Wii ability to download "legacy" games... worth it?

K600 said:

...all SNES/NES games can be "painlessly emulated" too. Does that make them worth less?

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Basically it comes down to galaga and pac man are completely worthless to me other than nostalgia which doesn't last long. I'd rather pay the money and play the old nintendo games on my TV than on my computer. The games I would buy have weeks of gameplay. Like I said, I had ms pac man, galaga and a host of other classic namco arcade games legally on my computer.

And they just aren't fun enough to pay $5 for. I bought a cd w/ about 30 namco games for $15 in the bargain bin and it wasn't worth it considering I only played it for a couple hours and was bored. I was sick of those simple arcade games when I was 8 years old, let alone now. No way those games are worth $5 alone. I would however pay $5 for SMB3 or $10 for Yoshi's Island or SFII. I know I'd get something for my money.

Smiffy said:

They have stated brand new games on the Virtual Console will be about $4-$8 iirc, common sense says that the back catalogue will be cheaper than that, at the very least NES titles. I highly doubt the classic range for GBA is any indication for prices, expecially with them saving on boxes, packaging, manuals and the dreaded cartridge format.

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I know I'm dredging a bit here, but I'm late to this thread.

I've read this argument (rationalization) before as to why NES ports to GBA were more expensive but it really doesn't hold water. If Nintendo had been interested in making those cartridges a true value, they would have put a bunch (5-10) of games on one cartridge (like so many other companies' retro releases), which would not have increased the cost of production at all. Nintendo did play the gouging game on those releases, without question.

That said, I'm not certain that they'll do the same with their download service. If they shoot for the high-volume, low-price iTunes model ($1-5 per game), we'll all be very happy and most of us will probably buy a whole bunch of old games. If they instead choose to charge $5-10 per game (no matter which console is being emulated - I can't be convinced that an old downloaded game, whether it's NES or N64, is worth more than $10) then most of us will probably still be happy but a lot more selective in what we buy. I don't think they'll push it over $10 because they'll start killing off true impulse sales. It would be pretty hard for most folks to justify paying more than $10 for a really old game when there are probably Gamecube (and, later, native Wii) titles sitting on shelves for $20 and lower.

I'm cautiously optimistic, but whatever my reservations I'm very excited about the Wii. Everything revealed so far seems fantastic and Nintendo would have to really screw something up to lower my anticipation for the new console.

Babbster said:

I know I'm dredging a bit here, but I'm late to this thread.

I've read this argument (rationalization) before as to why NES ports to GBA were more expensive but it really doesn't hold water. If Nintendo had been interested in making those cartridges a true value, they would have put a bunch (5-10) of games on one cartridge (like so many other companies' retro releases), which would not have increased the cost of production at all. Nintendo did play the gouging game on those releases, without question.

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I completely agree, but I was taking into consideration that this isn't the same Nintendo as back then, as another guy pointed out a few times. Gone are the day's of that crazy bastard Yamauchi, Iwata's even gone as far as stating he want's games with high production values(eg. Zelda & Mario) to stay at the usual RRP, while games with lower production values(eg. Warioware & puzzle games) should have a low cost. I got Polarium for £15 when it was just released, and I never would have bothered with it if it was higher, so the strategy seems to work, and benefits us.

If they were free then I'd be all for it, but I think its dumb to charge money for old NES/Genesis games. Sony will probobly charge too much for its PS1 games on the PSP too.

Yeah, it's dumb to charge money for games that cost money to make and will cost money to properly port over to their new respective platforms. A few bucks of chump change is way too much for them. Hell, why can't new games like Prey be free, too?

vortexpud said:

Yeah, it's dumb to charge money for games that cost money to make and will cost money to properly port over to their new respective platforms. A few bucks of chump change is way too much for them. Hell, why can't new games like Prey be free, too?

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Minus the overdone sarcasm, I agree. Remember that selling you a console does nothing for them (hurting in fact) unless you buy oodles of games for it. I maintain my belief though that they need to price things low and make money off of volume rather than charging a premium. The market is there to make even more money by having the content appear as a good value AND you have happy customers. Win = Win.

Baredor said:

Minus the overdone sarcasm, I agree. Remember that selling you a console does nothing for them (hurting in fact) unless you buy oodles of games for it. I maintain my belief though that they need to price things low and make money off of volume rather than charging a premium. The market is there to make even more money by having the content appear as a good value AND you have happy customers. Win = Win.

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This isn't true for Nintendo. They've almost always made money on their hardware and I doubt this time will be any different (The Wii has good hardware, but it isn't even remotely close to being cutting-edge).

I don't see a problem with charging, depending on what they add. If they simply make a straight port then no, I don't think any of the NES/SNES should surpass $5.

K600 said:

This isn't true for Nintendo. They've almost always made money on their hardware and I doubt this time will be any different (The Wii has good hardware, but it isn't even remotely close to being cutting-edge).

I don't see a problem with charging, depending on what they add. If they simply make a straight port then no, I don't think any of the NES/SNES should surpass $5.

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Despite my sarcasm, I agree with this. Though, the specs of the Wii are better than most (particularly IGN) have assumed - since their president reported to be taking a very small loss on the hardware at their reported price point (<$250, likely <$200), it's not a $125-300 loss on more powerful hardware like the other 2 systems. More than likely it's similar to the Gamecube in that they will be losing like $20 per system or less.