/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5288062
Because they want you to keep buying retro releases endlessly. It's much greater profit to them that way.

>>5288065
I don't know, if it was like $8/month I feel like pretty much everyone would be subscribed, and it'd be no work at all for them. Once the roms are all on a server all they have to do is collect the checks.

>>5288062
Xbox has this essentially now with game pass and it’s pretty fantastic

>>5288062
>I don't get it, why doesn't every console have a Netflix-like subscription option to play the entire backlog of that company's retro games? If they can do it for movies surely they can do it for games. How hard could it be for them to host their back-catalog on a server and include emulators on each new console? I would stop pirating yesterday if this was an option.


third party licensing agreements for every developer, many of which may be out of business, sold, abandoned, or partially owned by multiple other parties.
they also want to keep selling the same old ROMs over and over on new digital platforms for every console generation.

most people will maybe only actually play 1-2 old games for a couple times a week and get bored. almost no one will binge play old games like they watch netflix. old games aren't as interesting for as long to normies as old movies/tv shows.

>>5288134
I'm sure the same licensing issues exist with movies, but somehow they got it done. As for selling the ROMs again and again being more profitable than a subscription model, that may be it. I can only assume if my idea was more profitable they would have done it already. Then again, these massive companies are slow as hell to adapt.

>>5288193
Yea, like wheres 20th century fox today? Or Miramax?

>>5288062
>a Netflix-like subscription option to play the entire backlog

fucking lol. netflix's selection of movies is fucking shitty. it's unbelieavably shitty.

the answer to your question is legal/bureaucratic "intellectual property" reasons. and the ultimate answer, of course, is that ip laws should be abolished and "piracy" should be made legal.

seriously, the dvd rental place in my middle of nowhere brazilian neighbourhood had a *vastly* superior selection of movies than fucking netflix.

>>5288134
This.

>>5288193
So would Sega compensate Ubisoft each time you play Earthworm Jim on their platform? What if they disagree? What about Ecco the Dolphin? What about Turrican?

>>5288065
>customers pays for a few months of retroflix and plays all the shit he wants to play
or
>drip feed customer retro releases at 5 bucks a pop, rinse and repeat when next gen console comes out

Gee tough one.

>>5288062
no dlc-schemes to milk them in these games

>>5288539
>So would Sega compensate Ubisoft each time you play Earthworm Jim
Wait, Ubisoft seriously owns the rights to that series?

>>5288062
...isn't that what nintendo is already planning to do?

>>5289512
And yet, the way they do it is absolute garbage.

>>5289509
It's sad but true. There will never be another good port of it because even if they did release one where they didn't fuck with the gameplay, they bought tge rights to the game itself but not the voice work so if you play one of the new releases you'll notice all his sounds are off.

>>5288062
I'd only be okay with that if actually installed the ROMs locally. I'm not down for that game streaming bullshit.

>>5288261
>netflix's selection of movies is fucking shitty. it's unbelieavably shitty.
It actually used to be a great service for 2nd run and classic movies, but then people started bitching there is nothing to watch because apparently if a movie didn;t come out less than 6 months ago it's trash or they feel ripped off to normies. Now all we have is SJW-infested original series and capeshit on there.

>>5289659
>It actually used to be a great service for 2nd run and classic movies, but then people started bitching there is nothing to watch because apparently if a movie didn;t come out less than 6 months ago it's trash or they feel ripped off to normies.
What? No. the bitching came after they were already losing the licenses to classics to Hulu and Amazon. You've gotten your cause and effect confused.
>Now all we have is SJW-infested original series
God forbid a woman or POC is the lead. I'll grant you that shit like Sense8 is overwhelmingly in the "forced diversity" department but for the most part I wouldn't call their content SJW-infested.

>>5288261
I think Hulu is better. It has a big catalog of older shows and movies.
But fuck them for showing ads on top of paying the subscription.

