Revolution's virtual console: to rent or own?

If it came down to a montly fee, I would have to say no to them. Even though it may be a small amount, I already have way too many bills to pay. I've said "Oh, it's just another 10 dollars a month" one too many times already. :

I'd much prefer owning the games as I feel like I'm getting more for my money if when I pay for a game, I get to keep it. Who wants this whole pay money for a game and then race the clock to beat it before it expires. Though I suppose I would be okay with subscriptions if it wasn't too much.

Personally, I would be upset if Nintendo tried to pull something like a subscription system. Fortunately, the company seems to have an opinion that most on-line services should be free, A.K.A current Nintendo Wi-Fi. There's still a lot to speculate over the VC, so it's awfully hard to make predictions, but I THINK most of us expect that older games would have a very small price point and that once you download it, it should be yours forever, or at least as long as Nintendo maintains the service.

Any one think differently? Can you think of a reason why you'd want to rent instead of buy?

Why not offer all these options to the player? Their mantra seems to be that Nintendo is about choice.

Buy a game (using Nintendo's own currency; a la Star Catalogue), play on that system only. Ba da bing.

The Virtual Console is the main reason I'll be buying Revolution at launch. I would also be very upset if Nintendo went with a subscription format. I do not want to rent games, I want to be able to buy them. I have never liked the idea of paying of subscription fee and not owning anything in the end.

I would do a subscription service. I currently use Yahoo Music Unlimited for my music, and could not be happier with the concept. Instead of nickel and dimeing me to death, access to the whole catalogue for a minimal fee (no more than $7 a month) would be great. If I liked a game enough to buy it and cancel my subscription, I would like the option. Keep what I bought, and put me back into "preview/(itunes)" mode.

I hope they keep multiplayer free for anyone with a broadband connection, but don’t mind the option for a subscription back catalog. Maybe they could give a 3 month subscription trial for all new rev's. People would buy the games they love, or renew their subscription after the 3rd month was over.

What I would really like to see is a way to transfer purchased, or even subscription games to a DS. That kind of portability would be an awesome feature, and make Nintendo that much more different than the competition.

I think Nintendo must recognise that their audience likes to make collections of their nintendo stuff...hence all those special edition hardware items, and re-issues of old IP for Gameboy Advance etc. You can't build a collection with a rental or subscription model. I think they must also be looking closely at the success of the iTunes MS model vs subscription models.

Anyone have any thoughts on whether or not the VC will be region specific? Too many cool Japan-only PC Engine games to list here, not to mention the fact that TG16/PC Engine was never even released in Europe.

Subscription is out of the question. I wouldn't mind if they provided the option to rent AS WELL AS to buy.

I remember when I first heard the rumor that the Revolution was going to offer the entire back catalog for free. In the current next gen, it's all about the install base, and historically the market really allows for 2 major players. With the PS3 looking more and more like a disaster, if Nintendo opened up the entire back catalog (save Gamecube), they would instantly sell a unit to all of the emulator freaks AND the regular nintendo nostalgists who don't even know about emulation. The truth is that it's not that hard to get the Nintendo back catalog through emulation, and then buy an NES usb controller. By offering them free, it's a sign of good will and a great way to bury Sony. Squabbling over the money made from a back catalog that seemingly had no value until Nintendo saw the popularity of emulation is pointless..

I agree with fush, why couldn't Nintendo offer to sell the games individually (hopefully for around $5) or offer a subscription that allows unlimited access to games as long as they subscribe (for around $20/month). I think the only challange here would be how different the two methods are and the files would have to be different or the system would have to delete downloaded games when/if a subscription expires. I tend to believe they'll opt for the pay as you go method, but I just hope they don't charge more than ~$5 unless they offer significant upgrades to the games (such as graphics, online play, or revmote controls).

I think the idea would be to buy these games in their original format for under 10-5 dollars. For games that are in very high demand. For games that no one wants to even try to waste money on then why not just give them away. Although nintendo is about quality releases and I'm sure this will be part of the VC line up there are many games that where good but didn't sell because no one say a ad for them.

We must be sure to realise that this is nintendo's way of putting an end to emulation on pcs. Surely they must realize if a game is good that people will buy it regruadless. I guess it would be cool for them to host a bunch of games for free some months then rotate the roster and would it be cool if you could buy the game a host it for every one else thourgh your rev. That right there builds community. If they take a page out of napster with their own content then that along will blossom into some thing totatly revolutionary for them. Download over head for them would be divided among the users then just like bit-torren. Nintendo wouldn't even need to buy server equipment if they let the left downloading of old roms to the people who loved those games. They would only need a common place to come which would be Nintendos VC entrance web.
Yes choice is the mantra, So I'll leave you with this what if they offered all of these...

