5 ms·

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,

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.

shkkmo 5y ago
> 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.
- wildzzz 5y ago
  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.
cruano 5y ago
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
Gigachad 5y ago
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.
phatfish 5y ago
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 ;)
- brimble 5y ago
  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). That's still a lot of good games.
bredren 5y ago
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.
- math-dev 5y ago
  this was us!
- HFguy 5y ago
  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.
  - toast0 5y ago
    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.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > 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.
- kalleboo 5y ago
  Yes, this was called "The Disney Vault" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault It continued right up until the release of Disney+
RajT88 5y ago
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.
- astrange 5y ago
  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. And it's 51% foreign owned: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stock/information/index.html https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stock/information/index.htm...
  - darkwizard42 5y ago
    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.
    - astrange 5y ago
      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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- autoexec 5y ago
  > 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.
skeeter2020 5y ago
But somehow Disney does this - how many purchased VHS movies before they went into the vault? What's their secret?
babypuncher 5y ago
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.
effingwewt 5y ago
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.

shkkmo 5y ago

> 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.

wildzzz 5y ago
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.

cruano 5y ago

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

Gigachad 5y ago

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.

phatfish 5y ago

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 ;)

brimble 5y ago
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). That's still a lot of good games.

bredren 5y ago

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.

math-dev 5y ago
this was us!
HFguy 5y ago
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.
- toast0 5y ago
  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.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > 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.
kalleboo 5y ago
Yes, this was called "The Disney Vault" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault It continued right up until the release of Disney+

RajT88 5y ago

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.

astrange 5y ago
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. And it's 51% foreign owned: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stock/information/index.html https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/stock/information/index.htm...
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  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.
  - astrange 5y ago
    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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
autoexec 5y ago
> 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.

skeeter2020 5y ago

But somehow Disney does this - how many purchased VHS movies before they went into the vault? What's their secret?

babypuncher 5y ago

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.

effingwewt 5y ago

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.