As reported by DailyTech, Nintendo has released the number of emulated consoles (NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, and TurboGrafx16) as well as some of the initial offerings (Sonic, Bonk, Zelda, etc.). The pricing model is based on "points", of which you can purchase 2000 for $20 (ie. a penny a point) and games will cost between 800 and 1000 points to play.

Personally, I think the pricing is about double what it should be (everybody has played most of the offerings ten times over), but at least it's not completely unreasonable and unrealistic, like $19.99 per game.

Bah humbug. The most interesting old games are GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark Zero and some of the RPG's. Very poor offering and ten dollars for N64 games is a bit steep. Actually it's very steep.

I've found those prices a overboard, except N64 which seem just a tad overpriced. For that price, with a few exceptions, I could buy the original game, so paying the same for a downloadable wouldn't cut it for me.

And that's just N64... what about NES? $10 per game?! Forget it.

NES games are $5. seems fine to me...

I guess that's okay. The 800 to 1000 point quote would have made the minimum be $8. Anyhow, for downloaded content, even $5 seems a bit steep for NES games without manuals. Even if they offer PDF scans of the manuals, it's not the same as having a physical manual to look at. I'd rather stick to a real cartridge than paying $5 for an electronic version that could somehow get deleted and then you have to fight to get a new copy.

depends how you look at it; for a common nes game (cart only, no box/manual) $5 is a typical price give or take a few bucks. Depending where you live finding places selling nes games can be tough (flee markets, garage sales, etc) and then you aren't guaranteed to find the game you want. Buying carts online adds a few bucks for shipping. Popular and/or rare games can often go for much more (regardless of what they may really be worth) so in some cases the $5 price could end up being really cheap. For the non collectors (most people) who are typically only interested in a few games I don't think the prices seem that bad...

Except that all the games they're offering don't cost more than $1.

I think Nintendo has made enough money from those games already.

The pricing doesn't really bother me, as it could have been much worse. Beats getting ripped off on eBay, when it comes to some of the rare games that may be coming out. That is, if you're just wanting to play the game and not interested in the packaging.

I think that for N64 and GC games, 8 to 10 dollars is pretty reasonable. Most N64 games these days are still that price, so its not like you're getting ripped off. Considering how hard it is to find rare NES games and SNES games these days, I would like to say its a fair deal as we;;. But I think for the quality and hours of play you get from a NES (not many compared to modern standards) may be a little too steep for it.

All around I can't complain, I think the pricing is pretty decent. In my mind, I am saying that at least it isn't even more expensive. Nintendo could have easily charged more, but they're doing us a favor by keeping it below the 10 dollar mark, that's for sure.

There are no rare NES games that I can't pirate copy from the internet in 20 seconds. If I just want to play the game.

Course then you'd be missing the warm feeling you get by actually owning them. You don't want to miss out on that, do you? ~_^

$10 is cool for n64 or gc, but a bit much for older systems. Besides you're not "really" owning them. I still prefer a physical copy that I can hold and get neat packaging with etc. To the point that I e-mail developers of games I download (Bud Redhead, Jets'nGuns) and ask if they sell physical copies because I still like to hold it in my hand. Old fashioned maybe but to me downloading even if I pay for it doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, in fact it gives me the "hard drive, please don't fail" jitters.

So long as you have records of the purchase, or a code of some sort, you can always download software again. Not that I know if they do that on the Wii or not. I prefer "owning" physical media as well.

Does the Wii have individual codes that let Nintendo know you'd be downloading it to the same one? If not, then you could claim it was deleted and just download it onto someone else's, which Nintendo would never allow. That's what I was thinking when mentioning that.

Also, you really don't own it as was mentioned. Think about it. If I buy a physical copy of a console game, I can eventually turn around and sell it. If it happens that it becomes rare sometime in the future, I may even make money, though I wouldn't bet on that happening. However, if I download it, I would never be able to sell it. As far as I'm concerned, if I can't sell something I bought, then I don't really feel like I own it.

You can always display the downloaded titles to the buyer, and include them in the price. It's not perfect, but it works to a point.

Only if you're selling the Wii. You can't just sell a single game.

