Topic: What Nintendo needs to do to save the Virtual Console

Step One: License M2 to be in charge. What's the appropriate equivalent for "vote of no confidence"? That's how I think a lot of us feel about Nintendo's job so far. The 3DS Virtual Console has had its share of good releases, but the Wii U VC is a disgrace. Week after week, usually one game, only two systems so far to hit the service and very few games not already available on Wii VC... it's pretty terrible. Have they learned nothing from the Wii VC's mis-steps? M2 on the other hand has shown passion in emulation, and done a great job, with the Sega 3D Classics. So it's so hard to emulate games that they have to trickle out so gradually? An alternative would be just to hire three people who knew how to do it and cared, and the job would be tons better than the job they're doing now.

2) Stop releasing VC games in line with other downloads. Make Friday a day for new releases, demos, etc. Release VC intermittently throughout the week. Maybe a week goes by with one or two games. Maybe a week goes by with 20. Who knows. But that would inject some life into this thing... people would be pleasantly surprised sporadically instead of disappointed every Thursday. And it would hopefully do the same on Nintendo's end... because right now, we live in a world where whoever is in charge of the Wii U VC can put the finishing touches on an emulation of Urban Champion, schedule it to be released along with no other VC games and call it a day. This is unacceptable. Anyway, how cool would it be to get a pop-up from SpotPass saying "Double Dragon (NES) is on sale now at the eShop!" And, when it did in fact say "Urban Champion" (NES) is now on sale at the eShop!" it wouldn't be so disappointing because it wouldn't feel like such a wasted opportunity — more might be on its way the next day.

SO that's what I think. Any other good ideas?

I think Nintendo has a lot of things to worry about and VC is at the bottom of that list.

But i do agree that bringing in a dedicated third party studio that is made specifically to bring games to the VC would help them out a lot. At least it would give us something to play in between the droughts.

VC is a lost cause. We have been beating this dead horse since about 2008. What's really frustrating, though, is that when the Wii VC first started in 2006 they had the right idea by releasing 3 games a week. It was every thing else that they were doing wrong, like advertising, sales, etc. Now they are advertising better, but they have burned the 3rd parties so bad nobody seems to be interested in supporting the VC anymore. I don't know if not having other consoles like Sega Genesis and Neo Geo is Nintendo's decision or Sega/SNK's, but if it is Nintendo's decision then they are completely and utterly clueless. This trickle out VC releases thing is complete nonsense.

Do you go into a record store to have only a small selection of albums available, and you have to wait for a classic release to trickle out? Hey, maybe next week we will get Abbey Road! Probably a poor example, but I hope you see my point. One of the arguments defending the VC trickle out method is that the games get spotlighted when they come out. So what? Can't you have all the games available AND STILL spotlight certain games each week through sales and what not? A bigger selection of games to choose from would do more good than harm. But with the Wii U being out for a full year now, and the VC still doing the same ol' same ol', I don't see the situation improving anytime soon, if ever.

Step 1: Upload games.
Step 2: Profit.

Such a simple concept that apparently Nintendo does not understand.

I don't really need to post a list of what I want on WiiU VC... Just me showing up in here says it all

@brooks83 with the Wii Nintendo seems to have released everything good they had within the first year or so, hence why they didn't really have much worth downloading in the years following. With the Wii U they want to spread out the releases so that we don't get that ridiculously long VC drought we did with the Wii. I do agree that they are releasing games to slowly, but I can sort of understand why they are doing what they are doing.

That's kinda my point, though. I don't think people would really care too much about a drought in releases if there was 300+ games to choose from. Having people wait around for a certain title to be released is just crazy from a business perspective. At the very least, they should give us a release schedule like Japan used to get, showing us what games we can expect in a certain month.

@brooks83 the problem with that being people don't care about what releases in the now not what released a week ago. Like you said during 2009 onward there were already hundreds of games on the VC yet people still complained about a drought of VC releases. I'm sure the people complaining hadn't played a lot of those games already on the VC, but they still complained because for there weren't VC games being released that particular week. I do think Nintendo should pick up the pace a bit with VC releases, especially when there is droughts in new releases, but I can also understand why they don't just release everything all at once.

Why is every gamer now a buisness man??
Sometimes we have to accept particular circumstances and try not to struggle with it and waste our precious energy.
But I agree with having a seperate vc release date. But I guess it would distract some customers so they try to keep it simple with one release day per week.

well not all of gamers are business men, however this subject just happens to be right up my alley.
https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/wii_u_virtual_console/nint...

I don't think anyone is claiming to be a "buisness" man. They are just tossing ideas around that could help Nintendo, because Nintendo obviously needs it.

You are right about not wasting precious energy though. I got tired of being frustrated and gave up on the VC a long time ago.

ogo, the Wii U would outsell the Wii if Nintendo would adopt your idea. What's stopping them?

I don't agree with the idea of raising prices for rare retro games. I mean they are expensive because they are rare but they will only sell full price if they are full packaged and have a manual. And you can't call yourself a real collector if you just download a rare game for a ridiculous price. You can claim that buy hunting down that game on a fleamarket. And if you are lucky that guy with the copy of earth bound does not know how rare it is and you buy it for 5 bucks. The price won't do anything.

VC died like last year or something, the only good game we got this year was...EarthBound.

@Mizore Your dissappointment makes me at least a bit sad and I have to say that a combination of old and new vc releases would be a very good idea. Spoken as a passionate gamer

I'm still picking up the odd game of interest like Earthbound (which I've barely touched because I'm focusing on Lego City at the moment), but the bulk of my collection is on my Japanese Wii which had amazing arcade and PC Engine support (at the end I think the Famicom just edged it for largest library).

Even outside of Japan the Wii Virtual Console ended up having a pretty impressive library; there's no reason the Wii U cannot do better. Given Wii U owners are arguably more committed gamers by virtue of the fact the jumped on early I agree there's no reason for this trickle: they should be moving to convert the previous Wii VC ASAP if only to generate revenue from people double-dipping. I know I plan on paying the modest fee to update my Wii VC games and I doubt I'm alone in that. If third parties don't want to prioritise the VC then why not license the content and offer them terms that are less per sale than the Wii (since they aren't doing the work that seems fair), but by eliminating the minimum sale threshold they'd probably stand to make more than they did on the Wii VC anyway.

I agree Zach, bringing in a quality third party (the guys who did the Atari Greatest Hits for iOS/DS and Activision Classics on iOS are also brilliant) would be a nice way to get a steady stream of classics and I cannot imagine Capcom, Sega or Atari would be tough to get a licensing agreement with. All Nintendo needs is the will to do it. I think the VC experience on the Wii U is even better than on the Wii and I'd really like to upgrade all my old Wii VC stuff if I could!

Not with that attitude.

I have to agree that I am disappointed in the VC. The VC is the reason why I bought the Wii as the first system of the last gen but Nintendo is just not handling it right. Now I am not sure if it's licensing issues or what but I feel that alot of good games an even popular ones are being overlooked. Where is Contra for example? They can put Super C and Contra III on the service but not Contra??? Where is Castlevania Bloodlines? They can put every other Castlevania on the VC but that one? It makes no sense to me.

Now I am not condoning getting games other ways that can't be discussed here, but honestly I dont think people would be tempted to go down those avenues if Nintendo would just give the people what they want.

I don't understand why they can't just just put all the games that were released on the Wii's VC on the eShop...its annoying having to wait AGAIN for some SNES games as well as the N64.