I got a C&D from them 20+ years ago for hosting a ROM site. That's fair enough. I complied. But this seems ridiculous. What if they're plugging an 8-BIT NES to an adapter and into a capture card?
The whole thing seems silly as I don't see it's costing them money. But it's their product they can do what they want.
For a whole lot of software companies, the main competitor is the old version of the software.
Same for Nintendo: Newer games might be nicer to look at, but old games are just as much fun. So working older copies of their games do cost them money, and they'd rather see them disappear.
Indeed. This is a bit aprocryphal but I believe to recall reading about them attempting to shut down second-hand video game shops using legal threats somewhere in the 90s?
I guess this is it: Nintendo took Blockbuster to court arguing that rentals constituted copyright infringement. They also sued Galoob for the Game Genie under the premise that using the Game Genie to alter the game in any way constitutes producing an infringing derivative work. They lost in both cases.
Do they really get to do whatever they like forever with e.g. games and consoles they neither sell nor maintain anymore?
The NES was discontinued in 95, that was nearly 3 decades ago. I don't think they should have the right to prevent hackers to emulate it and share their findings.
Current consoles, yeah maybe, but even then the question would be why they should get a monopoly on the games developed for their platform..
> I don't think they should have the right to prevent hackers to emulate it and share their findings
They do not. Emulation is legal. However it is worth considering that:
0) NES Classic was sold as recently as 2018
1) Nintendo currently rent out NES games as part of Switch online
2) Copyright law ("lifetime" + 70 years) is on Nintendo's side for games themselves
3) Fair use can be a defense against infringement in some cases
4) Although it might or might not be fair use, I feel no guilt downloading Super Mario Bros 3 for an emulator since I've purchased it at least ten times by now, own multiple copies of the game on physical media, and am currently renting it through Switch online.
On the Sony/PlayStation side, I own a PS Classic, which actually runs a version of an open source PS1 emulator PCSX, amusingly enough. (I'm a bit disappointed that it's not a descendant of Connectix's emulator though.[1])
> Nintendo currently rent out NES games as part of Switch online
If Nintendo really cared about this they should create their own version of Spotify for legacy video games and charge a monthly subscription fee for the entire library that’s cross platform and mobile friendly. The strength of Nintendo really is their games, not the hardware. I don’t understand why Nintendo is so attached to their hardware in 2024, especially in the age of the Steam Deck.
> I don’t understand why Nintendo is so attached to their hardware in 2024,
Yes, you do not.
Nintendo makes a lot of money selling hardware. Switch is the third most successful game console of all time, behind the PS2 and Nintendo's own DS. Switch was always profitable vs. component and manufacturing cost, and this has largely gotten better over time with the exception of covid-related supply chain disruptions. Nintendo has no need or desire to follow in Sega's footsteps.
Switch consoles mean Nintendo can sell physical game cards. Physical media are important in Japan, and important elsewhere since they allow fully offline operation.
Moreover, Nintendo doesn't want to sacrifice its platform fees to the likes of Valve, Apple, or Google.
They do, but the majority of their library is not available on current hardware. I think not understanding this as a business decision is a valid opinion.
By restricting access to their classic portfolio, it inflates the value of it so they can periodically release it on new platforms in a time limited fashion.
Disney did the same thing with their classic movies during the VHS/DVD era. If they were all available all the time then nobody would even think to watch them. But by creating scarcity and then periodically releasing them in a time limited special edition they can eke out more money.
So Nintendo do not want everyone to be blasse about their back catalogue. They want the nostalgia to build and then release some of these titles every so often so you buy them over and over again.
> By restricting access to their classic portfolio, it inflates the value of it so they can periodically release it on new platforms in a time limited fashion.
One would think so, but there are incredible games in their portfolio that have never seen a single re-release - on any platform. The old Pokemon games are among it, as is A link to the past.
Physical media in Japan is important for a lot of reasons. Just looking around, the Music CD rental market is still big here... I have spoken to many people who have no streamers, they buy or rent all their DVDs and BluRays. There's the collectors thing, too, with "special edition" and "limited time" offers, etc. Physical media has a lot of love in Japan.
“I’m not a prophet or anything, but I believe that physical media will have more longevity here for the same reason that I think magazines do, which is that anyone can step out of their house and walk five feet [to buy one],” says Ricciardi. “It’s just easier to get to these things in Japan.”
I think part of the reason Nintendo (and it's not just Nintendo) is very reserved with their historical library is that they do not want to satisfy the demand for games that way while they're still making new ones.
If you can legally play Pokemon GBA or DS games under emulation for a subscription, would that have an effect on demand for buying new Pokemon games, especially for the adult market that has nostalgia for the earlier titles? I honestly think it would, especially given that there seems to be a fairly reasonable consensus online that the franchise peaked in the past for a lot of players - some people say the GBA titles, some say the DS ones, etc. I know personally that I play the old DS, GBA and GameCube titles for a lot of Nintendo franchises more than their current Switch releases.
