pathtracer

@Edu23XWiiU lmao. How about you try reading anything I've said or understanding any point I've made, instead of licking the corporate boot.

@Spiders I think Nolan deserved the heat for trying to control the experience that much, to be honest. I love movie theaters, but movie consumption is slowly shifting away from the theater much like how improvement in PCs and home consoles moved people away from arcades. I really don't think creators exerting that level of control over the experience is a good thing, especially when it comes to video games. (And I say that as someone who creates art and is a hobbyist game developer.)

I do think your bias towards Nintendo might be clouding your view on this issue. My bias is that on principle I think more people should be able to play the games they want to play, and I don't think both positions have value or need to be evaluated case-by-case. Hardware exclusives are always bad - especially when they're not driven by the hardware (like VR is) but rather by licensing and corporate greed. (which both Sony and Nintendo are very guilty of. Microsoft too, but fortunately they've been moving away from pure console exclusives lately.)

RE that lawsuit: Atari probably should have won that case. Even if Nintendo doesn't really have monopoly power in the game industry as a whole anymore, they still abuse their IP by essentially forming a cartel between their software and hardware divisions. "You'd love to play our games, right? I guess you'd better buy our console. No, I don't care that you already have two machines that could run the game better." I think these practices SHOULD be illegal or at least heavily penalized, even if I recognize that they unfortunately are legal at the moment.

@Spiders I do understand that Nintendo wants to exercise that level of control, and how they might think it makes sense for them. When it comes to what's good for the consumer (us) though, that's not at all relevant. At the end of the day, games ARE a software and media product just as much as they are an experience - and the (in my opinion, very excessive) control Nintendo wants over that experience ends up backfiring to severely hurt the experience of using the software. Or more likely not using it, since it's only available on one console.

I'll counter your White Castle analogy with one I used earlier: Imagine if Sony, to present a tightly crafted experience, made it so you could only watch the new Spiderman movie on their Sony TV and Sony Bluray player. No watching it on a Samsung or LG TV, it has to be Sony. They're looking at things from a larger perspective in which the movie is only a part, you see, and they're trying to manage a global brand and property.

I hope we can agree that would be a patently absurd limitation on the consumer's ability to experience the media, a limitation that no benefit to Sony's brand could make up for. (I'd even go so far as to say a business practice like that should probably fall afoul of antitrust laws.)

So why should that exact same practice be allowed for video games?

@Spiders I disagree with hardware-exclusive games on principle, though.

There's no reason someone should have to buy more than one game console/PC to play games that their machine has the horsepower to run. Nintendo/Sony/MS saying "Buy our console or you don't get to play our games" is a predatory business practice designed to funnel people into their walled gardens where they can make more money off them.

Right now if you want to play Forza, Metroid, and God of War, you have to buy three separate consoles with a total cost of $1,300+! You should be able to spend half that on a more powerful machine that can play any game. Forcing people to buy multiple systems to play all the games they want is incredibly wasteful.

@Spiders Nintendo has an IP-based right to complain about people uploading their games for free, but I'm pretty sure emulation is completely legal if you own the game. They can't do anything there.

"I still don’t see the fact that Nintendo doesn’t release on PC making a difference."

The way I see it, if they wanted to get money from the PC market, they would release their games on PC. The fact that they don't do so signals that they don't care what PC gamers do. As far as I'm concerned, that means they've lost their right to complain - like how you can lose a trademark if you don't use it for a few years.

@Spiders Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily saying it's good for people to pirate new games; emulation != piracy, and it's definitely better to buy the game if you're planning on playing it.

I'm mainly saying that emulating games, no matter how new, is completely fine. I don't think Nintendo has much grounds to complain about piracy if they don't release on PC, but they have absolutely NO wiggle room to complain about emulation.

@Edu23XWiiU Nintendo abandons the PC market every time they refuse to release a game on PC (which is every time). If they don't like emulation, they can release all their games on PC - but they haven't done that, so they have absolutely no right to complain about people finding a way to play their games on PC anyway.

Movie theaters are a bad comparison, this is like if Sony wouldn't let you watch any Spiderman movies unless you bought their new Sony TV and Sony bluray player. Imagine if everyone had to have 4 different physical TVs just so they could watch all the movies they were interested in! That's exactly the situation games are in right now, and it's just as bad.

@electrolite77 If somebody purchases the game and then emulates it on their computer, that is absolutely NOT piracy. They bought the game, they can do what they want. Nintendo doesn't get to complain about people emulating games they bought on hardware they own, just because they don't own a Switch as well.

@Edu23XWiiU Nope, games should not be tied to physical hardware purchases. That's a toxic practice that needs to die out.

Nintendo has completely abandoned the massive PC market, so they can cry me a river if they want to complain about people in that market emulating their games. They have nobody to blame but themselves.

@rpg2000 It's anti-consumer when streaming services do it too, but at least they aren't locking the content behind a $200+ HARDWARE purchase. I can just get Netflix for a month and watch what I want, then cancel it and sign up for Hulu and watch what I want from there, and so on.

HARDWARE companies also making content exclusive to said hardware is a massive conflict of interest, and honestly should have some kind of antitrust limitations placed upon it.

@nhSnork All I'm saying is that if they intentionally abandon a market, and then people in that market find a way to play their games, they have no justification to be angry or take action. If they really wanted money from that market, there's an easily-accessible way to get it. Just release the games there themselves. The fact that they haven't done so means they don't care whether people on PC buy their games or not.

@nhSnork "But it's not my choice what platforms Nintendo's games come out on, it's Nintendo's."

And if Nintendo chooses to overlook a massive market like PC, they have no right to act shocked when people in that market take things into their own hands and find a way to play the games anyway. After all, it's their own fault they chose not to release on PC.

@nhSnork It's not force in sense of physical violence, but "Buy our console or you don't get to play this game even though your computer is perfectly capable of running it" CERTAINLY counts as coercion in my book.

Hardware manufacturers making content that's exclusive to their own hardware is a colossal conflict of interest, and a relic of the infancy of gaming that needs to die out.

@Edu23XWiiU If Nintendo wants to get money from PC gamers or for their old games, they need to make the games available on the platform people want to play them on. A giant corporation so focused on hardware exclusivity has absolutely no right to complain when people don't want to buy a console, but still find a way to play the games.

@Mauzuri Console exclusivity is an incredibly anti-consumer practice, and wasteful to boot. Instead of letting people play games on hardware they already own, Nintendo tries to force them to buy another console they don't need, just for a handful of games.

Imagine if you wanted to watch the new Spider-man movie, but it could only be played on a Sony TV because Sony wanted to promote hardware sales.

Emulators only exist because Nintendo refuses to get with the times and release their games on PC. They can't blame people for wanting to play a game on the computer they already own, rather than shelling out hundreds of dollars for a redundant piece of hardware.