Netflix is on everything. It's on your phone, computer, and game console, going all the way back to the Nintendo Wii. Hell, you can get your Netflix fix on a Peloton. One place where Netflix won't be is Apple's upcoming Vision Pro VR headset. Why isn't Netflix planning an app for what is Apple's big $3,500 gamble on the future of augmented reality? According to co-CEO Greg Peters, it's because the company doesn't know if anybody's actually going to use it. Gizmodo: More specifically, he called the device "subscale," adding that he didn't know if it would be "relevant to most of our members." That was in an interview with business analyst Ben Thompson, where Peters implied his company is being far more selective, at least when it comes to Apple's $3,500 "spatial computer."

"We have to be careful about making sure that we're not investing in places that are not really yielding a return, and I would say we'll see where things go with Vision Pro," the Netflix co-CEO said. The interview dropped barely a day after Peters got done extolling how the company gained more than 13 million new subscribers in the last three months of 2023 while also mentioning potentially increasing subscription prices. Other common apps like Spotify and YouTube also don't plan to have a Vision Pro-specific app at launch, instead directing people to log on through their Safari browser. Peters added that they still want to work with Apple, and "sometimes we find a great space of overlap. We can move very, very quickly. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer." The investment Netflix is talking about is not unchecking a box to enable the iPad app on the Vision Pro.

After closing its 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year, Nintendo will shut down online services for those consoles in "early April 2024," it announced. From a report: That will put a halt to multiplayer features, along with "online co-operative play, internet rankings and data distribution," Nintendo wrote. Nintendo's Badge Arcade that allowed users to decorate their Nintendo 3DS home menu will also disappear. The date isn't fixed in stone yet, and Nintendo said it may even discontinue services "earlier than planned."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Historically, video game preservation efforts usually cover two types of games. The most common are very old or "retro" games from the 16-bit era or earlier, which are trapped on cartridges until they're liberated via downloadable ROMs. The other are games that rely on a live service, like Enter the Matrix's now unplugged servers or whatever games you can only get by downloading them via Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel, which shut down in 2019. But time keeps marching on and a more recent era of games now needs to be attended to if we still want those games to be accessible: indies from the late aughts to mid twenty-teens. That's right. Fez, an icon of the era and indie games scene, is now more than a decade old. And while we don't think of this type of work until we need it, Fez, which most PC players booted on Windows 7 when it first came out, is not going to magically run on your Windows 11 machine today without some maintenance.

The person doing that maintenance, as well as making sure that about 70 of the best known indie games from the same era keep running, is Ethan Lee. He's not as well known as Fez's developer Phil Fish, who was also the subject of the documentary Indie Game: The Movie, but this week Lee started publicly marketing the service he's been quietly providing for over 11 years: maintenance of older games. "The way that I've been pitching it is more of like, the boring infrastructure," he said. "Let's make sure the current build works, whereas a lot of times, people feel like the only way to bring a game into a new generation is to do a big remaster. That's cool, but wouldn't have been cool if Quake II just continued to work between 1997 and now without all the weird stuff in between? That's sort of why I've been very particular about the word maintenance, because it's a continuous process that starts pretty much from the moment that you ship it."

As he explains in his pitch to game developers: "the PC catalog alone has grown very large within the last 15 years, and even small independent studios now have an extensive back catalog of titles that players can technically still buy and play today! This does come at a cost, however: The longer a studio exists, the larger their catalog grows, and as a result, the maintenance burden also grows." Just a few of the other indie games Lee ported include Super Hexagon, Proteus, Rogue Legacy, Dust: An Elysian Tail, TowerFall Ascension, VVVVVV, Transistor, Wizorb, Mercenary Kings, Hacknet, Shenzhen I/O, and Bastion. [...] With the PC, people assume that once a game is on Windows, it can live on forever with future versions of Windows. "In reality, what makes a PC so weird is that there's this big stack of stuff. You have an x86 processor, the current-ish era of like modern graphics processors, and then you have the operating system running on top of that and its various drivers," Lee said. A change to any one of those layers can make a game run badly, or not at all.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A few months ago, the developers behind the Wii/GameCube emulator Dolphin said they were indefinitely postponing a planned Steam release, after Steam-maker Valve received a request from Nintendo to take down the emulator's "coming soon" page. This week, after consulting with a lawyer, the team says it has decided to abandon its Steam distribution plans altogether. "Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for software to appear on it," the team wrote in a blog post on Thursday. "In the end, Valve is the one running the Steam storefront, and they have the right to allow or disallow anything they want on said storefront for any reason."