And with regard to making it cross-platform & available on mobile, Nintendo has always controlled their platforms aggressively. They've never released games on other console platforms other than their own, and their mobile push has been deliberately very conservative (even moreso than other companies with retro libraries like Square Enix, Sega, etc). Plus especially with their handheld lineup, the DS and the 3DS are tricky to do emulated releases for - with the combination of built in touch screens, dual displays, etc.
But I also think that mobile gaming is a poor fit for most of Nintendo's library - unless you're expecting players to buy physical controls for their phones, I can't imagine playing eg Super Mario World is going to be very fun with touch screen button overlays.
Selling their own hardware still works for Nintendo, it's still profitable and it gives them control they'd cede if they released elsewhere. They'd have to pay platform fees, go through someone else's certification processes, etc. They have some of the most recognisable IP in gaming (and with Pokemon etc, one of the most recognisable bits of IP in the world), so they have the market power to pull people to buy their hardware too.
> They have some of the most recognisable IP in gaming (and with Pokemon etc, one of the most recognisable bits of IP in the world), so they have the market power to pull people to buy their hardware too.
I haven’t picked up my Switch since I bought my Steam Deck. That’s not “market power” that’s losing a gamer instead.
This is just baby steps to Nintendo weaseling themselves into Supreme Court to get Sony v. Connectix overturned. MGM v. Grokster attempted to overturn Sony v. Universal (VCR lawsuit), but while the movie studios did win, it was not an overturn of the VCR lawsuit.
Wonder what the EU laws are on this, as for example also things as game mechanics/features are not something you can register in the EU. So I assume they can't really block Emulation there.
And in that case, would it make a difference where the development is done, and if the website is "geofenced"?
>This is just overstretching of IP-laws if you ask me. This madness has to stop.
IP laws aren't a natural concept that exists by itself in nature, they're a construct manufactured and enforced by the governments. So if governments made them, then governments can easily rewrite them if they wish so.
But for that there needs public support and presure form voters to the politicians, but IP laws aren't something the average person cares or even ever thinks about, not when their core worries are inflation, CoL, housing, healthcare, education, etc, so the issue of IP laws is played exclusively on the battlefield of corporations and who has the most money for lobbying.
And corporations don't want laxer IP laws since that gives smaller players more leverage, versus the current status quo the favors the large plyers with the biggest litigation warchests to create large moats for them.
> But it's their product they can do what they want.
To the extent that we let them. There's no natural rights going on here, so theoretically (if you believe in democracy) we still get to decide how much power foreign companies have.
The US belongs to various international copyright conventions. The assumption is that countries will respect each others' copyrights.
And the US currently has an extremely long copyright period, life of the author + 70 years. Some (Larry Lessig and others) have argued that this violates the constitution's establishment clause for copyright, but so far the supreme court disagrees, and copyright reform also seems dead in the legislative branch. (And on the executive side, the copyright office is not sympathetic, and international treaties also impede copyright reform.)
But your thought experiment is interesting - suppose the US decides that Nintendo's copyrights no longer hold, and suppose that Japan decides that Microsoft's copyrights no longer hold? If it were only for old games and obsolete software, perhaps little would change. If it were for recent games/software, then I think it might change the incentives to localize games/software for other markets.
A large part of the US economy depends on IP law, including copyright; they're not going to suddenly abandon it.
They could, however, shorten the terms to much more reasonable lengths. It wouldn't hurt the US economy to shorten copyright terms to 50 years, for instance. If they shortened them to 30 years, it would have no real effect on the software industry, though Nintendo would be pissed. I don't think Microsoft would care much about people passing around copies of MS-DOS 3.3.
> If they shortened them to 30 years, it would have no real effect on the software industry, though Nintendo would be pissed. I don't think Microsoft would care much about people passing around copies of MS-DOS 3.3.
Well Windows 95 is coming up soon on its 30th... (and come to think of it MS already open sourced MS-DOS "4.0" for any retro-masochists who might want it.[1])
I'm sure MS Word and Excel must have improved slightly in 30 years, but by how much? They don't seem much more responsive than they were 10 years ago, and most of the shiny new Windows/Office features seem to be things I hate like annoying autocorrect, pointless UI redesigns, new advertisements and telemetry, and worthless and intrusive AI nonsense. Maybe with some incompatible save formats and clunky "cloud" features added in for good measure.
Office's largest enhancement seems to be Office 365, which offers an inferior and sluggish imitation of the desktop apps running in a web browser. This is possibly useful for people stuck with crappy Chromebooks, ARM-based tablets/phones, or Linux.
Different company but if I ever got serious about doing graphics/photo editing again I might actually prefer a dedicated ~2010-era CS installation on a virtualized legacy box over anything that either Adobe or the rest of the market has to offer today. CS4~6 felt pretty "done". Creative Cloud still sucks.