A nintendo power subscription and a subcription of certain games( your choice ) and the ablitity to preorder directly thur nintendo all from your rev?-

Free content! every few months they put a collection up for poeple to play or try out. You only need to have an empty sd card to have the game forever. You effectively just buy the media which might just be a special nintendo SD cart then it's not a subcription it's a choice.-

Next we have games that you could play in a demo mode for a certain amount of time. If you can beat it thur speed playing then cool for you...LOL The demo games (N-ware) games could also be setup for indie games ,new content, remixed games, customizable games.

For the developers they could also get a suit of old n64, nes, snes, enigines to play around with, yes these would include other games systems also. With all of that floating around with not release a full rev developed old school engine for 2.5D games for the indie guys?

Oyeah If you could some how use these same carts on the ds then that would be a cool selling point also...

Ok It's time for me to leave the Nintendo HQ board room...

Own the Nintendo Games. Not rent.

I wouldn't be totally opposed to a $5-10 monthly fee for unlimited access to all titles. I don't want to have to pay for each title I want to play, especially since I own a huge collection of NES, GB, SNES and N64 games that they would likely offer.

Of course the best good-will-selling-point option is to offer the service for nothing.

In all seriousness, I would like a virtual reality jack, much in line with what can be seen in the Matrix or Shadowrun. That way I can just jack in, sit there, and have a constant, unending stream of classic titles beamed directly into my brain. I'd pay 9.99 a month for that. Yeah, sounds about right.

doom3, you brang up a very good idea. Have a single-purchase model, but also offer Nintendo-branded SD cards that come with like a pre-paid model, that is, if it's a 256 card, then you get 256 megs of free downloads. I think that would work very well.

Although I do not know the form factor of the DS cards (I assume a regular old SD would work), being able to download classic NES games to one and slap it in your DS would be a fantastic move by Nintendo. Unfortunately, Nintendo is the king of nickel-and-dimeing, so this certainly won't happen. I'd much prefer the unlimited subscription plan, because there are way too many back catalog games I would want on my rev.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the only option was paying every time you loaded it up. Or, six months after Rev comes out, Nintendo releases new hardware with every back catalog game installed on it, color it white, and call it ______ SP.

I imagine the way it would work best is if instead of storing the entire game on your system (which would still be allowed, but you would make sacrifices to do so), you actually bought something much like a cookie. If you outright bought the game, then the cookie would allow that system to play the game bought for as long as the system was around. If you went with the subscription, it would allow any game, but the cookie would expire at a set point. I think that would be a relatively elegant way of making it so that you could do both a subscription and an a la carte service simultaneously.

There are many games I would want from the Nintendo back catalog, but not too many I would play more than once.

While I would love to play A Boy and his Blob, I would be loath to pay $5 for it. For a game like that, a nominal $10 subscription fee makes sense -- play all of those classic games (stored in RAM, perhaps) without committing to a $5/$10 purchase.

If you ask me, $2 to buy is the appropriate amount. Especially for NES games. $5 for SNES seems fair and $6-7 for N64. But $10/month to subscribe to play all of them? That's terrific.

In the end, it doesn't really matter. The whole thing will be hacked soon enough and we'll all be uploading ROMs into the VC soon enough.

My prefered method would definately be the buying scheme. I know a great variety of good games and I know what I like. However, lets say there is an obscure but incredibly addictive game I'd never heard of, am I going to buy it? Certianly not. What Nintendo should seriously consider allowing a demoing of a game, particularly for NES and SNES titles so that the consumer can tell whether the game will provide any personal enjoyment.

I certainly see benefits to the rental model. How many times do you have an urge to play an old-school game, but then after twenty minutes, that urge is quenched and so you want to move on?

This happens to me fairly frequently--I don't want to pay 5 bucks to buy a copy of Bionic Commando and then get tired of it shortly thereafter. If it were a rental service, I wouldn't have to worry about my changing predilections--but with a la cart, I'd be hesitant to buy games unless I truly knew I'd get my money's worth.

I may be wrong about this, but I think the DS carts are a tad bigger than an SD card. Like, just a smidge. I love the idea of downloading games to the SD card and having them playable on the DS...that would rock!

