Topic: Baseless Speculation: Virtual Console on NX

[King Bowser Koopa]

We posed a question to the staff and readers: what's next on Virtual Console?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/40773/baseless-speculation-virtual-console-on-nx

Baseless Speculation is a new feature where we poll our staff and readers on a speculative question, and corral the responses.

This week on Baseless Speculation:  What will Nintendo do with Virtual Console on NX?  We asked ourselves and our readers what they thought Nintendo would do with the classic gaming digital download service on their next home platform.  What did they have to say?  Read for yourself!

Neal Ronaghan, Site Director:I want to be hopeful, but as long as the people behind Virtual Console right now are still controlling it, Virtual Console will remain a trickle and the best we can hope for is that we can pay $1 per game to upgrade our Wii/Wii U/3DS Virtual Console libraries to NX.

Andy Goergen, Managing Editor:When Virtual Console first launched on Wii, I was a pretty avid customer, but once I began to realize that Nintendo viewed each hardware console as a separate platform for Virtual Console, rather than treat Virtual Console as its own platform, I began to lose interest. Nintendo now has three separate Virtual Console platforms, and hasn't shown any interest in letting customers share purchases between the three. The fact that the emulators are custom-made for each title (as evidenced by the file size on each release) ensures that the development cost on a per-title basis prohibits cross-buy or a large library of titles.

With NX, I want Nintendo to unify their VC platforms into a single platform that runs on NX and any future Nintendo hardware so that I have some confidence that when I buy a Virtual Console game, I'm contributing to a digital library of titles that has a longer shelf life than the hardware I'm purchasing it on. I want Nintendo to solidify their emulation technology so that every existing Wii and Wii U Virtual Console game that currently exists (at least NES and SNES) is available in this new platform, and my old purchases on all three platforms should carry over. Nintendo should embrace it's heritage and view it as an opportunity to remarket old games to a new audience.

Unfortunately what is far more likely is that Nintendo will finally ditch Virtual Console entirely except for a core 10-15 titles that will carry over from Wii U (but not Wii) purchases and that will be the end of the concept. Nintendo has shown such little interest in finding new ways for it's customers to play older games that I expect they will completely move away from this business model and redirect their focus on new endeavors.

Donald Theriault, Associate Editor: Given Nintendo's statements about using the Wii U architecture for future consoles, I would think that the next system's VC would hit the ground with at minimum a majority of what exists on the Wii U. This also might explain why the 3DS hasn't gotten anything new since the DK Land trio in February.

At some point, they're going to have to do away with the "tweak individual emulators" method and try to create a one size fits all solution, though. In addition, NOA has to ditch the Adelman-mandated slow boat.

Justin Berube, Features Editor: Before I answer the question I think it's important to remind readers that I think NX will be a digital platform that will run across multiple hardware devices.

With that said, I think Nintendo is currently doing as little as they can get away with on the Wii U and 3DS Virtual Console because the games will have to be re-optimized in a few years for the NX platform. So from a cost prospective it doesn't make sense to push the Virtual Console hard on the current Nintendo platforms.

When an NX platform launches I expect the upgrade process to be similar to the transition from Wii to Wii U. A small fee to be paid for an upgrade when the game comes to NX.

I think the slow trickle of Virtual Console software will continue on NX , but at a slightly faster pace. The good news is that since NX will likely be a digital platform users will only have to purchase each Virtual Console title once to have access to it on their home console and portable device that is running NX.

Andrew Brown, Associate Editor:I'm remaining skeptically optimistic that Nintendo won't start from scratch. They'll make sure the existing Virtual Console library is available from day one so they can expand and build on what (eventually) amounted to a halfway decent feature in the last two home consoles. We'll probably pay extra for the privilege of transferring the games or save data across, though.

I see them ironing out emulation issues that hindered the release of certain games in the past, such as the SNES Super Scope or Mario Paint mouse, or the N64 Controller Pak that was required for many third party titles by Konami and Capcom. Perhaps we'll see the addition of new platforms, like GameCube classics or the Virtual Boy's humble library. I also see an added effort into bringing in rarer titles from across the sea. Earthbound Beginnings bated our breaths for Mother 3; it has to happen now.