Surely that's a gaping hole in the market waiting to be filled?
> Which basically proves Nintendo has little to no moat apart from laws preventing their executables from being run elsewhere.
That would cause foreign countries to also ignore copyright held by US companies. Copyright laws only work as well as they do because all countries that matter sort of play by the same rules.
These days you can load up almost the entire history of gaming on a dozen different PC handhelds, choose from a thriving Android ecosystem of less-powerful but cheaper handhelds, and run emulators on iPhones and Android phones. Their walled garden is on the brink of ruin, unencumbered hardware and software have surpassed what they offer. I don't think it's existential yet but if they don't have a digital buffet ready for PC/Mac/iOS/Android then they are in real trouble IMHO.
And the IP laws as they stand right now can kill off all of that software, especially with aggressive addition of DRM and private stores which police existence of these kind of perservation efforts.
Remember that Apple had to be forced to even think about allowing emulators on their platforms by the EU and even then they aggressively block Americans from being able to access them.
> And the IP laws as they stand right now can kill off all of that software
Right but laws are only as good as their capability to enforce.
If I were to start an emulation project today I would mask my identity and try to do a better job of it than the silk road guy.
It's a shame ryujinx and yuzu were functionality killed when Nintendo got to the founding developers. There's contributions from other devs but I guess like with a lot of FOSS there's often just one person upon which the entire stack survives. Maybe the biggest projects like Linux and python can survive without their BDL's, but these emulators certainly haven't been able to, and that makes me sad.
I would love to take up the mantle of one of these but I don't know the first thing about emulation programming.
Its definitely existential or they wouldn't be trying to nickle and dime everything related to them whilst squandering all their good will in the process.
It appears that my suspicions are true, and that I am being specifically targeted by Nintendo. My recent Wii U video was taken down and I received a second copyright strike, even though this showcase video was no different than all of the tech demos and reviews I have made on this channel previously. I am still considering a counter claim under fair use, as the video was for educational use, transformative in nature, and had no effect on the market -- it was a demonstration of a console no longer for sale (even the Wii U eShop is closed, so the company itself has no means of earning revenue from Wii U sales). However, I am reluctant to open that can of worms with a multi-billion dollar corporation, as their next step would be to file legal action.
At the very least this means I am going to change how I approach future videos. I will no longer show any Nintendo games on-screen, which is a shame because I love using those games for my hardware demonstrations. I don't know how that will play out when it comes to showing things like ESDE frontend themes that contain Nintendo characters, but for now I am going to focus on actual gameplay. I am also going through the videos I am working on and blurring out any Nintendo game content as a precaution, even innocuous content like NES games. Unfortunately this is going to delay some video releases -- my latest video should be up right now, but instead I have to re-edit and re-upload the video first.
I know this is disappointing news, but with now two strikes on my channel, I don't really have any other choice except to adjust accordingly. Thanks for your understanding.
>I think they’re trying to prevent people from developing hardware alternatives to Nintendo Switch, next logical step after stable emulators.
They waged war against Famiclones in the past - see NTDEC (which had trademarks involved, since NTDEC stands for "Nintendo Electronic Company") and Power Player Super Joy III cases. However, they did lose the PocketFami case (in Japan, mind you) due to patents expiring and the fact it does not come with built-in games.
There's already a ton of options ranging from extremely powerful + expensive ROG Ally ~$800 to the Steam Deck ~$400 and much smaller/weaker Android and Linux handhelds like Retroid's products from ~$100 - $300. The PC handhelds actually run Switch games better than the Switch does.
We're actually at a point where some Switch games will even run on smartphones.
Right but all you're doing is demonstrating how silly it really is.
For something like 20,000 years we were all shared owners of our legends and stories, and recently that's changed. It doesn't make sense to me that the kids that grew up on pokemon are prevented by law from making their own stories, art, and games about this shared cultural history.
This idea that the corporation that spawned the thing "owns" the idea is absurd. The creation is borne of the input of our culture, the output belongs to the culture. If you wanna do a capitalism in there 20 years should be more than enough time to do so. 70 years or whatever the USA is at now is absurd, madness.
Public domain "IP" had lead to phenomenal art that's been capitalistically profitable. Sherlock Holmes, multiple profitable movies, tv shows, and videogames. Greek mythology, multiple award winning videogames and movies, same for Norse mythology.
Yes. I, too, hate copyright laws as they are. They are anathema to human creativity, which always thrived on reimagining and adapting existing things into new things.
Those laws still exist irrespective of how recent they are in relation to human existence however, and they are very much enforced by the powers that be, to the benefit of capital holders. Saying that it gives Nintendo "little to no moat" is a ridiculous statement.
I'm probably the only person on HN who sympathizes with Nintendo. I think the law should be stronger against internet piracy without hurting other freedom.