As far as buying vs. subscription...I'm looking at Apple. Nintendo's brought them up numerous times when talking about their business model. Their systems are reflecting a similar design. I forsee something similar to iTunes. As in, buying the games. Which, I wouldn't have a problem with.

I'm still thinking that they'll shock everyone at e3 and come out and say "Virtual Console is 100% free for all prior console games" (minus the Gamecube of course since those'll run straight off disc).

Both Miyamoto and Reggie [Fils-Aime] have said there are a lot more secrets about Revolution that no one knows about...truthfully I wouldn't be surprised if VC being free is one of them. It'd have a two-fold effect - 1) they'd appease their long time fans (and they could even say "to thank our fans for being longtime/lifetime supporters, here's our gift to you") and 2) they'd have a whoooooole lot of sales with fence sitters and other console owners 'cause that's an unbeatable price - pay for a Revo and be able to play every old Nintendo game for every Nintendo system (+ Sega + NEC now) that's ever existed? /drools

@20: Wrong, SD cards are far larger than DS carts.

DS cards are 1 gigaBIT (128 meg, this is the standard cart, there are larger ones), SD cards come in a variety of sizes ranging from 128 meg to 4 gigaBYTES.

A byte is 8 bits of data so you know.

Nope. If they go with a subscription, then I'm just going to go back to the emulation I've already got. They have to provide reasonable pricing as well.

The big reason to re-buy an old game for me is online multiplayer upgrades. The NES and SNES didn't have much for good multiplayer that isn't available on better consoles. They could fix up some certain Metroid Prime 2 multiplayer though...

While I agree with everybody's dreams about reasonable pricing ($2-$5) for purchasing retro games, keep in mind that this is the same Nintendo that had the nerve to charge $20 for the NES Classics releases on GBA. Ice Climber for $20 bucks?!
Let's hope they have come to their senses and make these no-brainer purchases.

What I'd hope there is is a cheap subscription service (Say,US$20 Per Month) That gave access to the entire Catalog of games. Then, I'd play every single one I could lay my hands on, pick the ones I like, and then Purchase those games to keep, so if I decide to halt my subscription for any reason, I'd be able to still play my favourite games. (I'd probably buy a bunch of Mario and zelda games, and Maybe Sonic the hedgehog and be off with it tho. :P)

own, then pwn

to #9 (Christian), it is a bad idea to give things for free, especially these games. Once you give something away for free it is very difficult to reverse that and ever charge anything in the future, and you set a precedent for the future.

A token payment of say, $2 as DG has mentioned, would be cheap enough for people not to care yet would protect Nintendo to allow for those games to be sold again in the future for a different price/model.

I would favour a service that provided limited-time play for free, say, 20 mins, then require a purchase. I've never really got into subscriptions, but that's probably because Australia has none worthwhile.

zero2dash -"pay for a Revo and be able to play every old Nintendo game for every Nintendo system (+ Sega + NEC now) that's ever existed? /drools"

1. Nintendo can still make a fortune from their back catalogue (as the GBA NES games proved), so why would they give this up? The VC would still prove to be a major selling point with a price attached to it.

2. If it were free, you could kiss all 3rd party VC support goodbye. Companies like Sega are already selling their old games via online emulation services for the PC. Why would they then go and give away these games for free on another platform? Pointless.

Buy. People like to own. And pwn.

I'm all for a subscription, as long as it is cheap. I never buy movies anymore thanks to $14/month to Netflix and I have saved tons of money. I expect this to work in a similar fashion. There are so many old games that I want to play/replay that a subscription could be a better deal.

I don't really expect to see a subscription though, because it would hurt the sales of their new Revolution games. If I pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to their old library it will be awhile before I spent any money on any new games (since I'd have so many older games to play first).

I'm also not sure how you'd be able to buy them, since the Revolution only has 512M of flash memory. That isn't a ton of storage space. Although I do recall a Nintendo spokesperson saying that standard USB drives would work with the Revolution, so maybe that is the solution.

"@20: Wrong, SD cards are far larger than DS carts.

DS cards are 1 gigaBIT (128 meg, this is the standard cart, there are larger ones), SD cards come in a variety of sizes ranging from 128 meg to 4 gigaBYTES.

A byte is 8 bits of data so you know."

I think #20 meant physical size, not storage capacity.

You honestly think Nintendo is going to be releasing old games for $5 each or a large subscription fee on its console?

