Illegal PC emulation -VS- Wii VC/XBL Arcade

PLEASE READ BEFORE VOTING!!

This is a little itch that has been nagging me. The itch has grown bigger recently, since they've announced Wii VC prices, and even bigger still with the mixed reception of the results of playing old games on one's Wii. Basically, it boils down to this; I don't think I should pay

Well, to be honest the prices don't seem too bad.

60Hz and no slowdown should really be as standard though. The rest (online multiplayer, for example) would just an amazing bonus, but it would take time and effort.

I didn't read what you wrote there before voting, but my opinion is that the price of the VC games/Arcade games...microtransactions is a fucking rip-off. They ripped us off when those games came out, and now they trie to do it again, not only with the VC...the price of a Wii as well, and people are falling for it.
Emulation for the WIN indeed.

to be fair the whole system for me is fair and the prices for the games are fair, even though they could have been a little cheaper, but to be perfectly honest the system is great and the issues with 50hz dont bother me. The system works and it works well in my opinion and when the back catalogue gets bigger it will really be a truly brilliant feature for wii

fenno2001 said:
Well, to be honest the prices dont seem too bad.

I don't support illegal emulation, that for me is not an option. Even with moral issues asside, to me it would feel quite empty being able to download any game I like, I like to play one game at a time, and if you pay for something (even a very small amount) you appreciate it more.

If you ignore illegal methods, and compare virtual console with the other alternative of purchasing the original games themselves, virtual console is far more convenient than ebay and much cheaper than buying retro games from shops that sell them, and if the service becomes better we won't have to have lots of consoles set up to play games from different systems. I downloaded Donkey Kong Country for a few pounds today, it would've cost at least 4 times that in Gamestation. So I voted the fourth option, I think its a fair price, even if it didn't cost them much to do, to the gamer its still a saving, and ~

Oni-Ninja said:

fenno2001 said:Well, to be honest the prices dont seem too bad.

I don't have a problem with PC emulation but I don't enjoy it...It's weird, I find it takes the experience away, something about being able to double click it on and off cheapens it...

The downloads are a compete rip-off though, i'll only be getting a couple of N64 games (Paper Mario, Lylat Wars PLEASE)...

There's also potential for updates in the future, so don't go jumping the bandwagon just yet.

Yes, Nintendo could have done much more to improve VC games, but at the end of the day they're only bothered about is making money, and this way they're going to make shit-loads, even if there's a lot of people playing ROM's

Oh, but was DOES piss me off is the limited amount of games available for the VC. There should be HUNDREDS, right out the box, not "a few and then we'll and some more later..."

( Edited on 08.12.2006 21:04 by fenno2001 )

I am still pissed off that Nintendo is charging 1000 points for a N64 game. Thats about

To the person who said we also pay money for old albums and movies; those are things that mostly age well, unlike games. Games, how many from the NES period are still fun to play? The graphics and sound are horribly outdated, they are shallow, short and most of the time not fun anymore.
The problem with these things is that you remember them as heaps of fun, but as technology advanced they became inferior in just about every way to most of the games today. And Nintendo is asking money, LOTS of money for that. Sorry, but I'm not buying.
I wish old games could make me feel like beautiful melodies on old abums do, but when it comes to those old games, it's just that nostalgic feeling of "yeah I remember when I played this with my brother in those dark winter months" which passes quickly for, "man this game really didn't stand the test of time".

Amazingjanet said:
People still pay the same price for albums from 20 years ago, people still pay anywhere from

If Nintendo drop the VC price it could hurt Wii game sales.

Rubbish. That's like saying if Nintendo keep on making DS games, it'll hurt Wii game sales. People plan for buying Wii games, the retro downloads should be cheap enough so that if you're bored enough one day, you browse through them and buy one on a whim. Not "Fuck, this is a tenner, what if it's shit?".

( Edited on 08.12.2006 22:59 by Oni )

Not "Fuck, this is a tenner, what if it's shit?".

adding online is all good and fun

but then you have to rember all the set backs of the time

first off,to implement something like online they would have to crack open the dusty folders on outdated machenes runing an OS no one in the company has herd of, letalone knows how to use. they then have to decypher the acent programing language. then they would have to try and acess hardware that the vc is claiming dosent even exist because the concept of online play on a console was considered stupid around that time. if they manage to change the VC to allow acess to the net,then they have to come up with new ways of sending the info and receving the info in this old out dated programing language that no one knows how to code, because of the limitations of the time and outdated libarys and fuctions*

but if they can by pass all that,then shure,itd be good

*if you dont know what i mean take a look at the change over time from the first versions of basic to the latest

I think my music ideology sets my view on ROMs. Long story short is if an album is worth me listening to it's worth a tenner, anything to help against the huge rot in modern popular music.