Let's be real. I'm guessing only 1% will rip the ROM off their purchased cartridge and play on an emulator. The 99% will pirate games they never purchased.
IIRC NES, SNES, and Game Boy cartridges have a battery for game saves that eventually needs to be replaced.
The point is a good one though: can we preserve the games so that they'll be playable hundreds of years (or more?!) from now, much as we can still play tabletop games from antiquity (backgammon, 9 man morris, chess, mancala, go, senet, etc.?) Whether the cyborgs of the 25th century will still want to play Mario Kart is unknown however.
It does, and "preserving" Switch games that aren't even out yet doesn't constitute preservation. See Yuzu case where they specifically used leaked copies of Zelda games to make those compatible with the emulator, while accepting financial retribution. Sometimes the hypocrisy is just too blatent for companies not to care.
Yuzu and Ryujinx are the real threats to its business as a number of highly anticipated game titles have been leaked and pirated several days (if not weeks) before their releases. This is not acceptable for both the developers and legit purchasers. I actually suspect that the recent Zelda title leak (2 weeks before its release) was the main motivation of recent takedown of Ryujinx.
I have read comments from game developers that copy protection, and anti-piracy tech, does seem to have a significant and positive effect on a game's sales for the first few days after release, which seems to be a hugely important window in a market with a short attention span and a constant flood of new games.
I agree that the big deal that Nintendo must be worried about is Switch emulation and piracy/leaks of new games before or close to release.
On the other hand (refuting my GP speculation perhaps), are Switch (and Switch game) sales really going to tank because pirates can run Zelda on Steam Decks? Regular Zelda fans who can afford one probably own a Switch already, are planning on buying a Switch 2 (or an OLED Switch after a price drop), and preordered the game.
> Regular Zelda fans who can afford one probably own a Switch already, are planning on buying a Switch 2 (or an OLED Switch after a price drop), and preordered the game.
This might be true, but only represents part of the sales — there are many potential buyers who are not “regular Zelda fans” and who may end up not buying the game if they can find a pirated copy.
I think more importantly: anyone who looks at the Switch as another computer they can buy will see it is worse than the Steam Deck by basically any metric including the Switch's own games running much better with higher resolutions and framerates plus all the QoL enhancements emulators add.
There's very little reason to buy-into a proprietary handheld that will restrict your usage and repairability and compel you to pay the highest possible prices for games, if you can enjoy those games without that hardware.
I don't know how many consumers are savvy enough to make that comparison but Nintendo are in an extraordinary vulnerable position already - and the Switch 2 will have to contend with two future generations of the Steam Deck as well!
> a number of highly anticipated game titles have been leaked and pirated several days (if not weeks) before their releases
Do they ever find out which stores or developers are leaking the games? Maybe they should have better control over how they ship new games to stores if they insist on shipping physical media...
Your comment about the effect on customers is interesting. I could see that as a Switch owner I might be a bit disappointed/envious to see the game running on other systems before I get my hands on it legitimately? Maybe it deflates the excitement a bit, especially if it is widely publicized. On the other hand, I'm still probably going to buy the game and enjoy playing it.
i can’t imagine having sympathy for some foreign megacorp hellbent on controlling every way you interact with a game their employees made. fuck nintendo, maybe they shouldn’t release complex software exclusive to an underpowered piece of shit that can’t even run ps4 games at 1080p60 if they don’t want people to prefer a superior experience
I got a C&D from them 20+ years ago for hosting a ROM site. That's fair enough. I complied. But this seems ridiculous. What if they're plugging an 8-BIT NES to an adapter and into a capture card?
The whole thing seems silly as I don't see it's costing them money. But it's their product they can do what they want.
For a whole lot of software companies, the main competitor is the old version of the software.
Same for Nintendo: Newer games might be nicer to look at, but old games are just as much fun. So working older copies of their games do cost them money, and they'd rather see them disappear.
Indeed. This is a bit aprocryphal but I believe to recall reading about them attempting to shut down second-hand video game shops using legal threats somewhere in the 90s?
I guess this is it: Nintendo took Blockbuster to court arguing that rentals constituted copyright infringement. They also sued Galoob for the Game Genie under the premise that using the Game Genie to alter the game in any way constitutes producing an infringing derivative work. They lost in both cases.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060515021332/http://www.1up.co...
[dead]
Do they really get to do whatever they like forever with e.g. games and consoles they neither sell nor maintain anymore?
The NES was discontinued in 95, that was nearly 3 decades ago. I don't think they should have the right to prevent hackers to emulate it and share their findings.
Current consoles, yeah maybe, but even then the question would be why they should get a monopoly on the games developed for their platform..