Have you played Animal Crossing enough to collect some NES games? Those are totally free versions of the game in its entirety. At least six popular games if memory serves me correctly. Animal Crossing is, what, $25 or less in stores now?

Here is a list of the games available through Animal Crossing in their entirety via GameFAQs:

Golf, Tennis, Pinball, Donkey Kong, DK Jr. Math, Clu Clu Land, Excitebike, Balloon Fight, Wario Woods, Baseball, Soccer, DK Jr, Clu Clu Land D, Donkey Kong 3, Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers, Ice Climber, and the original Mario Brothers.

Seems like a good deal for games within a game.

I agree with #21: "I'm still thinking that they'll shock everyone at e3 and come out and say "Virtual Console is 100% free for all prior console games" (minus the Gamecube of course since those'll run straight off disc)."

When I first heard of Revolution having a catalogue of games to offer, I always figured it would be totally free.

We shall see in 20 days.

suscribe...maybe. As long as it wasn't limited by home many titles at one time. Buying would work best for me. I could bring the titles I own over to a friends house on a usb thumb drive.

All this talk about downloading NES games, putting them onto a card and and playing them on a DS has got me thinking... why not just eliminate the card altogether? Both the demo kiosks that are popping up in Best Buys as well as the fact that you can download games from friend's DS both point to the fact that Nintendo may allow you to get the classics, store them on your Rvolution, and then download them to your DS for portable play as well as console play on the Revo. Sure, there are some kinks with this approach (don;t turn off your DS!), but it's a start.

Whoo Hoo, let pay again for the same exact games i bought over a decade ago!!!!

#23

That isn't necessarily the upper limit of DS cards. That is merely the largest size Nintendo offers to publishers. Since the cost becomes so great at that point there isn't need for a higher capacity DS card at this point but the capability for offering such is not a problem.

This has happened in the past with ROM based consoles going all the way back to the Atari VCS. When the game (Missile Command) used bank switching to enable great than 4 KB capacity, it was a remarkable thing. But it wasn't long before it became standard usage. Later 8-bit systems, although limited to 64 KB of memory, received games measuring up to 512 KB (4 Mb) via similar bank selecting techniques within the cartridge ROM.

When the GBA came out the largest cartridge capacity discussed was 32 MB and that seemed terribly expensive. The Nintendo engineers had the design tested for manufacturing but who was going to publish such a behemoth of a game? Now, we have items like 'Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.' Also, many popular games are being offered in multi-game carts at a lower price than any one of the games sold for originally.

DS cards can hold whatever is needed. The primary issue is cost.

No one's ever going to be able to download DS Demos from the net. Why you ask? the kiosks are in stores so that when you try a game, and LIKE the game, you can BUY the game. Being able to download on a whim when there's no immediate chance of a payoff defeats the purpose of the kiosks.

In case you guys didnt know Nintendo has already got into the Virtual console sceen. And for those of you consered with games costing 20 bucks I don't think you should worry that much. Nintendo also made the gba card reader that let you play full nintendo games for about 3 bucks. I wouldnt be that worried about nintendo 64 titles because of the IQue player costs. The system cost 498 Yuan (about €52), while each game was priced at around 48 Yuan (€5). Translated to $ that comes out more than 5 bucks for 64 games but please note that the price of games arent always effected the same way cash is. Just like the playstation 3 supposidly costing 600 bucks in the US. I would like to think that nintendo will just make everything 5 bucks to own. That is sorta what they did in China already so its not that much of a strech to think they'll do that in America and Japan.

Well im not sure if its true but i talked to the guys ate EB and they said that the system is gannan cost 250 and come with a year subscription for unlimited dl

It all comes down to price and frequency of use.

I have no compulsion to 'own' most of the older material if the download speed makes pulling it over in real time comparable to searching through my collection. Considering the substantial DRM that will be involved in allowing people to download to their own media, it would at best be a long term lease rather than ownership.

Any SNES game I ever wanted to own I long since have. Rather than trying to winnow down collection to something less physically massive, a unlimited download subscription saves me the trouble of trying to predict my tastes long term and instead allows me to indulge a momentary whim. It hardly seems worth buying a game I might only feel compelled to play a single day out of the year.

One thing I'd really want to see to win me over to a subscription is usage based billing. If I go through an entire billing period without any desire to play old games from the library, I don't want to be billed at anything like the full rate. If I've imposed no cost upon Nintendo during that period, ther their returning the favor is far more likely to keep me interested. If I make substantial use of the service one month at a cost of $10, that would be great just so long as the following month doesn't cost me the same if I don't use the service. If I feel I'm spending too much for something I get little benefit from most of the time, I'm likely to drop out entirely.