The Dolphin team also takes pains to note that this decision was not the result of an official DMCA notice sent by Nintendo. Instead, Valve reached out to Nintendo to ask about the planned Dolphin release, at which point a Nintendo lawyer cited the DMCA in asking Valve to take down the page. At that point, the Dolphin team says, Valve "told us that we had to come to an agreement with Nintendo in order to release on Steam... But given Nintendo's long-held stance on emulation, we find Valve's requirement for us to get approval from Nintendo for a Steam release to be impossible. Unfortunately, that's that." "As for Nintendo, this incident just continues their existing stance towards emulation," the post continues. "We don't think that this incident should change anyone's view of either company."

Despite the disappointing result for the Steam release, the Dolphin team is adamant that "we do not believe that Dolphin is in any legal danger." That's despite the emulator's inclusion of the Wii Common Key, which could run afoul of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions. The Dolphin Team notes that the Wii Common Key has been freely shared across the Internet since its initial discovery and publication in 2008. And while that key has been in the Dolphin code base since 2009, "no one has really cared," the team writes. [...] With what they believe is a firm legal footing, the team writes that Dolphin development will continue away from Steam, but including a number of UI and quality of life features originally designed for the Steam release. Meanwhile, emulators like RetroArch and the innovative 3dSen continue to be available on Steam, with no immediate sign of a further crackdown from Valve or Nintendo.

Slashdot reader Dave Knott shares the four class of 2023 inductees into the Video Game Hall Of Fame. They were announced today at The Strong National Museum of Play. From the press release: Barbie Fashion Designer : "The 1996 hit Barbie Fashion Designer emerged at a time when many games were marketed to male players. Published by Digital Domain/Mattel Media, it proved that a computer game targeted to girls could succeed, selling more than 500,000 copies in two months. The game helped greatly expanded the market for video games and in the process opened important -- and ongoing -- discussions about gender and stereotypes in gaming. Barbie Fashion Designer was also innovative in bridging the gap between the digital and the physical, allowing players to design clothes for their Barbie dolls and print them on special fabric."

Computer Space : "Nutting Associate's Computer Space appeared in 1971 and was the first commercial video game. Inspired by the early minicomputer and previous World Video Game Hall of Fame inductee -- Spacewar! (1962) -- the coin-operated Computer Space proved that video games could reach an audience outside of computer labs. While not a best-seller, it was a trailblazer in the video game world and inspired its creators to go on to establish Atari Inc., a video game giant in the 1970s and 1980s."

The Last of Us : "Released by Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2013, The Last of Us jumped into an oversaturated field of post-apocalyptic zombie games and quickly stood out among the rest with its in-depth storytelling, intimate exploration of humanity, thrilling game jumps and cutscenes, and its memorable characters. More than 200 publications named it the game of the year in 2013. Its story has since made the jump to Hollywood, inspiring an HBO adaptation in 2023 watched weekly by millions."

Wii Sports : "Wii Sports launched with the Nintendo Wii home video game system in 2006 and introduced motion-based technology to living rooms across the world. With a simple swipe of the controller, players could serve a tennis ball, hurl a bowling bowl, throw a left hook, or drive a golf ball. The simple mechanics made the game accessible to almost anyone -- allowing it to be played by young children and seniors alike -- and helped to redefine the idea of who is a "gamer." Ultimately, the game helped Nintendo to sell more than 100 million Wii consoles worldwide." These titles managed to beat out several other incredibly popular titles, including Angry Birds, Age of Empires, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, GoldenEye 007, NBA 2K, FIFA International Soccer, Quake, and Wizardry.