> I don't think they should have the right to prevent hackers to emulate it and share their findings
They do not. Emulation is legal. However it is worth considering that:
0) NES Classic was sold as recently as 2018
1) Nintendo currently rent out NES games as part of Switch online
2) Copyright law ("lifetime" + 70 years) is on Nintendo's side for games themselves
3) Fair use can be a defense against infringement in some cases
4) Although it might or might not be fair use, I feel no guilt downloading Super Mario Bros 3 for an emulator since I've purchased it at least ten times by now, own multiple copies of the game on physical media, and am currently renting it through Switch online.
On the Sony/PlayStation side, I own a PS Classic, which actually runs a version of an open source PS1 emulator PCSX, amusingly enough. (I'm a bit disappointed that it's not a descendant of Connectix's emulator though.[1])
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_I....
> Nintendo currently rent out NES games as part of Switch online
If Nintendo really cared about this they should create their own version of Spotify for legacy video games and charge a monthly subscription fee for the entire library that’s cross platform and mobile friendly. The strength of Nintendo really is their games, not the hardware. I don’t understand why Nintendo is so attached to their hardware in 2024, especially in the age of the Steam Deck.
> I don’t understand why Nintendo is so attached to their hardware in 2024,
Yes, you do not.
Nintendo makes a lot of money selling hardware. Switch is the third most successful game console of all time, behind the PS2 and Nintendo's own DS. Switch was always profitable vs. component and manufacturing cost, and this has largely gotten better over time with the exception of covid-related supply chain disruptions. Nintendo has no need or desire to follow in Sega's footsteps.
Switch consoles mean Nintendo can sell physical game cards. Physical media are important in Japan, and important elsewhere since they allow fully offline operation.
Moreover, Nintendo doesn't want to sacrifice its platform fees to the likes of Valve, Apple, or Google.
> Nintendo makes a lot of money selling hardware
They do, but the majority of their library is not available on current hardware. I think not understanding this as a business decision is a valid opinion.
By restricting access to their classic portfolio, it inflates the value of it so they can periodically release it on new platforms in a time limited fashion.
Disney did the same thing with their classic movies during the VHS/DVD era. If they were all available all the time then nobody would even think to watch them. But by creating scarcity and then periodically releasing them in a time limited special edition they can eke out more money.
So Nintendo do not want everyone to be blasse about their back catalogue. They want the nostalgia to build and then release some of these titles every so often so you buy them over and over again.
> By restricting access to their classic portfolio, it inflates the value of it so they can periodically release it on new platforms in a time limited fashion.
One would think so, but there are incredible games in their portfolio that have never seen a single re-release - on any platform. The old Pokemon games are among it, as is A link to the past.
Physical media in Japan is important for a lot of reasons. Just looking around, the Music CD rental market is still big here... I have spoken to many people who have no streamers, they buy or rent all their DVDs and BluRays. There's the collectors thing, too, with "special edition" and "limited time" offers, etc. Physical media has a lot of love in Japan.
> Physical media are important in Japan
Genuinely curious: why is that?
“I’m not a prophet or anything, but I believe that physical media will have more longevity here for the same reason that I think magazines do, which is that anyone can step out of their house and walk five feet [to buy one],” says Ricciardi. “It’s just easier to get to these things in Japan.”
https://www.theverge.com/24055863/akihabara-japan-retro-vide...
Because ironically they don't have much room to store them so it becomes a luxury they cherish?
I think part of the reason Nintendo (and it's not just Nintendo) is very reserved with their historical library is that they do not want to satisfy the demand for games that way while they're still making new ones.
If you can legally play Pokemon GBA or DS games under emulation for a subscription, would that have an effect on demand for buying new Pokemon games, especially for the adult market that has nostalgia for the earlier titles? I honestly think it would, especially given that there seems to be a fairly reasonable consensus online that the franchise peaked in the past for a lot of players - some people say the GBA titles, some say the DS ones, etc. I know personally that I play the old DS, GBA and GameCube titles for a lot of Nintendo franchises more than their current Switch releases.
And with regard to making it cross-platform & available on mobile, Nintendo has always controlled their platforms aggressively. They've never released games on other console platforms other than their own, and their mobile push has been deliberately very conservative (even moreso than other companies with retro libraries like Square Enix, Sega, etc). Plus especially with their handheld lineup, the DS and the 3DS are tricky to do emulated releases for - with the combination of built in touch screens, dual displays, etc.
But I also think that mobile gaming is a poor fit for most of Nintendo's library - unless you're expecting players to buy physical controls for their phones, I can't imagine playing eg Super Mario World is going to be very fun with touch screen button overlays.
Selling their own hardware still works for Nintendo, it's still profitable and it gives them control they'd cede if they released elsewhere. They'd have to pay platform fees, go through someone else's certification processes, etc. They have some of the most recognisable IP in gaming (and with Pokemon etc, one of the most recognisable bits of IP in the world), so they have the market power to pull people to buy their hardware too.
> They have some of the most recognisable IP in gaming (and with Pokemon etc, one of the most recognisable bits of IP in the world), so they have the market power to pull people to buy their hardware too.