OTOH, if the price per game is very low, then concern over the subscription cost during minimal usage becomes a moot point. I'd like to have both options and let the actual numbers make the final decision.

Yeah...I meant physical size of the cards. I know they can have more storage capacity. I was speaking in regard to the idea of plugging in regular SD cards into the DS slot.

If they do have a subscription service I imagine any new content would not be included. I can see how a tiered subscription service might work, such as $5 a month for all games off of one system, $7/month for two systems, $12/month for all systems or something like that.

I certainly hope (like most people) that they offer individual purchases along with any subscription service. That way people can subscribe to all SNES games and just buy one or two N64 games if they'd like, and new content would always be a free demo or individual purchase kind of thing.

I also hope they find a way to spotlight old underrated games or games never before released in some territories. Maybe they could have a "People who enjoyed this game are also playing..." type of thing that monitors how often/long we play each game and uses that information to suggest fun games. There could be lots of search options, including "Search for other games by this development team" or "See what games your 'friends' are playing." I just hope it allows different people on the same console to log in as different users, so that somebody with little sisters isn't suggested to buy Barbie: Pet the Furry Bunnies II.

They could also allow users to rate/review games but only after having played them for at least ten minutes, and include a "This reviewer had played the game for X minutes before reviewing" kind of deal to it so it doesn't turn into another amazon.com where there are already 200 reviews before something comes out.

I also hope they come out with a GBA cartridge sized SD card reader (or one that fits better into the DS lite, but that wouldn't fit well in a normal DS) so that you can play virtual console games on your DS or use the Revolution for purchasing new DS content such as expansion packs for existing games or completely new games.

Oh, I also want a pony. And a liger. I heard there were going to be ligers at E3.

#38

Keep in mind the IQue was aimed at a market where piracy is stunningly rampant and many citizens genuinely don't understand the concept of intellectual property or property in general after decades of Communist rule.

There is less compulsion to have such low prices in more affluent parts of the world. The IQue was structured so that it could be abandoned with a minimum of investmnt if it failed. Rather than sell old SNES and N64 games on individual carts for the fr lower prices that the advances in mask ROM density and cost made possible, they went directly to a flash download system. If the project failed to convince Chinese gamers to pay for their games, they could just end the operation without dealing with warehouses brimming with millions of cartridges.

That same savings and convenience aids lower prices for the Virtual Library concept but I strongly suspect they'll be looking to achieve a greater profit margin from their more traditional customer base. They may be brave and try for maximizing volume over price but there isn't much to indicate this is likely.

#42

It depends how they're handling third party participation. Do they pay Sega a flat rate for Vectorman or do they pay it out based on the popularity of that title on the service? If Sega gets a royalty payment rather than a flat rate payment, then that same tracking can just as easily be applied to new content.

James Spiers:

Region specific information from NOE:
http://www.n-philes.com/index.php?id=2005

He says that the VC will have no regional boundaries.

"No one's ever going to be able to download DS Demos from the net. Why you ask? the kiosks are in stores so that when you try a game, and LIKE the game, you can BUY the game. Being able to download on a whim when there's no immediate chance of a payoff defeats the purpose of the kiosks."

The kiosks exist because it's the only way currently possible to distribute DS demos to customers. Can you only play PC or Console demos in shops? No.

If such a service were to appear on Revolution (and im pretty sure it was quitely confirmed last May), then i believe these kiosks will still continue to operate. Why? Because not everyone can connect their DS to the Internet, and not everyone will have a Revolution.

And even then, these kiosks are availible to only a small fraction of DS users. A Revolution service would increase this availibity by some ridiculously high percentage, thus enticing more purchases.

If they give the option, I'm definitely buying them.

What if it there was a third option...? I might be interested in a "Lifetime" pass - like what Tivo/Replay offers. For $100 you could access the entire back catalog forever on that one console... I would do that. I would not do a monthly subscription though. I have too many monthly services already. There is just some mental aspect of being charged that way that makes me quit services.

My other questions - If they are sold per-game, how does backup work? What if I have bought some games, and my console shorts out and has to be sent in for service? Also can I back up my games to SD cards in case my kids accidentally delete the games?

If I had to guess right now, I would say they will do pay-per-game, with enough DRM that it will only play on that given machine (sort of an iTunes ripoff).