Pricing For Retro Games on the Wii

schnikies79 writes to mention an Ars Technica article revealing the pricing scheme for retro content on the Wii. From the article: "Iwata revealed that games for Nintendo's "virtual console" that will allow Wii owners to play old titles on their consoles will be priced at ¥500 and ¥1,000, roughly US$4.50 to US$8.99. For reference, classic retro games for the Nintendo GameBoy sold for upwards of US$35 for some titles, US$19.99 for others. Uptake was understandably low, as gamers were reticent to pay that much for old content." The piece goes on to say that they're ramping up DS production to meet command, and that connectivity with the DS will be a major selling point for the console when it releases.

Re:Sony... Microsoft...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actualy, Sony doesn't own so many PS1 games. Almost every them were developed by third party companies.

editors did it, not me

[schnikies79]

The line with the 'command' problem wasn't in my original submission.

Re:I wonder...

[July 21, 2006]

"I wonder how they worked out licensing with all the private companies that originally release these games?"

They didn't. Most of the games will probably be games that were made by Nintendo. They've negotiated some deals with companies but they're not going to have every NES game ever by any stretch.

Did the article get mistranslated?

[rhfb]

According to a few posts on the arsforums there and a few webtranslations the article should say new games developed just for the virtual console will be between 500 and 1000 yen, not the classic nes/snes/n64 games that will be available on the virtual console as well. There was another article a few days back, explaining that 3 people should be able to put a game together in a few weeks and sell it on the console for around 5$, can't find it right now though.

Re:Sony... Microsoft...

[AnyoneEB]

Actually, there are eight 64MB (512mbit) Nintendo 64 games that I know of, and there are several 32MB (256mbit) Nintendo 64 games, but your point remains. Even in comparision to the built-in 512MB of flash, most ROMs are tiny.

EBGames and GameStop

[strider2k]

As of June 1st, EBGames and GameStop in the USA stopped accepting PS1 and N64 games. The pricing explains the need to discontinue collecting antiques from the customers. There's no way the B&M stores can compete with the relatively lower price of the Wii Virtual Console.

Re:Sony... Microsoft...

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

SNES, not nes

Re:Have you read the summary?

[Wdomburg]

The Wii has an SD slot to augment the 512mb internal storage. Presumably you can download to that.

(Psst, most non-geeks don't have PCs with TV-out configured, or even joysticks or gamepads on their computer. And your own wife is proof people are willing to spend $5 on old games that are only a few hundred kilobytes.)

Actually, this pricing is for...

[GeneralERA]

new games released via the virtual console. If the guy who submitted it had read the commentary on the Ars story, he would known that this is not correct. They have not yet come out with the price, japanese or otherwise, for the older games.

Re:$5 is more than fair

[Sancho]

If you still have copies of them, what possible reason would you have for buying the content to play on the Wii? You act like you're somehow expected to shell out more money for this content.

YOu own the games already? Play them on your NES. You want to play them on your Wii? Pay a fee which covers the work on emulating the NES and the quality control that comes from ensuring the games work.

As far as what you get when you purchase a product which contains copyrighted material.. Well you get a physical manifestation of the material. You get a license to use that material in the standard way it would be used (play CDs in a CD player, read a book, play a video game on the console). You also get some rights under Fair Use, if you are in the US, however these are not clearly outlined.

It may be that you'd have the right to convert your old cartridges to a format the Wii can read. It may not. Only a judge would really be able to determine that.

Re:$5 is more than fair

[webrunner]

Virtual Console is Nintendo's name for the service that will allow them to provide roms of classic games to Wii customers. Along with NES, SNES, and N64 games there will also be Turbografix 16 titles available on the service.

Only NEW Virtual Console games

[PhysSurfer]

According to IGN [ign.com] this only applies to newly created virtual console games, not necessarily classic NES, SNES, and N64 games. That's a pretty crucial detail.

Re:Sony... Microsoft...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct, Ocarina of Time was a 512 Mb game.

However, the abbreviation Mb means "megabit." 512 Mb == 64 MB. (that's a "megabyte")

FALSE information...

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Damnit, I don't know HOW many sites this has been on today, but the $5 and $10 is NOT for retro games. It is pricing for NEW games distributed VIA the Virtual Console. Do a google search and you'll likely find hundreds of sites, or go to IGN for the most official news.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/711/711629p1.html [ign.com]

Not comparatively expensive.

[Eco-Mono]

Let me just point out that certain retro games (Kirby Super Star, for instance) regularly sell on eBay for over $50. An upper cap of $8.99 is a deal on such games.

Comments from a collector

[freeweed]

Fair enough.

Let me counter-point out that you can by some old retro games literally by the pound. Here are a few examples from the NES:

Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt
Super Mario Bros 3
1943
Contra
Top Gun
Hell, Zelda. Million seller.

Here's some from the Atari VCS:

Combat
Asteroids
Pac-Man
E.T.

And here's some from the Sega Genesis:

*ANY* sports title. There were over 200.

For everyone thinking $5-10 is a good deal for old games, take it from a collector: it's not. The overwhelming majority of cartridge-based games can be found for far less than this. There are maybe a dozen NES games that really have a lot of value (over $20), other than imports/prototypes/3rd party games, ie: things that only ever saw a few hundred copies in North America. Odds are you've never heard of these games, and odds are you couldn't care less about playing them.

For every rare/valuable NES game, there are a hundred common games that can be had for $1-$5 a piece, often less. I've been able to buy copies of SMB/Duck Hunt for a dime a piece. Same goes for SMB3. There are a LOT of copies of these games out there, and other than us hardcore nerds, very little demand. Cartridges almost never fail, so each and every one of these games is still good as new. Finding a console isn't very hard either, it's more the space that becomes an issue :) I've half-seriously thought about wallpapering a wall with SMB/Duck Hunt carts, it would cost me less than $100 - and I've seen enough copies to do this in the past year alone.

Millions of people owned these games back in the day. Millions still do. And most people don't play them anymore. The hardcore among us already own them, keep their consoles in good shape, and play them regularly.

I'm sure Nintendo will make a mint on this (the Wii's just too cool!), but I wonder just how large of a group of people there is that will really pay $10 for a game they could buy at a local flea market for 50 cents. Hell, half the casual gamers I know still have their old NES in a closet, they just can't be bothered to pull it out. Pay $10 to play what they already own?

Re:Sony... Microsoft...

[WhyCause]

That's not entirely true. The reason PS1s needed a mod chip to play burned games is because of a software hack.

As I understand it, the PS1 disks were stamped with an invalid checksum for the first data block on the disk (0, if I recall correctly). CD burning software helpfully computed the correct checksum and wrote that instead if you burned an ISO to disk. The PS1 looked for that zero checksum, and if it did not find it, assumed that the disk was pirated, and refused to load the disk.

I believe this is why the "disk-swap" trick worked.

Re:What about Gamecube games?

[rjung2k]

The Wii plays GameCube discs directly. You can even plug your GC controllers into the console.