In an exclusive interview with Variety, legendary video game designer, Nintendo fellow and self-proclaimed "Mario's mom", Shigeru Miyamoto, said: "Mobile apps will not be the primary path of future Mario games." From the report: After two moderately successful but dwindling iOS games, plus another that shuttered after two years, Nintendo is pulling Mario away from the mobile market. Released in 2016, Super Mario Run grossed $60 million in its first year, while 2019's Mario Kart Tour has generated $300 million (compared to Mario Kart 8's $3 billion and counting). Without explanation, Nintendo removed 2019's Dr. Mario World from app markets two years after its release.

"First and foremost, Nintendo's core strategy is a hardware and software integrated gaming experience," said Miyamoto, who played a pivotal role in designing the Wii, among other Nintendo consoles. "The intuitiveness of the control is a part of the gaming experience. When we explored the opportunity of making Mario games for the mobile phone -- which is a more common, generic device -- it was challenging to determine what that game should be. That is why I played the role of director for Super Mario Run, to be able to translate that Nintendo hardware experience into the smart devices."

Elaborating on the merits of Run and Tour, Miyamoto continued, "Having Mario games as mobile apps expands the doorway for far more audience to experience the game, and also expands the Mario gaming experience, where you only need your thumb on one hand." Referencing the innovation of the Super Mario Maker series and Super Mario Odyssey, which Miyamoto called "the ultimate evolution of a Mario adventure game on a typical 3D platformer," the Nintendo exec laid out how the company begins to develop a Mario game: "We try to define what is the gameplay, what is the method, and then define what devices we go on." When asked when fans can expect the next mainline Mario game, Miyamoto chuckled and said: "All I can say is please stay tuned for future Nintendo Directs."

On March 27th, Nintendo's eShop for its 3DS and Wii U consoles will be shut down. With many of the titles being original to those consoles and not available anywhere else, it's left archivists and historians scrambling to preserve them before it's too late. However, those preservation plans get complicated given Nintendo's litigious nature on matters of intellectual property. Techdirt's Timothy Geigner writes: Preventing the gaming public from continuing to buy games that rely on a company-operated backend infrastructure is one thing. After all, Nintendo can do what it wants when it comes to putting its products into commerce. But what really annoyed a ton of people, myself included, was how this would impact archivists and historians, or anyone else interested in preserving video game history and culture. With the impending shutdown, some of those entities are once again expressing concern: "While it's unfortunate that people won't be able to purchase digital 3DS or Wii U games anymore, we understand the business reality that went into this decision,' the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) tweeted when the eShop shutdowns were announced a year ago. 'What we don't understand is what path Nintendo expects its fans to take, should they wish to play these games in the future.'"

Because Nintendo is litigious, utilizes DRM, and the DMCA exists, all of that combines to make it wildly unsafe for museums and archivists to actually retain copies of these games that will shortly no longer be found anywhere else. And, no, the exemptions built into the DMCA for content such as movies and literature simply don't exist for the video game space. [...] So what can be done? Not a whole lot, honestly, but some hobbyists are at least going to make a go of it: "In an effort to address this -- or at least address it in a single place on as few consoles as possible -- YouTuber The Completionist decided to sit down and spend almost a year of his life (328 days in total) buying his way through both libraries. He's now done, and the statistics are staggering. The dude bought 866 Wii U games and 1547 3DS titles, numbers that include DSiWare, Virtual Console releases and downloadable content. That adds up to 1.2TB of data for the Wii U, and 267GB for the 3DS. Or, for the 3DS purists reading, 2,136,689 blocks."

As part of this effort, The Completionist has said he plans to donate all of this digital media to the VGHF. What they can do with all of that content still remains to be seen. All of the same copyright and DMCA rules still apply, so what access it can grant to researchers, never mind the public, is in question.

The new standalone Dolphin emulator will let you play almost any GameCube or Wii game on your Xbox console. Windows Central reports: Dolphin Emulator for UWP first rolled out in beta on December 6, 2022. It has since received a couple of updates, bringing it to version 1.02. The standalone Dolphin emulator is capable of upscaling games to up to 1440p. You can also play titles at their original resolution if you prefer. With mods, you can use HD texture packs to make games look more modern and have higher resolution. The emulator also supports a broadband adapter, but the usefulness of that varies greatly depending on the game you want to play online. For example, Mario Kart Double Dash would require tunnelling software to access online play.