I haven’t picked up my Switch since I bought my Steam Deck. That’s not “market power” that’s losing a gamer instead.
> Emulation is legal.
For now.
This is just baby steps to Nintendo weaseling themselves into Supreme Court to get Sony v. Connectix overturned. MGM v. Grokster attempted to overturn Sony v. Universal (VCR lawsuit), but while the movie studios did win, it was not an overturn of the VCR lawsuit.
Wonder what the EU laws are on this, as for example also things as game mechanics/features are not something you can register in the EU. So I assume they can't really block Emulation there.
And in that case, would it make a difference where the development is done, and if the website is "geofenced"?
NES Classic only supported 30 built-in games, with no official way to purchase or download more.
> But it's their product they can do what they want.
It's just because of IP-law that they get to do this. If there were no IP-laws, it would be:
"I bought their product, now it's mine, and I get tot do what I want."
This is just overstretching of IP-laws if you ask me. This madness has to stop.
>This is just overstretching of IP-laws if you ask me. This madness has to stop.
IP laws aren't a natural concept that exists by itself in nature, they're a construct manufactured and enforced by the governments. So if governments made them, then governments can easily rewrite them if they wish so.
But for that there needs public support and presure form voters to the politicians, but IP laws aren't something the average person cares or even ever thinks about, not when their core worries are inflation, CoL, housing, healthcare, education, etc, so the issue of IP laws is played exclusively on the battlefield of corporations and who has the most money for lobbying.
And corporations don't want laxer IP laws since that gives smaller players more leverage, versus the current status quo the favors the large plyers with the biggest litigation warchests to create large moats for them.
> But it's their product they can do what they want.
To the extent that we let them. There's no natural rights going on here, so theoretically (if you believe in democracy) we still get to decide how much power foreign companies have.
The US belongs to various international copyright conventions. The assumption is that countries will respect each others' copyrights.
And the US currently has an extremely long copyright period, life of the author + 70 years. Some (Larry Lessig and others) have argued that this violates the constitution's establishment clause for copyright, but so far the supreme court disagrees, and copyright reform also seems dead in the legislative branch. (And on the executive side, the copyright office is not sympathetic, and international treaties also impede copyright reform.)
But your thought experiment is interesting - suppose the US decides that Nintendo's copyrights no longer hold, and suppose that Japan decides that Microsoft's copyrights no longer hold? If it were only for old games and obsolete software, perhaps little would change. If it were for recent games/software, then I think it might change the incentives to localize games/software for other markets.
A large part of the US economy depends on IP law, including copyright; they're not going to suddenly abandon it.
They could, however, shorten the terms to much more reasonable lengths. It wouldn't hurt the US economy to shorten copyright terms to 50 years, for instance. If they shortened them to 30 years, it would have no real effect on the software industry, though Nintendo would be pissed. I don't think Microsoft would care much about people passing around copies of MS-DOS 3.3.
> If they shortened them to 30 years, it would have no real effect on the software industry, though Nintendo would be pissed. I don't think Microsoft would care much about people passing around copies of MS-DOS 3.3.
Well Windows 95 is coming up soon on its 30th... (and come to think of it MS already open sourced MS-DOS "4.0" for any retro-masochists who might want it.[1])
I'm sure MS Word and Excel must have improved slightly in 30 years, but by how much? They don't seem much more responsive than they were 10 years ago, and most of the shiny new Windows/Office features seem to be things I hate like annoying autocorrect, pointless UI redesigns, new advertisements and telemetry, and worthless and intrusive AI nonsense. Maybe with some incompatible save formats and clunky "cloud" features added in for good measure.
Office's largest enhancement seems to be Office 365, which offers an inferior and sluggish imitation of the desktop apps running in a web browser. This is possibly useful for people stuck with crappy Chromebooks, ARM-based tablets/phones, or Linux.
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS
Different company but if I ever got serious about doing graphics/photo editing again I might actually prefer a dedicated ~2010-era CS installation on a virtualized legacy box over anything that either Adobe or the rest of the market has to offer today. CS4~6 felt pretty "done". Creative Cloud still sucks.
Surely that's a gaping hole in the market waiting to be filled?
> Which basically proves Nintendo has little to no moat apart from laws preventing their executables from being run elsewhere.
That would cause foreign countries to also ignore copyright held by US companies. Copyright laws only work as well as they do because all countries that matter sort of play by the same rules.
These days you can load up almost the entire history of gaming on a dozen different PC handhelds, choose from a thriving Android ecosystem of less-powerful but cheaper handhelds, and run emulators on iPhones and Android phones. Their walled garden is on the brink of ruin, unencumbered hardware and software have surpassed what they offer. I don't think it's existential yet but if they don't have a digital buffet ready for PC/Mac/iOS/Android then they are in real trouble IMHO.
