Topic: An outsider's perspective.

My friend came over the other night and played the Wii U for the first time. We've been playing Nintendo together since N64. I put in Super Mario 3D World and we played through the first 5 stages. He wasn't impressed but enjoyed it anyway. Then the subject of Eshop came up. He was amazed that the WiiU eshop is so different from the Wii's. A noticeable lack of games. Also the prices shocked him. "$5 for the NES Mario? What a ripoff!" I guess to hardcore gamers who have ROMs of every Nes, Snes, and Genesis game on their phones that they got for free it might seem steep. I always feel like I'm donating to Nintendo when I buy from the Eshop. Maybe it is time that they realize It's better to sell a million vintage games for a dollar each than 2000 of them for $5. WiiU is going to do what it's going to do, but the 3DS eshop could be a goldmine.

Was the wii shop much better in price? I payed around £20 for 2000 points and got 2-4 games..

if I remember well the Wii was even worse in prices.... some VC games were about 1000 points(and the overinflated price of those points in my country stopped me from getting any)

Cool.

The Wii Virtual Console was more expensive. NES games were 500 points which was £5 as 1000 points was £10. SNES games were 600 points. I think NES games are now roughly £4.49 and NES games are £5.49.

What Nintendo need to do is get a system ready whereby Virtual Console is a universal system for any Nintendo piece of hardware. Buy it on 3DS and play it on Wii U or vice-versa. They also need to get catalogue of games from the Wii Virtual Console on the Wii U and 3DS sharpish. Maybe drop the price by another £1 or 50p.

This makes too much sense. Stop it.

I'd buy a hell of a lot more of their games at that price. The only VC game I've bought on my Wii U has been Mega Man X and that was on sale for $2.00. I can't justify buying a game for $7.99 unless it's one of the best. Period. If they made games like Super Mario Bros 2, Zelda 1 & 2 $1.00 a piece.. I'd probably buy them all. I'm betting a lot of other people would, too. Paying $4.99 just doesn't cut it though so I just don't do it, despite whether I like the games or not. Like I said though, I would buy them if the games a must-have, but otherwise no way. There are a ton of VC games I'd LIKE to have, but I'm not willing to cough up $4.99 for them.

A little price cut in the VC games would not hurt any body. Could acorage the users to buy a little more games.

Ha! Best post in this thread yet.

nintendo doesn't want to lower the perceived value of their games. the only problem is that the service is so comparable to emulators, which are totally free. the thing is that nintnendo actually spends a lot of time testing vc games before releasing them, and each one has its own emulator tailored specifically for it. if nintendo had adopted some open source emulators that have been around for years and years then maybe they could've justified a lower price point. i really hope they give us some fair pricing soon. the thing is that with a lot of these games, i wouldn't even pay that price for a physical copy anymore, digital games should be much cheaper.

The VC games sell a lot more than you guys think. They are often the best sellers and have done quite well.

Nintendo learned a lesson with the Wii VC, where their games sold like crazy and completely cannibalized WiiWare sales. Nintendo cannot afford to have a robust, cheap VC if they want to keep the eShop an attractive market for indies. (Lower prices and cross-buy would of course be nice, though... I'm one of those chumps who has re-bought VC games across systems more than a few times. To me, the prices are fine when In think back to how expensive these games were as a kid--$60-70 for a game like Chrono Trigger and Neo Geo games, forget about it.)

Instead, I believe Nintendo now sees the VC has a way to draw traffic and augment eShop sales (also notice how long it took them to put publish their own eShop games--compared to WiiWare, were their releases dominated, or 3DS, where they released quite a few off-the-bat, but since have refrained). This is likely why Nintendo doesn't want a massive VC dump. They are keeping the market from being saturated because the reality is most people are going to buy many more VC games then indie games, given the choice. These indies then have to compete with some of the best, most popular games of all time. Games made with substantial budgets by skilled teams.

Bottom line, Nintendo (NOA, Japan has many more VC games) wants to keep the eShop as attractive as possible. I imagine they hoped there would be more indies games released by this point (look at the absurd amount of games pushed back from a 2013 release). Can't be helped, but overwhelming the eShop with VC games is a shortsighted solution, unfortunately.
(And, of course, the Wii VC is still in operation, accessible through the Wii U and they play great on the GamePad.)

I imagine they will re-examine their plans in the future and it's very possible we'll start seeing more VC sales and incentives. Who knows? The thing is, it's easy money.

There could so much money to be had if Nintendo put GameCube titles alone on the VC. But at the moment there isn't even N64 games on there... What reasoning is there to not take advantage of such an opportunity?

Because they probably plan to remake most of the notable titles from those systems as full games on the 3DS and Wii U.

The prices on the 3DS eShop ain't bad. At least they're reasonable for the best respective games. There's no excuse for the prices of games like NES' Donkey Kong though. A game like that costing more than two bucks is a game i will not buy.

That's the problem. It'd be more cost effective to just port the original versions to the eShop instead of full graphic and control overhauls, plus more games can be added since I imagine it wouldn't be reasonable to completely remake more then a few titles.

i think nintendo just values there games alot and tbey dont want lower their values and btw 5€/$ isnt much for this much fun. i mean u pay 5€ easily for an stupd burger her in germany at least and such a thing only last few minutes but those games last hours....

i think the prices are fair

This is exactly what I expected. Even ignoring that people illegally get the games for free (not that I'm one to talk as the big Mother 3 fan), cheaper prices does make this look pretty lame. If nothing else I would've reduced the VC prices by a dollar.

That being said, his opinion on the eShop is the opposite of reality. It is so much better than Wii's version of it, but Wii's number of games were so much more acceptable for quite some time (especially since the competition is sooooo much more impressive for eShops or whatever than it was in 2009)

The prices are fair but too bad the consumer doesn't see it that way, they got too used to paying $1 or even getting games for free. So they now consider anything above $2 to be too expensive. I agree with the OPs statement though better to make 1 million dollar sales than hardly any sales with a game that costs more.

Yeah, the prices on the eShop are rather ridiculous, especially when you consider the general age of many of the games. That's one thing Nintendo needs to fix, they need to realise that to modern audiences, games like NES Super Mario Bros are not worth the prices they're charging.

The Wii Shop was misleading, I still catch myself looking at SNES games on the Wii U eShop and thinking "wow, $10.40AU is pricey for that game" but I don't remember ever thinking that on the Wii Shop. The Wii Shop was selling SNES games for 800 points and when you do the conversion that works out to be $12AU. So its both more honest AND cheaper. Then there's the fact that when you do buy a game you're getting more for your money. If you had the Wii version you can upgrade that for $1.40AU for a start. Then there's the fact that the Wii U version gives you a save state and lets you play off-TV. So it's a much better product really.

As for people complaining about price, I don't know what the big deal is honestly. If you're really into one of these games the price is more than fair. I'll happily pay the upgrade fee for any of the games I own. I'll also happily download something like Mario, Megaman, Zelda or Earthbound at the full price. However some people think it's overpriced. Remember when they were doing classic games on the VC for 30c each? People complained about the price of THOSE games. So what, do people want them to free to be happy?

Plus if you don't want to play the games don't buy them. Nobody is forcing you to.

I do think that stuff like the 30 cent Famicom deal from last year and Earthbound were things that showed that people could still care about VC so they should try some more different things like that. They've had some sales, which is...something at least.