Topic: Downloadable Game List (Unconfirmed)

[Pale]

"Iwata didn't elaborate, but did state that copy protection is in place (so don't expect to simply send downloaded game copies to your friends by e-mail)."

Does that answer your question Pale? Sure it'll evenutally be cracked, but it's still in place though.

Nah, i read that.  I just don't see how it won't be cracked within seconds of putting it in your drive.  A computer doesn't even have to decipher the content...it could just create an exact image of it to be copied onto another card much the same way copy protection is broken on PC Games.

The only conceivable solution I see would require that the Rev have access to the internet at all times.  Then when you try and start a game up from an SD card, it would go check your account and confirm that you paid for that game.  I personally wouldn't have a problem with that as it would also most likely mean you could freely re-download a game you already paid for, but people without persistant internet would be pissed.  

[vudu]

I'm no techie, but I imagine when you download the game your Revolution's unique serial number will be imprinted into it, making it playable on your system and yours alone.  It's also possible that the Revolution will have to be online in order to play these games, making it so even if you do give out your copy to others, only one of you can play it at a time.

[Pale]

The serial number thing wouldn't be a good idea either.  What happens when/if someones system breaks and they buy a new one?

[Ian Sane]

"The only conceivable solution I see would require that the Rev have access to the internet at all times. Then when you try and start a game up from an SD card, it would go check your account and confirm that you paid for that game."

Instead of keeping it online all the time maybe you could just have a systematic check that occurs whenever you do go online to download another game or play online.  It knows what games you bought on your account and then checks your card to make sure you paid for everything.  If you didn't then it knows and it deletes the offending game.  It would be based on an account instead of the console itself.  A possible loophole would be that you could just get two SD cards, one for your legit stuff and the other for pirated stuff and then you make sure you never go online with pirate card.  However the Rev could potentially store the id of every classic game played on your console.  If the check finds out that you played a game you didn't own it would save a flag so that next time it sees the game it gets deleted.  The only problem with that is that you can't bring your downloaded games to your friend's house.

Or maybe they just make it so that the interface on the Rev that is used to run the downloaded games simply doesn't even give you the option to play games you haven't received officially.  The list of valid games is stored on the console and updates everytime you download a new game.  So the console knows what you've bought and thus determines what it will let you play or not.  This isn't like a PC where you can open up Windows Explorer and see every file on the hard drive.  The Rev is proprietary and thus can just not let you run the executable for illegal games.  You may have Contra on your SD card but Contra is not on the list so no play for you.

[jasonditz]

Quote
Originally posted by: Pale
The serial number thing wouldn't be a good idea either.  What happens when/if someones system breaks and they buy a new one?

It could just keep track of what's been purchased and let the user link his account with the new system and redownload the titles.  

[Spak-Spang]

Yes, but If Nintendo released

25 first party classic NES
10 first party classic SNES
5-10 first party classic N64 games

Now add current Gamecube games and new Revolution games.

Then allowed 3rd parties to release whatever they wanted to at the availability at launch just the first party games would be the biggest launch lineup ever.

3rd parties would much more appreciate this.  

Then Nintendo could release a new set of games each month.  Create limited edition games and much more.  

Also about the plan they will use it hasn't beed decided yet or the cost.  So who knows what Nintendo will do.

And about Piracy...I don't think its that big of an issue.  Think about this.  It is already going on every single day.  Nintendo can't stop it.  Creating a system that can play ROMS that you download from your server is the best way to combat it.  Provide an affordable legal alternative.

A good example of this is MP3s.  You can steal music online using a variety of sources, yet it doesn't put I-Tunes out of business who are charging you $1.00 a song.

[Spak-Spang]

I think the realistic price for all games except perhaps N64 games will be at least 1 dollar, and probably no more than 5 dollars.

The 5 dollar games would probably only be N64 games.

A dollar is a price we are used to with music already, and really games are worth much more than music (at least to me.)

[jasonditz]

I'd like to see $0.50-$0.99 per NES title, $1.99 per SNES title, and $5 per N64 title

[BlackNMild2k1]

I think another good thing that will come out of all of these old games being re-released that hasn't been touched on yet, is that this will be a good gauge to see what franchises or games are popular enough to earn an update/sequel to the franchise.

i.e. If everyone were to buy Kid Icarus, Star tropics and Earthbound, Nintendo would know that the demand for updated games are pretty high and a sequel could sell really well.

and as far as pricing goes, I really wouldn't expect NES games to go below $1.00

NES - $1.00 - $1.99
SNES - $2.99 - $3.99
N64 - $4.99 - $7.99

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Aha.  Things aren't free.  That's the Nintendo I know.

