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I think Sega and Nintendo are missing a golden opportunity to gain revenue, They are doing this by not Legalising Emulation Software and ROMs of their older systems. OK they do not want to encourage piracy or stop sales of their consoles but as for the Megadrive and SNES are now 2 generations old (in computer Terms).
My idea is that they should do a big fancy website (as they do) and sell memberships for about a fiver a month. For your fiver you would have a copy of the emulator software required and you could download classic games such as the Sonic or Mario series. An issue may be piracy but nowadays they would be able to minimize this and as with any other form of piracy most people would prefer to pay a Reasonable price for the product.
At £5 per month per user with say 100,000 users worldwide + various advertising revenue etc Sega or Nintendo could be making millions of pounds per year while providing their users a cheep and fun way to play Classic games.
My idea is that they should do a big fancy website (as they do) and sell memberships for about a fiver a month. For your fiver you would have a copy of the emulator software required and you could download classic games such as the Sonic or Mario series. An issue may be piracy but nowadays they would be able to minimize this and as with any other form of piracy most people would prefer to pay a Reasonable price for the product.
At £5 per month per user with say 100,000 users worldwide + various advertising revenue etc Sega or Nintendo could be making millions of pounds per year while providing their users a cheep and fun way to play Classic games.
I think Sega and Nintendo are missing a golden opportunity to gain revenue, They are doing this by not Legalising Emulation Software and ROMs of their older systems. OK they do not want to encourage piracy or stop sales of their consoles but as for the Megadrive and SNES are now 2 generations old (in computer Terms).
My idea is that they should do a big fancy website (as they do) and sell memberships for about a fiver a month. For your fiver you would have a copy of the emulator software required and you could download classic games such as the Sonic or Mario series. An issue may be piracy but nowadays they would be able to minimize this and as with any other form of piracy most people would prefer to pay a Reasonable price for the product.
At £5 per month per user with say 100,000 users worldwide + various advertising revenue etc Sega or Nintendo could be making millions of pounds per year while providing their users a cheep and fun way to play Classic games.
My idea is that they should do a big fancy website (as they do) and sell memberships for about a fiver a month. For your fiver you would have a copy of the emulator software required and you could download classic games such as the Sonic or Mario series. An issue may be piracy but nowadays they would be able to minimize this and as with any other form of piracy most people would prefer to pay a Reasonable price for the product.
At £5 per month per user with say 100,000 users worldwide + various advertising revenue etc Sega or Nintendo could be making millions of pounds per year while providing their users a cheep and fun way to play Classic games.
no way, how many kids do you know with credit cards man?
Alternativly... they could stick all their old MegaDrive and SNES games on a cart and sell them for the GBA?
:)
:)
Armitage Shanks wrote:
> Alternativly... they could stick all their old MegaDrive and SNES
> games on a cart and sell them for the GBA?
Did anyone have Williams Classics for the PS1?
> Alternativly... they could stick all their old MegaDrive and SNES
> games on a cart and sell them for the GBA?
Did anyone have Williams Classics for the PS1?
NO WAY, Emulation is legal if you own the original game but these games are like abandonware. I can understand them stopping N64 games on emulators but Nes and Snes games aren't avilible anymore except in second hand stores so Nintendo aren't making profit on them anyway.
So keep the roms coming and make them PS2 compatible so i can play all my NES games without bug infested windows anywhere in sight.
So keep the roms coming and make them PS2 compatible so i can play all my NES games without bug infested windows anywhere in sight.
Emulation isn't legal. The oft noted "back-up" clause is total guff. What it actually allow you to do is make a copy of YOUR game i.e. it must be a copy of the actual cartridge you purchase - not mearly the identicle data someone else ripped.
The fact that it is practically impossible for a user to rip data for back ups from his cartridge is neither here nor there as the measures were never really intended for games anyway. In fact if a case ever came up regarding the issue it is 100% guaranteed that a clause would be made for electronic entertainment as it is really intended for office applications and the backing up of the data on them. This is because off the sheft packages aren't always ideal for the companies needs so they re-engineer some of the code to suit their purposes better. If their systems crash and data is erased they will obviously loose this work so need to keep a back-up of it. As they have changed the packages original code they need to store the WHOLE program and therefore there is a clear reason for them needing to back-up the packages.
These measures are not intended as an excuse for people to simply disregard Intelectual Property laws and download games (be they current titles or older) from the internet for nothing. In reality what you are doing when you download a title is pretty similar to walking into Virgin, grabbing the game off their shelves and running.