And the IP laws as they stand right now can kill off all of that software, especially with aggressive addition of DRM and private stores which police existence of these kind of perservation efforts.
Remember that Apple had to be forced to even think about allowing emulators on their platforms by the EU and even then they aggressively block Americans from being able to access them.
> And the IP laws as they stand right now can kill off all of that software
Right but laws are only as good as their capability to enforce.
If I were to start an emulation project today I would mask my identity and try to do a better job of it than the silk road guy.
It's a shame ryujinx and yuzu were functionality killed when Nintendo got to the founding developers. There's contributions from other devs but I guess like with a lot of FOSS there's often just one person upon which the entire stack survives. Maybe the biggest projects like Linux and python can survive without their BDL's, but these emulators certainly haven't been able to, and that makes me sad.
I would love to take up the mantle of one of these but I don't know the first thing about emulation programming.
> Right but laws are only as good as their capability to enforce.
Enforcement of IP restrictions is built into hardware of all new computing platforms. It's easy to enforce them worldwide now - again, see Apple.
Its definitely existential or they wouldn't be trying to nickle and dime everything related to them whilst squandering all their good will in the process.
Related:
Ryujinx (Nintendo Switch emulator) has been removed from GitHub
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711709
Nintendo is getting YouTube to take down videos that feature footage generated from emulators.
Better source: Comment last week on /r/SBCGaming: https://safereddit.com/r/SBCGaming/comments/1frjcaa/hey_ever...
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It appears that my suspicions are true, and that I am being specifically targeted by Nintendo. My recent Wii U video was taken down and I received a second copyright strike, even though this showcase video was no different than all of the tech demos and reviews I have made on this channel previously. I am still considering a counter claim under fair use, as the video was for educational use, transformative in nature, and had no effect on the market -- it was a demonstration of a console no longer for sale (even the Wii U eShop is closed, so the company itself has no means of earning revenue from Wii U sales). However, I am reluctant to open that can of worms with a multi-billion dollar corporation, as their next step would be to file legal action.
At the very least this means I am going to change how I approach future videos. I will no longer show any Nintendo games on-screen, which is a shame because I love using those games for my hardware demonstrations. I don't know how that will play out when it comes to showing things like ESDE frontend themes that contain Nintendo characters, but for now I am going to focus on actual gameplay. I am also going through the videos I am working on and blurring out any Nintendo game content as a precaution, even innocuous content like NES games. Unfortunately this is going to delay some video releases -- my latest video should be up right now, but instead I have to re-edit and re-upload the video first.
I know this is disappointing news, but with now two strikes on my channel, I don't really have any other choice except to adjust accordingly. Thanks for your understanding.
>so the company itself has no means of earning revenue from Wii U sales
Nintendo's de facto method to do this is to simply re-release them on Switch - though this only matters for first-party titles.
Here's the proper link: https://old.reddit.com/r/SBCGaming/comments/1frjcaa/hey_ever...
I don't know what the fuck "safereddit.com" is, but it is an unnecessary layer of obfuscation when the literal source is right there.
It's necessary when using a VPN, Reddit blocked anonymous access a few months ago
Safereddit looks like a website that implemented a private front end called redlib:
https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib
Agree that we don’t need to add a layer of obfuscation but this seems to be a way to reduce telemetry captured by Reddit.
Standard Nintendo behavior.
I think they’re trying to prevent people from developing hardware alternatives to Nintendo Switch, next logical step after stable emulators.
Which basically proves Nintendo has little to no moat apart from laws preventing their executables from being run elsewhere.
>I think they’re trying to prevent people from developing hardware alternatives to Nintendo Switch, next logical step after stable emulators.
They waged war against Famiclones in the past - see NTDEC (which had trademarks involved, since NTDEC stands for "Nintendo Electronic Company") and Power Player Super Joy III cases. However, they did lose the PocketFami case (in Japan, mind you) due to patents expiring and the fact it does not come with built-in games.
So what you're saying is someone should grab a high-end SBC and 3D printer, and build a hardware alternative to the Nintendo Switch.
There's already a ton of options ranging from extremely powerful + expensive ROG Ally ~$800 to the Steam Deck ~$400 and much smaller/weaker Android and Linux handhelds like Retroid's products from ~$100 - $300. The PC handhelds actually run Switch games better than the Switch does.
We're actually at a point where some Switch games will even run on smartphones.
I wonder if Switch games could be run in a WINE-like environment.
> Which basically proves Nintendo has little to no moat apart from laws preventing their executables from being run elsewhere.
"They have little to no moat apart from copyright law protecting their IPs"
There, I rephrased it for you. It is actually one hell of a moat.
Right but all you're doing is demonstrating how silly it really is.
For something like 20,000 years we were all shared owners of our legends and stories, and recently that's changed. It doesn't make sense to me that the kids that grew up on pokemon are prevented by law from making their own stories, art, and games about this shared cultural history.