Of course, you can't just download the Dolphin emulator through the Microsoft Store. The easiest way to install the emulator is by enabling Developer Mode on your Xbox console. It's also possible to set up by using retail mode. A computer is needed to configure your Xbox controller and other parts of your system. You should also have a USB drive handy. Modern Vintage Gamer walks through the entire process in their video. It's possible to run Dolphin Emulator for UWP on older Xbox consoles, such as the Xbox One X, but performance will see a significant drop compared to playing on the Series X or Series S. Modern Vintage Gamer walks through the setup, testing, and "other neat things" on YouTube.

Game developer Archer Maclean recently passed away at the age of 60. Maclean was a longtime programmer and designer best known for Dropzone on the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64. Game Developer reports: Born January 28, 1962, Maclean's first game was the aforementioned Dropzone. Following the success of that title, he would go on to do design and graphics for 1986's International Karate (and its 1987 sequel, International Karate+), and several snooker simulation games, including Archer Maclean Presents Pool Paradise. Several of these titles were developed at Awesome Studios, a subsidiary of the now defunct Ignition Entertainment. Maclean co-founded Awesome in 2002, and later left the developer in 2005. He went on to found Awesome Play, creators of the 2009 Nintendo Wii title Speedzone (or Wheelspin in Europe). Though Speedzone marked the end of his time as a game developer, Maclean also wrote columns for Retro Gamer Magazine.

What do you when people hate your $10 billion selfie? "Mark Zuckerberg, in response to a torrent of critical memes mocking the graphics of Meta's newest project, has heard his critics — and changed his selfie," reports CNN: Zuckerberg debuted Horizon Worlds, a virtual reality social app, in France and Spain earlier this week, sharing a somewhat flat, goofy digital avatar in front of an animated Eiffel Tower and la Sagrada Família.

The internet immediately jumped in, mocking what many users viewed as (hopefully) preliminary graphics for a venture that Meta has spent at least $10 billion in the last year.

New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose compared the graphics to "worse than a 2008 Wii game" on Twitter. Slate used the term " buttcheeks." Twitter was less kind: "eye-gougingly ugly" and "an international laughing stock" popping up. Many compared it to early 90's graphics and pointed out how lifeless and childish the Zuckerberg selfie looked. It quickly won the designation "dead eyes."

Well, Zuckerberg has apparently seen the memes, because on Friday he announced there are major updates coming — along with new avatar graphics.
In a CNBC report on how Zuckerberg "is getting dragged on the internet for how ugly the graphics of this game are," they'd actually quoted a Forbes headline that asked, "Does Mark Zuckerberg not understand how bad his metaverse is?"

A collection of over a dozen games from Ubisoft will see their online elements shut down on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in September, "which means players won't be able to play their multiplayer components, access their online features, link Ubisoft accounts in-game, or install and access downloadable content," reports The Verge. From the report: "Closing the online services for some older games allows us to focus our resources on delivering great experiences for players who are playing newer or more popular titles," Ubisoft's help page reads. With Assassin's Creed Brotherhood having originally released in November 2010, it's had almost 12 years of online support. But it's always sad to see a piece of gaming history become inaccessible, especially given the game's multiplayer element was missing from its remaster on the PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Alongside Brotherhood, the online services associated with 2011's Assassin's Creed Revelations on PS3 and Xbox 360 are also being shut down, as well as 2012's Assassin's Creed 3 on PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U. [...] Other games set to have their online services decommissioned across various platforms this September include Driver San Francisco, Far Cry 3's 2012 release, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Prince of Persia the Forgotten Sands, Rayman Legends, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. You can view the full list of games here.