That assumes the download service will remain active. I have links inside of PC programs already that go to features or extras that simply don't exist anymore because the company has taken that content down... After all it's 4 years old, they're not going to sell any more of them.

The warm feeling of owning an emulator "ROMz" is equal whether you download it from Emulationsite.com or Nintendo.com.

Sadly, you don't "own" roms, you possess them. Given the opportunity to legally own the right to play a game, and voice support for a series by purchasing it (a language companies understand), has certain benefits. Not the least of which is knowing that one is not standing on shaky moral ground. Still... If you legally own a real copy of the game contained in the rom, then roms are marvelous!

The games you buy in Wii for Nintendo money is "ROMz". They don't send you a cartridge with box and manual in the mail. So what is the difference, except for the monetary transaction which I could just as well do without so that I can use the money to "voice support" for beer and food instead?

In this case, the one standing on shaky moral ground is Nintendo, who are making money on 20 year old programs which they have sold millions of copies for already, and where none of the money goes to the people who actually made the games. That's not something I want to voice any support for. It's nice to include an emulator in Wii, but that should have been a nice extra for the children to play with and not another way for Nintendo to make money. We've already paid them once, in the eighties.

There's a clear difference between roms sold by the copyright owners and those given out for free from people holding no rights. In one case, you are purchasing from the legal owners/designers, and in another you are taking stolen goods from strangers.

Nintendo and other respective companies own the rights to the games, created the titles, and have every right to sell older them, just as Stephen King has the right to expect people to pay money for his older books, written when he had less experience. In addition, not everyone who plays the older titles, will have purchased them back in the day.

I understand what you are saying, and entirely agree that it would be fabulous for companies to give us free access to their older titles, but they aren't obligated to do so. It's not immoral for companies to ask you to purchase older titles, it's a lost opportunity to be generous, and do something special. They simply chose the standard route of selling their wares. At least they aren't charging the outrageous prices they used to for these games.

The difference is merely a legal one. You were the one who brought up "moral grounds", and in this case our morals differ. I sincerely doubt that any Wii money go to the designers, since they are not the legal owners. If that were the case, I would look at it differently, but it is not the practice of Japanese game companies in the eighties to care about the people who made the games, to the point of forbidding them to use their real names.

To quote an old Atari boss, when his employees asked to have their names put on the games:

"Do towel designers ask to have their names put on the towels they design?"

Those towel designers went on to found Activision.

Ok, here comes the stupid question: will those games receive a new platform once the Wii is added to our database? Will those games fall into that emulator genre of ours?

I would guess that they will get a new platform. I would also speculate that they would not be listed as emulator but will get a new package listing of download to add to the keep case, box, jewel case listings they now have.

As Sony is also offering downloads, it certainly warrants consideration. Excellent question by the way, Black Wolf.

I'm wondering what might happen to the pre-owned market for the carts that will be downloadable with the Wii.
On one hand, you may be decreasing the value as people can play the games for less and wont bother with the real carts. Demand goes down, so does price.
On the other hand, you might increase prices as players will cheaply be able to legaly demo full games and then hunt out the real carts. Increase in demand, increase in price.


Of course people will still download ROMs for PC emulators but as with music downloads there's bound to be a large number of users who will want to make use of a legit way of getting games.


Anyone else have any thoughts or perhaps studied the effects of downloadable media against the real thing?

The only thing I have noticed is that most people who download things illegally are the same people who wouldn't buy the thing in the first place. Someone might download thousands of MP3s, but if they couldn't do that, they *might* buy a few CDs more than they already do... not that many more. The same for games or ROMs. ROMs are especially true, when someone might download one because they don't have the system to play it on. If they couldn't download it, they just wouldn't play it at all. That's like me and all the great PS2 games from Japan that I can't play because I don't have a PS2. I'm not going to buy one, so I just don't play them. Unfortunate, but true.

Companies (especially music companies) tend to put out inflated losses when speaking out against downloading stuff illegally. They include the cost of every single download, regardless if 70%+ (that is a guess on the percentage) wouldn't have bought it in the first place. So, that would mean that their losses are about 70% less than they claim.

In other words: leech on.

I wouldn't mind paying for certain games just for the convenience of playing them on the TV, but not at that price.