Pirates of the Nintendobbean
It’s no surprise that the game
industry hates piracy. Why wouldn’t they? While it’s an inevitability that
their products will end up on sites like The Pirate Bay, anyone is made happier
when their hard earned work is paid for.
I’ve always said that the best way to
subvert large-scale piracy is to utilize the power of convenience. iTunes and
Spotify are huge successes because they allow unlimited access to a huge variety
of music for a small fee. Similarly, Netflix hit the big time for basically the
same reason, offering an enormous variety of TV, movies and original
programming for an easy and small payment. People like these programs because they allow quick,
cheap and easy access to all sorts of media without having to worry about the
pitfalls and traps that can come with pirating stuff.
The major game publishers are also
jumping on this train, primarily Microsoft. While this does come at the expense
of console exclusivity for their games (and as a result negates any reason you
may have to buy an Xbox One), most if not all of Microsoft’s recent games are
also available for purchase on Windows 10, allowing PC Gamers to join in the
fun for games like Gears of War 4 and
the upcoming Sea of Thieves.
And then there’s Nintendo.
This week Nintendo made the news again
with the first pre-orders for the upcoming SNES Classic plug-and-play system,
and fans weren’t exactly happy with the business strategy. Despite saying that
the chaotic understocking that happened with the early 2015 lines of amiibo and
the especially infamous NES Classic from Holiday 2016 wouldn’t happen again, to
nobody’s surprise the SNES Classic was so woefully understocked that barely any
fans were able to get their hands on one.
It also didn’t help that pre-orders
went live unannounced at 2:00 AM.
Nintendo recently seems to have gotten
the wrong idea of what makes a “collector’s item”, at least in my eyes. For me
a “collector’s item” means a limited edition product that everyone who wants
one has a chance to get their hands on provided they nab one before they go
away forever. This is a strategy Disney uses to make their re-releases of their
classic animated movies on new platforms seem more significant. Whenever the
movie is redistributed, it’s made available for around a year’s time, and when
that time is up it is sent back into the infamous “Disney Vault” for a good few
years before it’s brought out again. Recently The Lion King was brought back to store shelves in celebration of
the film being brought to the Disney Movies Anywhere program.
But if getting a new copy of The Lion King was made as difficult as
it currently is to nab yourself an SNES Classic, people would probably be none
too happy with the House of Mouse. This is where Nintendo’s got it mixed up. To
make the NES Classic, SNES Classic and their other big-name peripherals seem
like special “collector’s items”, they deliberately understock them, turning
them from a simple plug-and-play device with a bunch of classic games on them
to gaming’s own version of Bigfoot. Sightings of the NES Classic on store
shelves were about as common as sightings of the mythical ape-man of the
Pacific Northwest, and most photographic evidence was written off as a hoax.
And, just when the always crazy
holiday season has come to a close and springtime is on its way, the product is
unceremoniously yanked from production, never to see the light of day again,
and leaving several unlucky customers with a real chip on their shoulder. It
feels like adding insult to injury, taking such an impossible to find product
off the shelves so shortly after it’s chaotic arrival, but that’s what happened
with several rare types of amiibo, it’s what happened with the NES Classic, and
I have little doubt the SNES Classic will befall the same fate.
But we’re not here to talk about the
production woes today, my friends. Today we’re here to talk about how those
production woes impact Nintendo’s piracy defense.
Boasting the most illustrious and
extensive backlog of games in the entire industry bar none, Nintendo’s pantheon of games
spanning over thirty years make them a prime target for pirates. In the past
they’ve gone through several ways to try to get around this by using the
convenience method, including releasing several of their classics on handheld
systems like the GameBoy Advance and the ever-popular Virtual Console on Wii
and Wii U. The Virtual Console especially was a quick and easy way to grab
nearly all of Nintendo’s classics up to and through the N64 era, even if a few
of the games were a bit overpriced by today’s standards.
But Nintendo didn’t count on the flaw
in that plan.
The arrival of the Nintendo Switch
signaled the death knell for the Wii U, one that had basically already rang
almost an entire year prior with the launch and subsequent failure of Star Fox Zero, the console's last true big-name exclusive. The Wii U took the Virtual Console down with it for the time
being, as no retro titles from old systems are currently available on Nintendo
Switch. There are rumours that Nintendo will be offering a Netflix-style
Virtual Console with their old games sometime next year as incentive to pay for
their online services, but those are still just rumours.
So let’s say you’re Johnny Newgamer,
you’ve just gotten into video games and you’ve just bought your first Nintendo
console: a brand new Nintendo Switch. While you’re enjoying Breath of the Wild, you’ve gotten
curious as to how the Zelda series
got started and want to play some earlier installments. You learn about how A Link
to the Past on the Super Nintendo is considered by many as one of the
series’ highest points, and you begin searching for a way to play it. Well,
it’s not available right now on Nintendo Switch, but there are rumours that you
might be able to try it later next year. But Johnny Newgamer waits for no one!
So you start looking into the SNES Classic, which boasts plenty of games from
Nintendo’s past. But uh oh, it looks like you didn’t get a pre-order down at 2
in the morning, and that means you’ll never see one in person. What’s left for
you to do?
I think I have to agree with Jim
Sterling when he joked that Nintendo’s understocking of the NES and SNES
Classic when combined with a lack of alternate options currently on Nintendo
Switch is basically encouraging fans to pirate their classic games. I’ve always
said that despite my love for Nintendo, they definitely seem a bit cocky at
times. They know they’ve got a very loyal army of fans behind them as well as
years of experience in the industry neither Sony nor Microsoft have. But in the
end this does sometimes make them feel like they’re sort of ignorant of what
the fans want, like how it took them years to adapt to the future of
high-definition gaming, how they still haven’t released Mother 3 in the west leading fans of the franchise to only be able
to play the game via a fan translation, and now how they’re creating a false
sense of rarity in the products that are currently the only way to play
Nintendo’s vast library of beloved retro games at home.
Nintendo, stop this garbage before
your entire fanbase goes off to sail the seven seas.
Song of the Week
Mining Melancholy – Donkey Kong Country 2
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