That said I don't have a problem with people who emulate or have only ripped CDs. Just anything on the VC that I'd fancy downloading is worth the three or four pounds they want for it. Indeed Golden Axe is currently mocking me from the Shopping Channel, reminding me how great it is, that I don't have it anymore and that it's only a few quid. (I'll cave soon, no doubt)

true,and who knows,the prices might drop

but at pressent microsoft/nintendo are trying to pay off the setting up of the server for said service

then theres ongoing costs like internet conections,paying people to make shure the servers dont go under,roytalys for each game sold,etc,etc

Adding online elements would be easy actually, on PC emulation it has already been done. At least the emulator RockNES X has a netplay feature available to use. And that's on the PC. You wouldn't be able to have more than 4 players but online would be easy to incorporate onto the WiiConnect 24 service.

Same goes for the refresh rates, if PC emulation done by people in their spare time can incorporate these things then surely a multi-million dollar company can do it too. Especially on a deadicated platform.

Unfortunately, when you email the PC emulator creators with these ideas, then to their limits, they will endeavor to add if they think it's a good idea.

Royalties are a problem, and will remain to be unless people would consider to allow the games into open domain. I can imagine that the companies would only allow Nintendo to pass on royalties in the event that they don't charge for the games.

And to any Nintendo workers that accidentally stumble onto this page (about a 15'000'000 to one chance), we want netplay, we want 480p, we want it without paying through the nose.

( Edited on 09.12.2006 12:15 by Lightmare )

your going to pay through the nose to get anything any way

its like i said they have to keep the cost-to-proffit raitos fairly tiped to the profit side

some examples are needed here
(please note, all prices are in NZD)
broadband (at 2 MB upload & download and 20GB bandwith with world exchange) - roughtly $23.00 a month and $5 a GB thereafter
paying a pro teche to look after the servers - any where from $10.25 an hour up
buyin all the raw equiptment - $500 one time fee
paying roytalities - maby $2 per download

ok,now say you have someone working full time (41 hrs a week) and you get 3 servers to enshure that AT LEAST one is going at all times. and an average game DL of:
10 nes games a month at $2.50 each
20 Snes games a month at $3.00 each
30 N64 games a month at $6.00 each

so thats a $625 a month profit at launch
and expenduchers land at 1943.25 a month at launch,and thats with out doing all the bandwith caping calculations and adding on roytalys

so as you can see,in the beguning nintendo are taking a risk in setting this up,but once its off,it will make MINIMAL profits in hope of making up for its losses at the start,then who knows,they might drop there prices or continue to make a minor profit

The VC has absolutely ZERO advatage over emulation (it actualy has disadvantages) other than the legality at the moment.

If a reasonably obscure and interesting game turned up on it, it would be different. At the moment it's just the most uninteresting, mainstream stuff you could think of.

Xbox Live Arcade is different, because most of the games have improvements and stuff like Symphony of the Night is coming out.

Alright so I agree with you that prices are way too high, 10$-20$ CDN. I would like to see the prices dropped.

My real beef comes with you saying that Nintendo is making 500-1000% profit. This would result in huge inflation (making 25$ for a 5$ game???). You may have meant it to be an exaggeration so if you did please don't be offended.

On subject, I would be willing to pay maybe 2$(1 pound) for a classic NES game (maybe 5$ for SMB 3). I would also be willing to pay 20$ for something like golden eye or perfect dark but not for the majority of N64 games.

I think I'll just be downloading the odd game that I've never played before (eg Ristar, which looks ace, but which I would prefer to play through a console rather than a PC, for some strange reason.)

I don't entirely agree with PC emulation. I do it but only with certain games that I have owned before like the excellent Golvellius for the Sega Master System. Hopefully as time goes by, the quality of the Virtual Console will increase.

Bandwidth costs next to nothing for a company like Nintendo. They should have so much it costs essentially nothing/download.

I regularly download demos on XBL (and I *think* you can do them with Silver which is free, don't quote me on it though) which are OVER 1 GIGABYTE. Nes games barely break a meg, the size of many images online. I mean, ffs Nintendo.

They're doing their age old adage of making money off old franchises.