern Exp. All for my entire party in everything outside gen 1
