Nintendo Seemingly Rules Out Virtual Console Revival, Says It Remains Focused On Offering Classics Via Switch Online

I get what's being referenced but every time I read "fun" in quotes it sounds like FireRed and LeafGreen are Pokemon's takes on Russian Roulette.

Meaningless placeholder statement. If this trial balloon sells like hotcakes, you can bet there will be more and possibly a full return to the virtual console (perhaps a dual online subscription-permanent download purchase model).

@Euler I honestly doubt it. I really feel like this is specifically a Gamefreak thing, because Gamefreak would rather take a bullet to the head than have a .01% chance of a Pokemon being duped. My bet is that this purely exists because Gamefreak refused to re-release a Pokemon game with Save States and Cloud saves, and then eventually realized "Hey, we can get an extra $20 for this!" I can only see this happening with other Pokemon games. I'd love to be wrong, though.

Yeah, that's definitely a vague statement, and I wouldn't be surprised at anything at this point.

Sad if true. I’d much rather buy individual games I'm interested in.

It makes sense than TPC/GameFreak wanted actual revenue for their game instead of some small slice of whatever Nintendo earns from Switch Online, however they calculate that and divvy it up couldn't possibly be as much income as an actual sale. More people would obviously pay the $20 up front to own it than the reportedly still dismal number of people willing to pay $80 a year to not own anything (nearly $1k a decade for temporary access to antiques is a niche interest, shocking).

Love the idea that it's more fun to pay £17 rather than add it to the online service. They could have done both then those not on the service who like owning stuff still get the game and the gba online subscribers don't feel hard done by. Now that would have been very fun!

What I learned yesterday is that people will get really angry regardless

Just drop some collections on cartridges. An NES collection, a virtual boy collection, etc. Offer a bundle with a controller as an option. Or break it up by series. Just give us some classics on cartridge.

This isn't a vague statement at all, in fact it's surprisingly clear. They didn't need to put this question in their FAQ, and they could easily have given it a non-answer such as "you never know". Instead they pretty much said straight up: No. NSO is what we're giving you now, stop asking for Virtual Console to return. We reserve the right to occasionally re-release games like this or Mario Galaxy for full price as a special event, we're not going to start giving you a stream of cheap simple romdumps, which would cannibalize sales of both "event" games like these and the NSO subscriptions.

@a1904 Yeah, people really seem to see a gaming company relaesing a paid game as a personal attack on them. Even though nobody is ever forcing them to play and pay for them. You can even just play the GBA versions, if you still have them, on a GBA.

Very simple, let people who want to enjoy these rereleases enjoy them.