Nicholas Bray, Associate Editor:I think that all the Wii U purchases will be downloadable right away on the NX, for free.

The trickle of content may continue, but I am hoping they are simply holding off until the NX comes.

I'd like and hope that they can improve the way some systems display, as currently there are problems. Also, we need the option for 50 and 60Hz downloads for PAL systems.

From our readers via Twitter:

@Nintendo_NWR status quo. Drip feed first party games with not a lot of 3rd Party support

ā€” Drew Covert (@Eyothrie) July 9, 2015

@Nintendo_NWR With NX VC, I see them doing a huge game drop at the beginning: 100 titles across all Wii U VC platforms. Then 3 per week.

ā€” Jordan Rudek (@GamingTweets64) July 9, 2015

@Nintendo_NWR Probably expect people to pay $5 for Super Mario Bros. again. #nothanks

ā€” Jason Williams (@Jet_Pilot) July 9, 2015

Want to find your tweet featured in the next edition of Baseless Speculation?  Just follow us on Twitter at @Nintendo_NWR and click refresh repeatedly until you see us ask for a response!

[Ian Sane]

Starting in the 32 bit era companies realized they could re-release their old games so they did so in compilations.  Then the VC came out and that become the way to do it.  But a few years later we started seeing HD remakes and since that can charge pretty much full price THAT became the method.

There's what makes the most sense for consumers and what makes sense for the companies selling the product.  Naturally the companies selling the game would charge $10,000 to rent the game for five minutes if they could get away with it.  So it was no surprise that Nintendo pretty much destroyed the VC concept with the Wii U.  Of course they wanted us to pay for those games again because that's the pipe dream that benefits Nintendo the most.  Some sort of universal VC that spans all Nintendo platforms is exactly what we want but it involves us making only one purchase that can last us for years.  Nintendo doesn't want that and honestly neither do Sony or MS.  The NX is going to have the VC in whatever manner Nintendo feels will benefit themselves the most.

Now what I really want is a Nintendo VC standalone console.  I want real NES/SNES/N64 hardware in a Nintendo-manufactured machine that plays VC purchases for those consoles plus has the cartridge slots and controller ports so you can also play the real cartridges.  I don't want to fart around with flaky NES hardware anymore but I also want real hardware instead of emulation and Nintendo's typical build quality.  Nintendo won't do it because they'll think that 30 year old cartridges will eat into the VC sales.  Of course there are already products out there that let you play old cartridges so you figure Nintendo would want to get into that.  An official Nintendo version of such a product, done right, could easily mop the floor with competing products.

[NWR_insanolord]

I think what Justin's saying is the best case scenario. Nintendo intends to get it right with the NX, and until they do they don't want to throw a lot of resources at releasing games the old way because it wouldn't get enough return. Do I think that's what's happening? Not really, but that's the hope.

[BiteThePillow]

The current digital content setup across the four active platforms (DSi, Wii, Wii U, and 3DS) is like a Rube Goldberg machine at this point. NX needs one storefront and one OS menu to launch games from (no Wii U mode please). It should at least launch with all previously available titles, and Nintendo should de-emphasize the Virtual Console jargon. Maybe get rid of it altogether. People understand "classic games", but the meaning of term "Virtual Console" is not immediately apparent to your average consumer, and it implies that there is more going on than simply old games on new platforms. Also, it raises the expectation that all or nearly all of the old games are going to be available, because it is a "virtual console", not "a limited selection of emulated games from older consoles".

[Adrock]

My thoughts on the Virtual Console haven't changed:

Does Nintendo still emulate each individual game instead of using a general emulator? If so, that may explain this. There are benefits to writing an emulator for each game, but it's a lot more work. Maybe Nintendo is finishing up the games it already started emulating or are now focusing on other platforms like DS that haven't been emulated yet. Maybe both?

Nintendo has talked about future hardware being more integrated, like "brothers in a family of systems." Here's a good article. As much as it sucks in the short-term, if Nintendo is serious about simplifying the transition of porting between platforms, it doesn't make sense to continue individually emulating games on Wii U. It would be in Nintendo's best interest to move on from PowerPC. Imagine if Nintendo could use the same emulator on the successors of both Wii U and 3DS. Nintendo dug itself into this hole so if true, it's nice its finally doing something about it. Now, hopefully this also includes unified accounts.

