10 replies to this topic

[Mendon]

CLICK HERE for a very interesting read from IGN concerning the decline of the VC Channel.

I have been wondering why VC releases have been so infrequent this year and the above article offers one possible reason. Not sure if the authors are right or not but it is an interesting read.


Mendon

[Nesbroslash]

Maybe they just need to add some Atari or Vectrex games, and definitely more arcade games.

[cimerians]

It could easily be great if they feature something special with those old games.

Achievments, HD graphics, save states, high score competitions (see Game room for Xbox360), artwork, onlineplay, bonus Nintendo club points.
ANYTHING to make it more than what it is!

Why buy a game again you already have or can play through an emulator?

When it first came out I supported it but then I stopped buying the games cause I felt like I was being ripped off. Afterall I HAD the games I was re-buying!! They offer NOTHING other than a downloadable copy of the game you already have. It doesn't make sense.

Once again, they could easily make it fantastic by giving us something other than just a copy of a game we probably have.

It's unfortunate but its been worthless for a while now especially with homebrew.

[akator]

Battles between "___ of America" and the headquarters "___ of Japan" are old stories. It's sad to hear that crap is still happening, but it's no surprise. The lack of non-Japanese VC releases is undoubtedly related.

VC releases aren't technological hurdles. They are licensed, then the same ROMs all of us can get off the net are wrapped in HTML and downloaded for points. The only possible hurdle is licensing.

WiiWare and the 3DS may have drained resources from the VC, but that would be Nintendo's stupidity. Is Nintendo really too cheap and shortsighted to keep a successful service going while developing other projects? I doubt it.

The article really didn't do much for me. The 4 pages was too long for the content, and I'm still unsure of what the conclusion was. Why has the VC dried up? I didn't find any answers from it.

[chrisbid]

i dont want to read a multipage ign aritlce

but on the subject itself, summer is the slow time of year. it doesnt make sense to have multiple releases when fewer people will buy them. nintendo will get back to once-a-week releases as xmas approaches.

the list of must-have first rate AAA titles have pretty much already been released. i cant think of any major release that hasnt been listed on the virtual store

VC is still awesome when it comes to import-only and rare titles. 8 dollars for castlevania: rondo of blood is an incredible deal.



all that said, i am still clamouring for an offical arcade donkey kong release.

[ComputerSpaceFan]

Very interesting read, thanks for letting us know about it, Mendon.

I have had a big beef about VC non-releases for a while and it's good to at least believe from what IGN says that Nintendo of America is begging Japan to give us good non-Japanese titles and Nintendo of Japan is blatantly ignoring them. That explains why, despite the excellent release of the Super Star Wars games, we have had zero of the equally awesome Star Wars N64 titles, something I was really looking forward to.

Some of the stuff in this article really shocks me. Only nine Commodore 64 games ever came out? That's criminal!

I'm curious of the logic the writer gives though related to Wiiware. He says that after Wiiware launched "Predictably, VC's numbers fell off fast." I don't see what relevance Wiiware would have. I was very much of the opinion Wii owners were a diverse group, consisting of old school gamers as well as the new casual market. Just because there are new Wiiware titles to try shouldn't necessarily mean VC is going to decline as far as the interest from gamers goes. Instead, Nintendo just dropped the support.
Crazy if you ask me. I have tons of points ready to buy more stuff but they don't make any of it available.

The biggie in my opinion was the line "It must be like jumping through hoops to try to get any game not originally presented by a major Japanese publisher through the submission and approval process to go live in the American Wii Shop". That more than anything else explains a lot of problems with VC. Not only are there very few games I am interested in playing but non-Japanese consoles like the 2600 are never going to see the light of day on that service based on this info. Heck, I am surprised they ever made Commodre 64 available.

Anyway, glad I read that one. There's less than half a dozen old titles I would ever choose to buy had they ever come out on VC and now I know I don't need to get any more Wii points cards for them because it is doubtful they'll ever be released.

[Mendon]

akator, on Tue Aug 10, 2010 12:56 PM, said:

The article really didn't do much for me. The 4 pages was too long for the content, and I'm still unsure of what the conclusion was. Why has the VC dried up? I didn't find any answers from it.

