Well, the virtual console offerings on 3DS were not cheap, as I recall.
Nintendo should offer their entire NES and SNES library for free with their Nintendo subscription service. They’d win video games forever.
Because it’s not 30 years old. Because it doesn’t cost them zero dollars to do so.
I find it hard to believe that people were willing to spend 60/80 bucks on the NES/SNES classic. I suppose they could have made a whole bunch of those games available for free on Switch and focused on producing more Switches instead of those. Then again, those are a much lower price point for people that would find a Switch prohibitive.
Please explain how it costs $0 to make a back catalog available on new hardware.
Also please explain why a corporation should give their beloved products away for free.
It also doesn’t cost them zero dollars to give away all their old software, and you’re calling that “free”.
Also, I have to point out that the idea that $8 for Mario Bros is reasonable, is absurd.
For $80 I could get the SNES classic, and get 20 if the greatest games of all time, plus hardware to play it.
$8 for a game that is inferior to all of those games and 30 years old, that I need to purchase a $300 piece of hardware to play, is nuts.
The original Mario Bros is not worth that. It’s like a $1 phone app at this point.
The SNES classic was the best money I spent on gaming last year, hands down.
But to @timex 's point, even if you don’t subtract out for the hardware, that’s still averaging $4 a game. For games 15 years newer than original Mario Bros. Among them some of the meatiest, and best, examples of their genre. Not every game has aged gracefully, but Super Mario World, Super Metroid, FF VI, and Link to the Past are still among, if not the, best examples of their form and style ever made.
So the $8 point is absolutely absurd.
Go price the original cartridges and come on back here once you have.
Well there is a slight difference there. An original cart is a collectors item of a physical good that is more than the sum of the code.
A digital download… is not that. There’s a reason I would pay more for certain things. For example I wouldn’t pay more than $5 for most digital novels. However wave a first edition Lord of the Rings, or one with the Alan Lee illustrations and maps? And the price I would pay is multiplied many times over.
Just to be clear here, I’m not arguing that it’s unfair for Nintendo to make money.
I’m arguing that they could actually make MORE money with a different approach here.
They are totally different business models, I don’t know why you’re comparing them.
I hate to be repeating myself, but this is not something published by Nintendo. It’s by Hamster. That’s just the business they are in: ports / emulator wrappers for ancient arcade games on modern consoles. It’s also their standard pricepoint. I don’t know who buys that shit; I wouldn’t download it for free. But they’re still in business after doing this for years and with a ton of games. That’s a pretty strong signal that it’s a reasonable pricepoint for that particular type of niche product.
I admit my error here. I assumed that since it was a Nintendo developed game, they were the ones selling it on the switch store.
I still find the price absurd.
They’re already selling Switches just about as quickly as they can make them. How is giving away the crown jewels for free going to make them more money?
Look, Nintendo has already signaled what they’re going to do with the SNES back-catalog. You’ll pay $20/year for their online service, and get some limited access to the SNES games. (IIRC the original trial balloon was one game per month, and unlike PS plus / XBox Gold, the game would go away at the end of the month. Don’t remember whether they walked that latter part back already).
It’s the main carrot they have for actually getting people onto a subscription plan, which seems to be the holy grail for console makers. Giving those games away for free isn’t going to happen.
Yeah it was pretty weird how they forced you to buy it.
They’re selling systems as fast as they can make them and you’re telling us they need to give away their back catalog to sell more systems they don’t have to sell.
Are you sure that’s your argument or do you just want to admit you’d really like something for free that no one owed you in the first place?
I didn’t buy it, because the price point was absurd.
If it were a dollar? I might have.
I’d love for my kids to be able to play our extensive collection of WII games on the switch. That’s really my only complaint so far.
It’s a valid point, although I think that on some very real level Nintendo simply mismanaged their production numbers. But that itself doesn’t change that their sales are very high. The ps4 has averaged around 17.5 million units a year, and the switch has moved 10 million in its first year. I suspect they could have moved more if they had made more.
But I would pay for such things… But just not those insane prices.
I pay don’t, for instance what, $50 a year for access to their online network. And as part of that, they give me like 3 free games every month. And they are modern games that are usually only a year or two old.
Now, when Nintendo comes out with their online service, they could offer something similar. At one point, they said they were going to give you ONE game, and you would lose access to it after the month was over… I believe they changed this suggestion after folks said how insane it was. But it’s possible that they could offer a good deal that would be worth the price.
As jsnell points out though, this largely stemmed from my misunderstanding, in that I thought Nintendo was itself selling Mario Bros for $8, which I found absurd. But apparently that’s another company selling it for an absurd price.
Eh, I just think it would be a better business decision for Nintendo to offer some sort of Netflix- like upgraded online service for access to NES/SNES/N64 games. Make it a premium over base online.
If they do a remaster of an old game, or bring over GameCube games, then charge that $15 or $20 each.