I started an entire thread a couple weeks ago in the Nintendo a Console Discussion forum regarding what I think NX can be based on things Satoru Iwata has said in the past two or three years. A console and a handheld that play the same games is a direction I see Nintendo going. A unified Virtual Console would be part of that plan. If Nintendo develops a universal emulator, I think more games will be released with greater frequency. I don't think it helps Nintendo to trickle out games. The way it was doing things (emulating each game) was the most cost prohibitive structure. It required more work for less output. No bueno.

[NWR_insanolord]

The thing is, that wouldn't explain why they abandoned putting Wii games on the eShop.

[Adrock]

The thing is, that wouldn't explain why they abandoned putting Wii games on the eShop.

Does it need to? There could be a separate, completely unrelated explanation for that.

[Luigi Dude]

The thing is, that wouldn't explain why they abandoned putting Wii games on the eShop.

They probably stopped because the Wii games weren't selling that well compared to the other systems on the eShop.  Which makes sense because the Wii U's core audience is hardcore Nintendo fans who probably still own all their Wii games.  Since the Wii U can play Wii games, not hard to imagine Wii U owners didn't feel a need to buy the eShop versions since they already own the exact same games and can still perfectly play them on the Wii U.

In comparison, games on every other system sell better because you need to download them if you want to play them at all on the Wii U.

[TOPHATANT123]

The thing is, that wouldn't explain why they abandoned putting Wii games on the eShop.

They probably stopped because the Wii games weren't selling that well compared to the other systems on the eShop.  Which makes sense because the Wii U's core audience is hardcore Nintendo fans who probably still own all their Wii games.  Since the Wii U can play Wii games, not hard to imagine Wii U owners didn't feel a need to buy the eShop versions since they already own the exact same games and can still perfectly play them on the Wii U.

In comparison, games on every other system sell better because you need to download them if you want to play them at all on the Wii U.

The Wii games are done, they are even still rated by the esrb, and they lose absolutely nothing by releasing them so it's nothing to do with cost. I think the lack of US Wii games is just due to scheduling and wanting to spread the releases over a larger period of time. I believe Metroid Prime Trilogy and Mario Galaxy 2 are in the top 20 best selling eshop games but I would have to double check that.

[NWR_insanolord]

The thing is, that wouldn't explain why they abandoned putting Wii games on the eShop.

Does it need to? There could be a separate, completely unrelated explanation for that.

That's true I suppose. It doesn't really make sense that it should be a problem, but the way they do the other platforms on there doesn't make sense either.

[BiteThePillow]

Maybe putting up a few Wii games was more of a feature highlight to make the Wii U more appealing, but Nintendo doesn't want to release many Wii games because they would rather people spend more money at retail for Wii U titles. Nintendo has a history of trying to manipulate the market in mysterious ways. The motivation to funnel consumers toward retail is there though. Nintendo has lost a lot of console shelf space in recent years.

[Ian Sane]

I think with stuff like not releasing Wii games on the eShop that Nintendo's logic may be to "save" certain games for re-releases that they feel would be more lucrative.  Xenoblade COULD be a downloadable title on the Wii U but then you wouldn't go buy a New 3DS for it, would you?  Even with games that aren't available in another format Nintendo might be thinking that they COULD be at some point so the game sits in the "vault" until they find a way to exploit it.

We joke that Balloon Fight kept getting re-releases because Iwata made it but it might be that Nintendo knows full well that there is no market for an enhanced port of Balloon Fight so it's safe to release it on whatever service they want because they know that is the maximum potential value it has as a product.  But the really popular games could get a full-on (and full-priced) remake or at the very least get a re-release that is carefully timed so that it acts as marketing for a new game in the same series coming out around the same time.

[BiteThePillow]

I for one would love more 3DS remakes of Wii and Gamecube games. Xenoblade 3D and DKCR3D proved that anything is possible, if the controls are close enough. I'd have been much happier with a portable 3D Metroid Prime Trilogy than a Wii U download version, even if they sold the titles separately.