This idea that the corporation that spawned the thing "owns" the idea is absurd. The creation is borne of the input of our culture, the output belongs to the culture. If you wanna do a capitalism in there 20 years should be more than enough time to do so. 70 years or whatever the USA is at now is absurd, madness.
Public domain "IP" had lead to phenomenal art that's been capitalistically profitable. Sherlock Holmes, multiple profitable movies, tv shows, and videogames. Greek mythology, multiple award winning videogames and movies, same for Norse mythology.
Yes. I, too, hate copyright laws as they are. They are anathema to human creativity, which always thrived on reimagining and adapting existing things into new things.
Those laws still exist irrespective of how recent they are in relation to human existence however, and they are very much enforced by the powers that be, to the benefit of capital holders. Saying that it gives Nintendo "little to no moat" is a ridiculous statement.
“apart from” doing a lot of work here. That’s a big moat.
I'll never buy another Nintendo game or console again.
Everyone says that, but I don't see them struggling to sell consoles...
I'm probably the only person on HN who sympathizes with Nintendo. I think the law should be stronger against internet piracy without hurting other freedom.
Let's be real. I'm guessing only 1% will rip the ROM off their purchased cartridge and play on an emulator. The 99% will pirate games they never purchased.
Either way your so called "piracy" helps preserve the games and keep them playable for much longer.
IIRC NES, SNES, and Game Boy cartridges have a battery for game saves that eventually needs to be replaced.
The point is a good one though: can we preserve the games so that they'll be playable hundreds of years (or more?!) from now, much as we can still play tabletop games from antiquity (backgammon, 9 man morris, chess, mancala, go, senet, etc.?) Whether the cyborgs of the 25th century will still want to play Mario Kart is unknown however.
It does, and "preserving" Switch games that aren't even out yet doesn't constitute preservation. See Yuzu case where they specifically used leaked copies of Zelda games to make those compatible with the emulator, while accepting financial retribution. Sometimes the hypocrisy is just too blatent for companies not to care.
The interesting question to me is how piracy (or unlicensed downloads) affects the company. In many cases, it seems like it has little effect at all.
Are people really going to stop subscribing to Switch Online because NES ROMs are readily available for emulators?
What I think might (?) have some impact on Nintendo is downloading Switch games for execution on competing handhelds like the Steam Deck.
Yuzu and Ryujinx are the real threats to its business as a number of highly anticipated game titles have been leaked and pirated several days (if not weeks) before their releases. This is not acceptable for both the developers and legit purchasers. I actually suspect that the recent Zelda title leak (2 weeks before its release) was the main motivation of recent takedown of Ryujinx.
I have read comments from game developers that copy protection, and anti-piracy tech, does seem to have a significant and positive effect on a game's sales for the first few days after release, which seems to be a hugely important window in a market with a short attention span and a constant flood of new games.
I agree that the big deal that Nintendo must be worried about is Switch emulation and piracy/leaks of new games before or close to release.
On the other hand (refuting my GP speculation perhaps), are Switch (and Switch game) sales really going to tank because pirates can run Zelda on Steam Decks? Regular Zelda fans who can afford one probably own a Switch already, are planning on buying a Switch 2 (or an OLED Switch after a price drop), and preordered the game.
> Regular Zelda fans who can afford one probably own a Switch already, are planning on buying a Switch 2 (or an OLED Switch after a price drop), and preordered the game.
This might be true, but only represents part of the sales — there are many potential buyers who are not “regular Zelda fans” and who may end up not buying the game if they can find a pirated copy.
I think more importantly: anyone who looks at the Switch as another computer they can buy will see it is worse than the Steam Deck by basically any metric including the Switch's own games running much better with higher resolutions and framerates plus all the QoL enhancements emulators add.
There's very little reason to buy-into a proprietary handheld that will restrict your usage and repairability and compel you to pay the highest possible prices for games, if you can enjoy those games without that hardware.
I don't know how many consumers are savvy enough to make that comparison but Nintendo are in an extraordinary vulnerable position already - and the Switch 2 will have to contend with two future generations of the Steam Deck as well!
> a number of highly anticipated game titles have been leaked and pirated several days (if not weeks) before their releases
Do they ever find out which stores or developers are leaking the games? Maybe they should have better control over how they ship new games to stores if they insist on shipping physical media...
Your comment about the effect on customers is interesting. I could see that as a Switch owner I might be a bit disappointed/envious to see the game running on other systems before I get my hands on it legitimately? Maybe it deflates the excitement a bit, especially if it is widely publicized. On the other hand, I'm still probably going to buy the game and enjoy playing it.
i can’t imagine having sympathy for some foreign megacorp hellbent on controlling every way you interact with a game their employees made. fuck nintendo, maybe they shouldn’t release complex software exclusive to an underpowered piece of shit that can’t even run ps4 games at 1080p60 if they don’t want people to prefer a superior experience