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

The cynical side of me thinks Nintendo know exactly what they're doing with the Wii U VC. They're making out like it's hard for them to get a decent software emulator that can handle all the ROMs so they need to make individual emulations for the time being but I am almost certain that they know the Wii U has lots of fairly wealthy hardcore Nintendo fans who just want something to play. Nobody would buy any of the NES games except the absolute classics if there was a shop full of SNES games. N64 and GC games aren't on there because they're just going to remake them and sell them for £50 a pop.

It has to all do with coding. They have to add the gamepad and Miiverse features that weren't in the Wii versions.

They have in the past confirmed that N64 games are coming, and there are statements to that effect on both the UK and US official sites. So unless they've changed their mind and not updated their websites...

Suspect you're right about the GC though.

That and Nintendo doesn't release remakes like crazy.

That coding is in the emulator, not in the games themselves. And they've clearly already mastered adding that code to the NES and SNES emulators for Wii U, so it really shouldn't take much work to update the code for the other games.

I think Nintendo has just one guy on VC duty. He has to update the code for each "game" (rom + emulator package) and then test the game to make sure there are no errors. So, a few minutes worth of updating code and then however long it takes to play the game. Then, of course, he has to go get coffee for all the rest of the Nintendo staff whenever they ask for it and deliver their mail. Gotta stay cost efficient! But, yeah, that's why we only get one VC game a week. Then, of course, back in the Wii days they had three people on VC duty, which is why we got three VC games a week. But then they fired two of them and then when it went down to once a week.

To save the Virtual Console, Nintendo will need to "save" their platform. Once games start rolling out normally they can start looking at Virtual Console. With so many games being delayed they need all their people power on getting things out the door, then they can start on getting Virtual Console to a normal flow

It does have to do with coding, but considering the system has been out a year I find it hard to believe that they can't have more games ready to download. At this point in the Wii's lifecycle we were well over 100 games.

What Nintendo needs to do to save the Virtual Console??? Simple, copy my NES and SNES physical collection and put them all up on VC. You guys would have awesome games for months instead of just the same old Mega Man's, Mario's and Zelda's.

I do not understand the dislike for Virtual Console... I never had a Wii (and don't have a Wii U), and I'm having a blast with the few VC games I've gotten so far... I've got Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Dig-Dug, The Legend of Zelda, Wario Land, Metroid II, Donkey Kong ('94), and Shantae. I've had tons of fun with all of them! For me, at least, there's more VC games already than I could ever hope to play... and I had never had a chance to play any of the aforementioned games before, so for me, the VC service is absolutely perfect.

And if I got a Wii U, it'd be the same deal: I'd suddenly have access to a whole bunch of games I'd never been able to play before (Super Mario World and Earthbound being at the top of my list).

There's plenty of games in Wii mode

Most of the suggestions for Nintendo seem to be to dump everything at one time and be done with it. That is never going to happen for a couple of reasons.

1.It makes no sense to dump 500 games on the service so people can just by the same 15 they want for the next 3-5 years,
2. Its a bit impossible due to the way the Wii's virtual console was set up. This time around there's a general framework but each rom still has to pass Nintendo's rigorous testing.
3. Nintendo probably has to relicense a lot of the games on the service espcailly the third party games and consoles.
4. with the Wii U's 2014 looking a bit slow on big AAA games that aren't from Nintendo's the Virtual Console alongside with other eshop games are even more important now.
5. Money Money Money we talking about the money

Not to mention the dumping of games is what caused the Wii VC to stop

Add:

Arcade
Sega Master System
Commodore 64
Amiga
Turbografx-16 (and CD)
Sega Genesis
Neo Geo
Sega CD
Sega 32X
Nintendo 64
Sega Saturn
Sega Dreamcast
Nintendo Gamecube

Then you can easily have more than 1 release a week and not run out of games. Of course you'll still have people saying "Rocket Knight Adventures!? I never played it but I'm sure its crap where is Yoshi Story?" every week, but if they choose to miss out on classics then that's their problem.

Well, it is hard to understand what Nintendo is doing with Wii U's VC... Let's compare with the Wii... from november 2006 to november to 2007 we had, approximately:

50+ NES games
20+ SNES games
09 Nintendo 64 games
35+ Genesis games
40+ TurboGrafx-16/TurboGrafx-CD games
05 NeoGeo games

So, Nintendo is not practicing the same great ideas and the reasons for that are completely unknown because they don't say a thing. On December 2007 Nintendo announced that 10 million VC titles had been downloaded. I'm sure the number of downloads on the Wii U is far away from that mark. So, the Virtual Console is indeed a really popular service... but profitable? Not sure, so maybe that's why Nintendo is slowing down the service. Another thing is the Wii's VC, it's there already, so why bother? The only difference is to play on the gamepad, but for me that's THE difference. I wish they could make the gamepad usable in the Wii mode, at least for VC and WiiWare... because then a lot of people (including me) wouldn't care for WIi U's VC that much, maybe for new systems like GameCube, Saturn, Dreamcast. But for being honest I don't see this happening.

The 3DS Virtual Console started great, it was really promising, but then, boom. We barely had GB titles in the past few months, not to mention GBC and GG. Only NES and a bunch of bored games lately. If you have a portable console makes no sense to not having a decent library of portable systems on the VC.

And all this is really sad. I love the VC service and I love playing portable titles on my 3DS XL and I love to play SNES games on the Wii U's gamepad.

Nintendo's attitude regarding the VC is not optimist at all. I'm not expecting much.

But what they should do is really simple. They've learned with the Wii, they know what to do. They can't dump hundreds of games at the same time, this is obvious and people already said about it here. Besides, Wii U still has a few years ahead. What it needs is more systems and 2 to 3 games per week, that's it.

Although about the N64, I think it would be there already if Nintendo were not planning something else. Not having N64 yet makes me think they're indeed working on that "ReUmagined Series".

Who's to say that when the Wii Shop closes its doors (which it will, eventually and likely sooner rather than later), we won't see exactly that: a flood of VC content? Maybe Nintendo is trying to negotiate rights to make that happen right now - after all they do seem to be pursuing 3rd parties more aggressively than they have in the past (though without much success admittedly).

What does Nintendo have to do with Contra and Castlevania? If Konami chooses not to release them on the Virtual Console, Nintendo can't do a thing about it. All the third party games you want or didn't want on the Virtual Console are the responsibility of those third party publishers. Nintendo can only publish Nintendo games.

They don't want to release the good games when the current install base is so low. It makes sense for Nintendo to wait at least until after Christmas to start releasing Super Mario Bros. 3 and Link to the Past.

But it's a slap in the face to those of us who own both consoles and really haven't gotten anything good lately. 3DS should be playing SNES games at the very least. It's believe unfathomable that there's nothing from N64 on Wii U. The slow trickle would bother me a lot less if there was anything decent coming out.

Even if this was an issue of licensing, Nintendo has enough of its own games to release one good classic game every other week on the the Wii U and 3DS. They are just trying to hold on to every last cent that these games can produce. It's kind of a slap in the face though to the loyal fans who bought the console as a show of faith.

i think the newly announced nes remix is a a great compliment to vc, even if it is technically not vc. i hope they eventually do stuff like this for snes and 64.

I fully support Virtual Console (don't know about you guys), and have a lot of VC games (Golf, Mario, more Mario, even more Mario, etc.)

I just thought of HD classics when I saw the Remix, they should totally do that. lol
Like, same 8-Bit graphics, but at the same time not....8-bit....graphics...if that even makes sense. x3