>>5289679
>But fuck them for showing ads on top of paying the subscription.
It is shitty but Adblock/Ublock has started working on hulu again by the way. No 60 second black screens either. It takes like 2 seconds for the ad to fail to load and then you're back to the show.

>>5289685
How recently? I was still getting ads this week.

>>5289512
>planning

I'll believe it when I see it. It is NES games only, and a very small selection.

>>5289696
For the past 3 weeks for me. I'm using ublock origin in chrome.

>>5289564
I mean, they're the same company that brought us Rayman Origins / Legends and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game (as much as people still view them as Assassin's Creed machines), i'd still have a bit of hope for them to make at least a new decent Earthworm Jim game.

>>5289704
Huh, I just checked and I had it turned off for hulu. It must have broken the site at one point.
Anyway, thanks for the tip anon

>>5288062
Are you Seriously asking why they do it this way?
>buy smb 3 on nes
>buy smb 3 (allstars) for snes
>buy smb3 Remake for gameboy
>buy smb 3 on virtual console for wii
>buy smb 3 upgrade for wiiu
>buy smb 3 on switch
>buy smb 3 on virtual switch boy 64

... Or you pay 8 Dollars to stream All the games per month... Hmm... What brings you more money

>>5289871
In your example smb3 was purchased a total of seven times over many years and consoles. That's $56. In a $8/mo subscription model, they'd get that $56 in just seven months. But that's ignoring the other games that would be purchased from various virtual consoles too. I dunno, it just seems worth a shot.

I would think someone who posts on /vr/ would have enough sense and know-how to not buy into a digital subscription service for emulation. Then again, plenty of posters here have defended their purchases of Nintendo's micro "consoles" so what do I know.

Nes: 60 bucks
Snes: 60 bucks
Gb: 40 bucks
Wii: 9 bucks
Wiiu: 2 bucks
Switch: 8 bucks? Dont have it
Vswitchboy 64: 20 rubels

That would be at least 180 Dollars for the same game over 25 years.
Niw this would be for 1! Game, now do the same shit for the other smb, zeldas, metroid, dk's, pokemon, excite bike, tetris, and the list goes on. Let's say it would 100 bucks per game in the lifecycle (sofar), that would be at least 2000 Dollars per customer with only the Main franchises. Combine this with rarer pickups from the eshop and you make massive amount of money. Playing for a streaming Service would be 96 bucks a year, that would be 960 if you used it for 10 years, and would have at least a library of (let's say they don't get every game) 350 nes games, 200 snes game, 60 n64 games, 500 Gameboy (GB gba gbc) games.

You Seriously believe they wouldn't do it if it wasn't lucrative? Nintendo Fans will rebuy the same game over and over again, the got the Newcomers who want to experience "the classics", the ildschool fags who want nostalgia-fever, etc...

Nintendo wants all the money, they will only change their ways if nobody is buxing the old shit

>>5288062
I'm not giving my money to some corporate gangster or schmuck who just purchased the rights for a penny. My money goes to the people who made the games or to nobody at all.

>>5289976
This. Resellers and publishers selling 20 year old roms from long dead developers can get fucked.

Why does every C64 retro device only ever feature Epyx games and a couple of Euro shmups/platformers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZOpOSL0Z1c

Why not add some more levels? They were limited to 50 due to 1984 ROM size limitations but that's not an issue today.

>>5291225
1. They don't have the source code anymore
2. Even if they did they wouldn't have anyone who could write Famicom code anymore
3. The ROMs on these retro devices were all gotten off the Internet anyway

If companies released all back catalog games, the market would be flooded, and demand for new releases would tank. It's futile maintain hope for this to ever happen. It will never happen.

http://www.consoleclassix.com has been going for maybe a decade now with this idea.

As for why companies don't do it themselves, I'm reminded of Game Room on XBLA. That wasn't a subscription service, but it was an attempt at a third party negotiating with companies to distribute their retro games through an integrated one-stop-shop. The result was that even when every game was being sold for I think 5 bucks a piece, they still couldn't convince anyone more than three companies to get in on it, with one of those companies (Konami) only offering really old shit from their catalog.