[jasonditz]

Quote
Originally posted by: Pale
I still want to know how Nintendo plans on preventing people from sticking their SD card into their computer and making their games and saves available to the world.

SD stands for "Secure Digital", its got DRM built right into it, and it won't even be accessable to the computer in all likelihood.

That's not to say someone won't crack it eventually... but even getting an unsecure SD Card to work in a system without the DRM-enabled drivers installed is a hell of a challenge.

Its probably not a big deal anyhow, so long as the Rev will only play games that are encoded with the owner's account info. Think a "public/private" key situation, where the ROMs are encoded with a public key and only a user-specific private key placed on the internal flash chip would be able to make the ROM playable.

I'm sure even that is theoretically breakable (I can think of one possible way off-hand),  but by this point you're putting it out of the reach of the average user.

[thepoga]

Is anyone gonna even try getting all these game? You're gonna have to pay for em.
 

[stevey]

I think pricing will go like this $1 to $2, for ness $2.50 to $3-4, n64 $5 to $7-10, and 3rd parties add $1 to $3 a game. Also for game that never came out in the us add $3 to $5 and game that are text heavy like ff 2,3,5 add $5 to $50 (ff fan will still buy it).

[stevey]

"I still want to know how Nintendo plans on preventing people from sticking their SD card into their computer and making their games and saves available to the world."

They just formate the sd card so _% with be for game and will be unreadable on computer as so there no data there.

[KnowsNothing]

poga, I think deep down we knew we would have to pay anyway, so no big deal.  I'm prepared to pay around $15 for a game, over $20 is pushing it.  But I predict that they're not going to go much more expensive than that, if they even reach that at all.

That was a great article, it cleared some stuff up.  The USB connection is the wireless router-sans-network thing that was predicted, and it will work with the DS and the Rev.  Also good to hear that we'll be able to download demos to our DS, hopefully this means NES/SNES games too.

Quote
wata also discussed the Revolution's internal 512MB flash memory, which he said will be used for saving game data, downloading virtual console games, and for "expansion of the Revolution's capabilities."

Interesting......I'm thinking this could mean firmware updates, which means that we could be seeing new Rev features and programs and stuff all throughout it's life, which sounds neat.

[SgtShiversBen]

As I have said somewhere else, I think paying more than a dollar for an NES game is outrageous.  We're paying for an IMAGE of the game rather than an actual PHYSICAL copy of it.  We all know we can find these games for cheaper off of Ebay and other sources (and Nintendo does too as shown by their store locator).  I think a quarter would be a reasonable price.  I mean we can get these games for free off of the internet (allbeit they aren't the best, but they're there) and also they aren't new.  iTunes uses the dollar method, but that's because you can get the songs that just came out.  I wouldn't pay 1$ for a Beatles song knowing that somewhere someone is hosting the song on their website.

I just think, like I said in the beginning, a dollar or two is too much to pay for an IMAGE of a 20 year old game.  A quarter would be great, a dollar for an SNES and maybe 2 for an N64.  Heck, you can get Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, WWF No Mercy or Ocarina of Time for around 2.99$ at GameStop.  At least then I'll have some physical evidence.

But I do love the fact of them being able to put on the SD card.  Anyone think that the memory cards will be the same format as the DS cards?  Would be great in my opinion.

[Ian Sane]

"I'm prepared to pay around $15 for a game"

You and you only.  There's no way in hell I would pay that.  I can get real SNES carts for less than that.  If Nintendo went that high this concept would bomb.

Plus you have to remember that it's really easy to get NES and SNES emulators running on a PC and it's pretty easy to find free roms.  If Nintendo overcharges there's a very easy to use pirating alternative.  If the games are like a buck then people will be more willing to do things the official way but much like with MP3s it's not going to take much effort to push someone to piracy.  I'm not defending piracy but it's there and people will use it.  These things better be dirt cheap.

[BlackNMild2k1]

"Interesting......I'm thinking this could mean firmware updates, which means that we could be seeing new Rev features and programs and stuff all throughout it's life, which sounds neat."

For those of you that have been skimming through this thread, This was posted back on pg. 3

Quote
Originally posted by: SgtShiversBen @ 11:31am
Well, the games will carry a fee.  I just hope it's like a quarter for NES games or something reasonable.