The main part of a games cost is in development and IP. Nintendo have numerous employees spending months in R+D to create a title. Suprisingly, they need to pay these people a wage, as well as paying for all the equipment they use. All these costs need to be recouped through the sale of a cartridge (or five thousand) - as do the advertising costs and the costs of innovative development risks (a phrase I've just made up to label titles that never get released but obviously still incur development costs :)
The fact that it is practically impossible for a user to rip data for back ups from his cartridge is neither here nor there as the measures were never really intended for games anyway. In fact if a case ever came up regarding the issue it is 100% guaranteed that a clause would be made for electronic entertainment as it is really intended for office applications and the backing up of the data on them. This is because off the sheft packages aren't always ideal for the companies needs so they re-engineer some of the code to suit their purposes better. If their systems crash and data is erased they will obviously loose this work so need to keep a back-up of it. As they have changed the packages original code they need to store the WHOLE program and therefore there is a clear reason for them needing to back-up the packages.
These measures are not intended as an excuse for people to simply disregard Intelectual Property laws and download games (be they current titles or older) from the internet for nothing. In reality what you are doing when you download a title is pretty similar to walking into Virgin, grabbing the game off their shelves and running.
The main part of a games cost is in development and IP. Nintendo have numerous employees spending months in R+D to create a title. Suprisingly, they need to pay these people a wage, as well as paying for all the equipment they use. All these costs need to be recouped through the sale of a cartridge (or five thousand) - as do the advertising costs and the costs of innovative development risks (a phrase I've just made up to label titles that never get released but obviously still incur development costs :)
er i don't think it's the same as going into a retailer grabbing what you can and running. First off these games aren't availible anywhere and i think it's great that people can try out old games for nothing.
There's no harm in that!
The real harm is making roms of N64,dreamcast,ps games which would affect sales.
Abandonware is the same thing with old games that no one buys anymore availible for download.The real problem is piracy not emulators.
There's no harm in that!
The real harm is making roms of N64,dreamcast,ps games which would affect sales.
Abandonware is the same thing with old games that no one buys anymore availible for download.The real problem is piracy not emulators.
I totally understand your point of view and have to say I sympathise. However, in legal theory (I'm a Law and Accountncy student - I get to pretend to be clever in situations like this :) there really is no difference and I'm sort of glad it is that way. Why? Well, where do you draw the line? How do you define what is emulation and what is warez? There simply isn't a practicle way and it would just lead to a huge grey area where no one knows what is or isn't legal.
Considering Nintendo are currently raiding their back catelogue for GBA titles (Sega the same to a lesser extent) these can't really be defined as titles that have stopped retailing. Sure, you can't get Mario 2 for your NES anymore but the equivalent GBA version is still available. There's those Sega compliations for the DC and I'm sure you well away of the other compilations like the Midway classis and Namco collections. You may therefore think you fine downloading something as innocent as a Sonic ROM due to your theory of it not being on sale anywhere. Even that isn't strictly true when you think about it.
What should happen is far more use of the older IPs - for example selling them with official EMUs over the internet as someone suggested. It a nice simple idea but the problem would be unnofficial distribution i.e. someone signs up, takes all the ROMs and sticks them on his own site or maybe even someting like Bearshare or KaZaA. If they were so freely available for free who would bother with the subscription fee. Then we'd be back to the situation we're in now.
Actually, just remembered - Nintendo have tried something similar before. The Satellaview (spelling is way off, but its something like that) was a modem/storage add-on for the SNES and you could download NES classics and some unique SNES games for it. This is where the oft considered as abandonware F-Zero 2 and the Mario Motorcross game actually came from.
Considering Nintendo are currently raiding their back catelogue for GBA titles (Sega the same to a lesser extent) these can't really be defined as titles that have stopped retailing. Sure, you can't get Mario 2 for your NES anymore but the equivalent GBA version is still available. There's those Sega compliations for the DC and I'm sure you well away of the other compilations like the Midway classis and Namco collections. You may therefore think you fine downloading something as innocent as a Sonic ROM due to your theory of it not being on sale anywhere. Even that isn't strictly true when you think about it.
What should happen is far more use of the older IPs - for example selling them with official EMUs over the internet as someone suggested. It a nice simple idea but the problem would be unnofficial distribution i.e. someone signs up, takes all the ROMs and sticks them on his own site or maybe even someting like Bearshare or KaZaA. If they were so freely available for free who would bother with the subscription fee. Then we'd be back to the situation we're in now.
Actually, just remembered - Nintendo have tried something similar before. The Satellaview (spelling is way off, but its something like that) was a modem/storage add-on for the SNES and you could download NES classics and some unique SNES games for it. This is where the oft considered as abandonware F-Zero 2 and the Mario Motorcross game actually came from.