'We Thought It Would Be Fun': Nintendo Has a Whole FAQ on Why It's Selling Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen Separately for $20 Each - IGN

https://piefed.ca/c/games/p/539440/we-thought-it-would-be-fun-nintendo-has-a-whole-faq-on-why-it-s-selling-pokemon-firered-and

'We Thought It Would Be Fun': Nintendo Has a Whole FAQ on Why It's Selling Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen Separately for $20 Each - IGN

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I know lemmy really has a strong sentiment against Nintendo, but for me personally, I am happy about this. I think its fair to download and emulate games when there is no legal version being offered anywhere. I would also say that being offered through subscription only doesn’t change that either. But if there is a version for sale by Nintendo, I am happy to buy that instead. I don’t think piracy is justified just because you are angry at a company. If I can purchase a copy on my modern system, that is the way I’m gonna go.
Piracy is justified because I already own those games, and they’re not backwards compatible. I’m not going to pay for the same game multiple times.
piracy is always justified
Probably not from indie developers
Even from indie devs. Many have said that if you don’t have the money to buy their game to get it and play it anyway. More eyes on it and word of mouth and whatnot.
Kinda wild to claim that a purchase of a game 20 years ago justifies pirating a game now. It’s not like no one had to do any work to get it going on Switch. They had to make GBA features connect between Switch systems. But you play how you wanna play. I just don’t like all the gatekeeping a lot of people do about people buying a copy.
Do you work for the billion dollar company? Weird fucking take you have portraying them as a victim
I mean there are smaller people who work at the billion dollar company. You think the devs who ported this release at Nintendo are billionaires? Just because you hate a brand doesn’t mean everything that they do is exclusively handled by greedy mustache-twirling villains. The games industry is full of regular people who deserve to get paid just as much as anyone else does. I’m not going to justify fucking those people over by pretending they don’t exist while I steal from a faceless brand. A handful of greedy assholes making decisions at the top aren’t the only people who are impacted.
Thinking that pirating a $20 game from Nintendo is fucking someone over is a wild take. Stop treating international giga corporations like people
It’s moreso that if I made something and worked hard on it, I wouldn’t think people were justified in stealing it just because they think the company I work for is shitty. I want to pay those people for something they made that I enjoyed. I don’t see Nintendo as a person, but I do see the people at Nintendo as people. At the end of the day, your $20 boycott isn’t going to make or break it for those people. But they do deserve my money when they create something I enjoy in my opinion. You are welcome to disagree and not buy it all you want.
The work was already done, and the people who worked on it have already been paid. Nobody’s getting royalties here.
The devs already got paid. The money spent buying this game just goes to the higher ups who spent 0 time actually working on the game.
You were right in your first comment, but this is plainly false. Not pirating, mind, but making copies of what you already own is legal, at least in US and most of Europe.
Copying what you already own is another thing entirely. If it’s from your own copy, do whatever you want.
I do whatever I want regardless. That you go out of your way to defend the multi-billion company from copyright theft is pointless, when nowadays agents like Meta have been reported stealing millions of copyrighted materials and nothing happened.

If a company shows no respect for its consumers by nickel and diming them for everything, then there is no reason to show a company respect by purchasing its products.

If they re-released their entire back catalogue at reasonable prices—not locking them behind a subscription—with a commitment to letting users transfer them to future consoles without an upgrade fee, then things would be different.

If a company shows no respect for its consumers by nickel and diming them for everything, then there is no reason to show a company respect by purchasing its products.

Sure, but there is a difference between not giving them money, and not giving them money but getting their product anyway.

“I don’t like your product or practices, so I’m not going to purchase it” is not the same as “I like your product but not your practices, so I’m going to pirate it.”

Video games are not exactly a vital good like food.

Blind consumer loyalty only incentivizes Nintendo to further raise prices and make their products less consumer friendly.

Piracy simply demonstrates a problem with supply; if Nintendo wants to solve it, the solution isn’t trying to cuts heads off of a hydra, but rather adjust prices to capture unrealized market potential.

I did not say anything about blind consumer loyalty, so that comment feels strange in the context of this conversation.
I’m curious, what is a reasonable price to you for these games? Because as far as I’m concerned, buying both games for the price of buying one of them 20 years ago feels pretty reasonable. I agree that they drip feed the fuck out of us on actually providing a way to play these games. But releasing these games in a way that you can bring forward to additional systems, and not putting them behind a subscription is a move that should be prasied. I just think it’s a step in the right direction. I’ll take the ability to own one game on my modern system over owning zero.

Unlike physical cartridges, a digital, emulated copy of FireRed has no resale or collector’s value. Also, as the primary cost in developing such titles is the emulator, Nintendo could release additional GBA games in this manner with minimal additional effort.

Considering those factors, and the Switch having a higher install base than prior systems (over ten times Wii U unit sales), maintaining the Wii U and 3DS price points is the most reasonable means for Nintendo to monetize their back catalogue in a way that makes piracy less enticing for many people: $3 per GB, $4 per GBC, $5 per NES, $7-8 per GBA, $8 per SNES, $10 per N64, and $20 per Wii game price point.

Given that each console only requires an emulator to be developed once (something Nintendo has already done for NSO) to support hundreds of paid titles, there’s no need to increase prices when the games will sell several times more than they had any chance to on the Wii U.

Given how many games NSO includes, they could continue offering them that way for people who prefer renting their library. Consumers want meaningful options; pricing a GBA game at $20 is not that.

Fair enough, I would personally prefer those price points too. I agree that this isn’t a particularly meaningful option. But it is significantly more meaningful than what existed before it. I think the big disparity on the pricing is a symptom of everything having a subscription nowadays. Not justifying it, just acknowledging it. They probably tell themselves that $20 for one game is fair becuase they could have charged $20/month if they added it to NSO. It does feel high, but just the added value of not having to pay a subscription every month or year to play this game feels significant to me. I recognize that’s a bit dystopian, but it feels like a little breathing room in this gaming landscape.
No need to attack me for stating an opinion. You could try discussing the topic instead of contributing nothing to the conversation.
If you thought that was an attack then you’re about thin skinned enough to be a Nintendo stan. Congrats.