I suspect that the amount of wrangling and negotiation needed to convince companies to be on board with an unproven distribution model like this just isn't worth it for a market that may not meaningfully exist. Maybe if Nintendo lead the way with their own service for their own games and could prove that there's enough people willing to sign up for something like that, other distributors would be more on board to offer their catalogs for services like it.

>>5288545
>drip feed customer retro releases at 5 bucks a pop, rinse and repeat when next gen console comes out
That business model turned out to be a complete failure by the way, and Nintendo already knew this in 2008 when they were shitting out releases like Vegas Stakes and Double Dribble.

>>5289569
This.

>>5291225
The idea of publishers adding new content to certain retro games horrifies me. It’s weird cause I’m on board with certain things like an extra difficulty mode or something, but I don’t want them to start tampering with classics so they can say ‘LOOK we added a new level to that game you love now buy it again!’ I don’t want the equivalent of DLC to be shoved into old games that never had them.

They do this constantly with games these days instead of just selling a finished product, Nintendo is worst about it with all the enhanced switch ports but everyone does it.

>>5289659
If I were a scummy business man, I'd propose additional Netflix package options such as pay $5 extra per month for classic movies, or $10 extra for anime, $25 extra for live sports streaming etc - kind of how cable companies sold channel packages.

Normies would snatch it up and it wouldn't alienate the people who wanted the baseline package for the baseline price.

>>5289675
Oh shut the fuck up. I'm a "poc" (by the way I hate that phrase) and I'm sick of people like you ruining the narrative by saying dumb shit like "durr SJW means you get screen time" as if that's all he meant it entails. Representation is a different beast than pushing some horseshit "woke" liberal political philosophy and you know it. Stop acting like you don't know this.

>>5289679
Hulu snatched a lot of Netflix's best TV shows.

>>5289512
>buy Nintendo game
>buy it again for Wii virtual console
>buy it again for Switch after Nintendo drops VC support
>rent it again for a monthly fee after Nintendo switches to a streaming model and drops support for the Switch store

Do Nintendo fans really do this?

>>5292186
Yes

>>5288193
Licensing issues do exist. That's why movies and shows are always disappearing from streaming services. The only surefire way to have any movie or show always available to you is still for you to buy it, either digitally or physically.

netflix was alright in the beginning but now that everyone else is trying to get a slice of it you need like 8 different subscriptions and piracy becomes preferable again
fuck amazon's streaming shit the most though, it used to be ok but the quality is godawful to the point i'd rather watch it in sd

>>5293343
It may not be the best, but I appreciate the fact that I automatically get it as a bonus for paying for Prime for the shipping benefits.

>>5288084
Most of the games available are shit

>>5291595
>2. Even if they did they wouldn't have anyone who could write Famicom code anymore
I'm not so sure about this. Nintendo has been known to modify the ROMs they sell from their original versions, so someone is at least tinkering with the assembled data if not rewriting from source.

>>5291624
>We are the only emulation service that is 100% legal! We operate as any other rental service and own copies of each game we allow our customers to play.
I looked at some of their vids on Youtube, and even though they reserve a number of slots equivalent to how many copies of the cartridges they own, I still feel like this is breaking the law by sending you a copy of the game's data and not the game itself. I hope for their sake they don't run into any issues though, and I'd love to hear a legal expert weigh in.

>>5288062
Xbox game pass.

>>5288134
>old games aren't as interesting for as long to normies as old movies/tv shows.

Normies don't watch any movies before the 1980s, the lone exception is "SW: A New Hope" but even that is fading from the mass consciousness. They also eschew foreign movies and art/indie films and they are quite satisfied "Netflix Original" dogshit. They give me stank eye when I reveal my ignorance of the latest Capeshit releases. Source: my sister's friends are normies and I talk to them.

Those old boomers who would rewatch Casablance or It's a Wonderful Life are now bedridden with dementia in care homes now.