Maybe I read more into it than was really stated, but I came away with the impression that one of the reasons was that NOJ felt that the VC selections might take away from the WiiWare and DSiWare selections. NOJ wants to really push those two services and having less competition for downloadable dollars means the small developers get a better chance at your attention and money. I thought the article hinted that this was the reason that NOJ hasn't announced any type of GameBoy VC channel for the DSi.

As I said, maybe I read more into the article than was stated.


Mendon

[roberto]

cimerians, on Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:08 AM, said:

It could easily be great if they feature something special with those old games.

Achievments, HD graphics, save states, high score competitions (see Game room for Xbox360), artwork, onlineplay, bonus Nintendo club points.
ANYTHING to make it more than what it is!

Why buy a game again you already have or can play through an emulator?

Hopefully they will get it soon or later...

[Austin]

Don't mean to sound like an ass, but they need to get their crap together and start putting out MORE VC games. It doesn't matter to me if there are achievements, special additions, or not--It's the fact that they hardly release anything that annoys me. Four titles a month across nearly a dozen platforms isn't much of an offering at all when you put it into perspective. I would be happy to plunk down more money if there was a wider selection of titles on a more constant basis, but honestly, the last VC game I bought was Dracula X for the DUO.. and damn, that was a few months back.

Also, is it just me, or are the Arcade VC games way overpriced? It seems kind of asinine to buy Mappy for, say, 800 points (nearly ten dollars), when you can buy virtually any modern Namco Museum release for less then half of that (or on older platforms like XBOX and PS2 for hardly half of that). Likewise, another example is Altered Beast, one that is 800 or 1000 points--You can buy that title by itself on XBLA for 500 points (five dollars) or just unlock it in the PS2 Sega Genesis Collection (a game that will cost you roughly the same price on the used market, AND it includes 15+ more games).

**edit: OK, admittedly I wrote all of that prior to actually reading the article. But now that I have, I am a little skeptical.. What they talk about in the article sounds to me more like pure speculation than anything else as to why Nintendo of America hasn't supported the Virtual Console. The reasons they provided (Such as "the power is out of their hands") sounds like complete BS to me.. IMO, even if NOJ thinks that VC games are "getting in the way" of WiiWare sales, I doubt that's the reality of it. I am certain there are pleeenty of people out there that couldn't give a damn about WiiWare titles and would rather spend their money on VC titles. The only way to maximize that possibility of profit then is to provide frequent updates for both outlets, which they don't seem to be doing these days..

Also, now that I think about it, what do you think it actually costs Nintendo to get new titles hosted? I wouldn't think much at all, if anything.. They are probably making a tiny bit of profit to host these games, unless 3rd part developers are starting to get greedy and want more money from their titles being sold on the VC (Maybe the reason why it took so damn long for Mega Man IV to appear to begin with?)..

Edited by Austin, Mon Aug 16, 2010 4:50 AM.

[garyd97]

It seems to me that licensing should not be much of an issue with the pricing Nintendo uses. There is plenty of profit margin left over and has been done already with TMNT for NES.
I would really like to see Atari 2600/7800 games on the VC.

[jeremysart]

cimerians, on Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:08 AM, said:

It could easily be great if they feature something special with those old games.

Achievments, HD graphics, save states, high score competitions (see Game room for Xbox360), artwork, onlineplay, bonus Nintendo club points.
ANYTHING to make it more than what it is!

Why buy a game again you already have or can play through an emulator?

When it first came out I supported it but then I stopped buying the games cause I felt like I was being ripped off. Afterall I HAD the games I was re-buying!! They offer NOTHING other than a downloadable copy of the game you already have. It doesn't make sense.

Once again, they could easily make it fantastic by giving us something other than just a copy of a game we probably have.

It's unfortunate but its been worthless for a while now especially with homebrew.

Totaly agree with you there.

They could really take some advice from XBLives game room. The virtual arcade is a pretty cool concept. This could easily be done with the mii's. Where you could intereact with other people's mii's that are online and "walking" around through the arcade, and even play with them.