Nintendo has announced that in March 2023 the online storefronts for 3DS and Wii U systems will be ceasing operations, a move that the BBC reports has attracted a lot of backlash from fans. Kotaku adds: In terms of people playing and enjoying the games they already own, Nintendo says: Even after late March 2023, and for the foreseeable future, it will still be possible to redownload games and DLC, receive software updates and enjoy online play on Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems." All of this is expected stuff. The 3DS is 11 years old this year and the Wii U ten, so digital store closures were always going to happen sooner or later. What's shitty about these closures in particular, though, is that both shopfronts offered users the ability to purchase and then own many of Nintendo's greatest ever titles, something you're now largely unable to do ever since the company switched to a subscription model with Nintendo Switch Online. The announcement post from Nintendo initially had an FAQ question, which read, "Doesn't Nintendo have an obligation to preserve its classic games?" The company deleted that part from the blog post. Kotaku adds: "We currently have no plans to offer classic content in other ways," is an incredibly shitty thing to read, because under zero circumstances is a subscription-based model an acceptable substitution to actually owning a game.

Nintendo's latest financial report to investors, issued as an overview of its fiscal year's third quarter, came with a momentous announcement for the veteran video game and console producer: Switch has joined the 100 million-worldwide-sales club. From a report: What's more, Switch's current tally of 103.5 million means the device has leapfrogged over both the PlayStation 1 and Nintendo Wii in terms of sales. The count makes the Switch Nintendo's highest-selling home console of all time. While Sony's PS4 and PS2 console families continue to hold higher sales counts, neither got to the 100 million mark as quickly as Switch, which only needed 57 months to do so (March 2017 to December 2021). The only console family to get to the 100 million-global-sales mark faster is Nintendo's own portable DS platform, which needed only 51 months. The DS, which came out in 2004, launched at a lower $149 price point and went lower from there, while Switch has never sold for less than $199. In a statement to investors, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa affirmed that the Switch console, as it nears its fifth anniversary, is "in the middle of its lifecycle." Furukawa said nearly the exact same thing a few months earlier when Switch crossed the 90 million-sales mark.

New submitter segaboy81 writes: In 2001 the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was born, and it took the software engineering world by storm. Linux, Windows, Facebook, AAA games, and just about everything else, adheres to this manifesto in some form or another. It is a paradigm that allows teams to work collaboratively on projects in the most effective and streamlined way possible. However, EA may not have gotten the memo. According to a blogpost by former EA developer Adam Berg, different teams take very different approaches to development with one team in particular being especially slow to progress. Adam recounts his experience on the FIFA team where he worked on the Wii, PS Vita, and Nintendo 3DS ports of the game: "I often worked in the realm of competition logic. Testing changes here could mean progressing through several seasons of career mode in order to test out a change. No joke, it would take an entire day to change 3 lines of code and know that it actually worked correctly."

Nintendo's worst-selling home console, the Wii U, continues to be the source for some of its biggest hits on the record-setting Nintendo Switch. From a report: With the Switch, Nintendo is putting on a clinic about how to turn prior failure into fortune as it repurposes games from the disastrous Wii U and tries selling them again on its newer hit device. The latest example of this salvaged success is the Switch's "Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury," which sold 5.6 million copies in its first seven weeks of release this year, according to new Nintendo financial data. Compare that seven week total to the just over seven-year total of 5.9 million copies sold of 2013's "Super Mario 3D World" for Wii U. The newer Switch game is basically the old game with a fun bonus adventure. The Wii U was a disaster even by Nintendo's usual cycles of occasional struggle and phenomenal fortunes. The 2012 successor to the popular Wii (remember swinging that controller?) bombed, with just 13.6 million units sold lifetime. Its big innovation: a home console with a controller that contained a screen, allowing players to keep playing their games using that screen when others needed the TV. But people didn't care and it was discontinued by early 2017.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nine months ago, GameStop stock bottomed out at $2.80 a share, a reflection of the myriad problems facing the retailer specifically and brick-and-mortar game retail as a whole. As of Tuesday morning, though, that stock price is hovering around $40 a share (peaking at $44.74 as of this writing), with the vast majority of those gains coming in the last couple of weeks.

Is GameStop really worth up to 16 times as much as it was back in April? Is the company's ambitious turnaround plan finally (and suddenly) turning things around? Is GameStop roaring its way back to the nearly $10 billion market cap it enjoyed at the height of the Wii phenomenon? Probably not. Analysts suggest the recent surge in GameStop's stock price is the result of a massive short squeeze bubble that will pop eventually. But beyond the sky-high valuations of recent weeks, analysts also suggest there's some reason to believe GameStop's long-term health is more robust than last year's stock doldrums suggest. Investor Ryan Cohen, best known as the founder of pet food superstore Chewy.com, bought in to a roughly 10 percent ownership stake in the retailer back in August. "Since August, Cohen has bought even more GameStop shares, and he and two former Chewy executives have been named to the company's board of directors," reports Ars. "That gives Cohen, along with fellow activist investors from Hestia, the potential capability to steer the company in a new direction."