It's an IGN link, so beware: DS Nes

Also the games will be able to be downloaded to the Revolution AND to the SD memory card.  I think they got a hint from the PSP about this.  This will also be used for DEMOS and firmware patches.

Quote
from IGN article:
Nintendo's use of flash memory rather than a hard disk was very much intentional. The company believes that kids as young as five years old will use the Revolution and could damage a built-in hard disk. Additionally, Iwata points to longevity, reliability and cost as being part of the decision to go with flash.

The internal flash memory is being used for a few areas besides the download of game classics. You'll be able to save games to the flash area, update the Revolution's firmware (adding new features along the way, presumably) and download game demos! That's right, Revolution game demos, downloaded right to your Revolution hardware.

 

[KnowsNothing]

I'm willing to pay a maximum of $15  for a game.  I'm not saying that all games are worth that.  Only the top-tier N64 games and rare SNES games are worth that, I was only saying that I would be willing to pay around $15 for certain games.  Obviously NES games are worth much less than that.

Of course, now that I think of it, $15 is a little high, I'll bring that back to $10, especially since we already have both N64 Zelda's on the Cube and Mario 64 on the DS, and others and stuff.

Black: oh  Still, though demos aren't new, DS demos are, SO THERE    

[Talon]

You know what would truely be revolutionary is if Nintendo released the nes and/or snes sdk's to hobbyists.  If nintendo is willing to sell the original nes and snes games at an extremely cheap price, piracy just isnt a factor.

I think it would be totally rewarding and awesome to develop a game for the nes or snes on your pc and be able to download it and play it on the revolution (legally o_O O_o).  This sort of product not everyone would be interested in but nintendo could earn a bit more revenue from selling their sdk's at a reasonable price.  NES and SNES games are no longer being made by anyone and as while as nintendo keeps the pricing of the downloadable games down, I cant see any reason how this could hurt their profits.  Not to mention we could see a surge in NES and SNES game development and some original ideas from hobbyists who are more inclined to take risks and go out on limbs with their software unlike developers and publishers of today.

If nintendo was smart they could really create a whole new product line around this sort of concept.  With the sdk's they could release user manuals to get the best out of the hardware (emulator), programming guides, game development designs, architectures and patterns.  Anyway Im starting to day dream but one can only hope.

[jasonditz]

Maybe instead of the overly restrictive hardware of the previous gen systems they could go one better and offer a cheap, somewhat crippled devkit for the system itself. Or even something like the extremely cool Saturn BASIC that ASCII released in Japan.

[Pale]

I see an explosion by Ian in the future when the pricing scheme is actually announced.

Seriously guys, if these were as cheap as a dollar I'd be shocked.  5 dollars is probably a safer bet, and to whoever said 25 cents, you are dreaming.

Iwata saying you get games for buying games is seriously intriguing.  I'm starting to think the games will be fairly high priced, but Rev games will give you 'Nintenbucks' that you can use towards getting games free.

That actually makes a lot of sense.  They aren't GIVING the games away because they are promoting sales of other games.  Third parties could get on board... Buying the new CC will give you 'Squarebucks', etc, etc.

That way, if you REALLY want to play Earthbound on launch day, you shell out the 5-15 bucks.  Then, as you get a backlog of 'Nintenbucks' you finish out your collection.

Would you all be happy with that?  I would.  

[Mario]

"Nintenbucks", that's an excellent idea! Know what'd be awesome? If you got Nintendollars for putting your GC games in, and the hardware detects them or something (or maybe your GC memory card), and gives you a dollar for each game. That'd be a nice reward for fans.

[KDR_11k]

Blacknmild: Remeber that not everybody has the same page size as you, for me this thread is still on its second page.

I don't see them demanding a dollar or less for these games. Why? Well, a game lasts you at least a few hours, usually days. Nintendo is very conscious of the time a user will be occupied by a game and won't buy new games. They even called MS stupid for bundling lots of crap with the Box because a user playing that crap pack-in game won't buy new games for some time. Of course, more than five a piece would be counterproductive but one or less would make those games literally a dime a dozen. The less you pay for a game the less you value it. I didn't feel bad when I put Rez on the shelf after two hours never to touch it again, I felt bad when I did the same thing with Harvest Moon:AWL because I shelled out 50 Euros for that piece of garbage.

[Talon]

I dont even see the need for SD memory cards anymore.  The 512mb of flash memory would be enough to temporarily store game saves and then for games that you dont play any longer you could archive them on your pc through the wireless conection.