You’d think Nintendo want’s people to play their games, but you’d be wrong. Nintendo wants people to buy their games. Whether they play it or not is irrelevant. While some producers and creatives might still have fun and the user first mindset, current Nintendo is only interested on profit. New releases will always make way more money than supporting old releases via emulation. They don’t care that people can’t legally purchase or play their old games. They think of them as marketing to leverage nostalgia for new releases. They place no value in their library of past games.
I’ve never thought about it like that, but this is so true. I’ve thought about how easy it would be for Nintendo to port for example gen 1 Pokemon to phones and charge $5 or $10 and make a boatload of cash. Easy money. But as you imply, that would devalue new releasesand reduce sales if people would rather spend time playing old games.
You’d think Nintendo want’s people to play their games, but you’d be wrong. Nintendo wants people to buy their games.
Ford doesn’t want you to drive their cars, they want you to buy their cars.
Apple doesn’t want you to use their computers/phones, they want you to buy their computers/phones.
My town doesn’t want me to use water, it wants me to pay for that water.I don’t think the Ford and Apple examples apply, as these companies make primarily physical products. Both of these companies really do want you to use their products for two reasons:
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Most of their marketing is literally just people seeing their products being used.
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Cars wear out with usage, as do computers, so the more you use their products, the sooner you’ll buy a new one.
Digital media is unique in that it’s not highly visible and using it more doesn’t make it degrade.
Digital media is unique in that it’s not highly visible and using it more doesn’t make it degrade.
I’m not sure what they has to do with whether the business involved in funding and creating the media wants to be paid for that work. But I’ll provide more examples if that helps.
Disney doesn’t want you to watch their movies, they want you to pay to watch their movies.
Netflix doesn’t want you to watch their shows, they want you to pay for a subscription.
Sony doesn’t want you to play their games, they want you to buy their games.
Apple doesn’t want you to listen to music, they want you to pay to listen to music.I agree with your examples, all of which have been heavily criticized for anti-consumer behavior, particularly Disney and Netflix, so I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make. Just because Netflix does it, doesn’t make it okay for Nintendo to do it. Digital media companies have strong incentive to practice anti-consumer behavior, so public outcry is important to counterbalance that.
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Replace Nintendo with Sony or Microsoft and you get the same result. No company cares about you playing their games, just buying and spending money. Hell they’d prefer if you didn’t play them and just gave them money.
Frankly I don’t think this is quite accurate when it comes to media companies. They want people playing games because people who play games are more likely to talk about them and sell them to other people.
But they would rather have people talking of their new games. for sure.