"There's nothing wrong with GameStop," says Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, who has a target price of $16 for GameStop stock. "I'm absolutely convinced they're going to thrive and survive. They don't have net debt, so they're not going bankrupt or anything. And with the new console launch, they're probably going to sell a lot of consoles and be fine." As long as there's demand for new and used physical games, there will be demand for GameStop, suggests Pachter.

Nintendo is retreating from the $77 billion mobile gaming arena after disappointing results deflated once-lofty ambitions, ending a multiyear effort just as the market goes through an unprecedented Covid-era boom. From a report: President Shuntaro Furukawa proclaimed two years ago that smartphone games would be a $1 billion business with growth potential, building on his predecessor's promise that Nintendo would release two to three mobile titles each year. That spurred hopes among investors that the gaming powerhouse could carve out a substantial slice of the market. In May, however, the president adopted a markedly different tune, saying "We are not necessarily looking to continue releasing many new applications for the mobile market." Nintendo's shares slid 4% the day after that remark. Close observers might have sensed Nintendo was growing disillusioned with the mobile realm even earlier. Its smartphone games project was born out of necessity to shore up the bottom line amid the Wii U's failure. Now, riding a surge in Switch popularity and investor confidence, the Kyoto-based company appears to have reassessed the mobile business and narrowed its focus to its own console ecosystem.

It might soon be much easier to buy a smartphone that can charge small devices like earbuds or smartwatches. From a report: The NFC Forum, responsible for near-field communications tech, has unveiled the Wireless Charging Specification (WLC). That will allow devices like chargers or smartphones, equipped with a single antenna, to transfer power to compatible devices at up to one watt, the organization said. At the same time, NFC devices equipped with the tech would also be able to communicate with each other. While it doesn't seem like a lot, one watt is enough to charge up a smartwatch or wireless earbuds relatively quickly. And since most smartphones come with NFC, it would be easier for manufacturers to implement this type of reverse charging.

"NFC wireless charging is truly transformative because it changes the way we design and interact with small, battery-powered devices as the elimination of plugs and cords enables the creation of smaller, hermetically-sealed devices," said NFC Forum chair Koichi Tagawa. The standard could work with other NFC-equipped devices besides smartphones, including chargers, PCs, tablets and even gaming controllers -- the Wii U gamepad has an NFC chip, for instance.

Nintendo says the Switch has hit 52.5 million sales in its lifetime, already surpassing that of the SNES. From a report: In becoming the company's fifth best-selling console of all-time, the Switch has helped to boost Nintendo -- the company reported a $2.75 billion operating profit, up from the previously predicted $2.38 billion. Previous forecasts had Switch sales for the fiscal year, ending March 31, at 18 million. That number has now jumped to 19.5 million. And, 10.8 million of those were sold during the holiday season alone, leading to a 22.5 percent increase by December of the previous year.

A European court has sided with Nintendo's ongoing practice to not let users cancel digital preorders. The Verge reports: According to Norwegian gaming site PressFire, the consumer authorities of Norway and Germany sued Nintendo for not letting users cancel digital preorders purchased from the eShop. The case went to court at the end of last year. This week, the court ruled in favor of Nintendo, meaning it can continue the practice for now. PressFire reports that the German consumer authority has appealed the ruling.

When the Norwegian Consumer Council first formally criticized Nintendo's policy in 2018, it said that Nintendo's policy conflicts with the EU's Consumer Rights Directive, which requires that consumers must be able to cancel online purchases and receive refunds. Nintendo's no-refunds policy is also in place for the U.S. -- in fact, Nintendo states that all sales of digital purchases on the Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch are final -- and Nintendo is the only console maker that doesn't let customers cancel a digital preorder, which the Norwegian Consumer Council noted in its 2018 complaint.