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Nintendo To Sell Old Consoles To China?
drfishy writes "An interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata on IGN hints at the possibility of Nintendo entering the Chinese market with their products soon. The most curious part of the interview is that Satoru Iwata says Nintendo is considering releasing older generation hardware to combat piracy, could this mean the big N is going to start making Super Nintendos again? Will there be new games? How would this fight piracy?"
By re-releasing older consoles, Nintendo can shutdown ROM piracy by claiming that the games are actively on the market.
If Nintendo starts manufacturing old hardware again that will mess up the prices of used games in a big way. I we at the mall days ago and they has NESs for 40 bucks, SNES for 30 and N64s for an amount I forget, but cheap. They might have been cheaper than the NESs I dont' remember so well. Bit it was messed up! We've got like 3 NESs in the house. Well actually 1 physically here. I own one that is far away. We won one at a duck hunt tournament (people SUCK at duck hunt!) and my roomate's got one. We gave one to his brother.
Oh yeah, that's another thing. At that very same duck hunt tournament there was a guy who was collecting Mario/Duck Hunt cartridges. He had so many he made a suit of armor out of them. However, he performed very poorly compared to us in the tourney. Apparently he collected so many that the price went from 15 cents to 95 cents a cart in his time. If nintendo manufactures more old Nintendo stuff wont that not work. I mean people can get carts for 95 cents they aren't going to pay more than that. And making more supply just lowers prices.
I'm fairly certain Nintendo will only be manufacturing N64 stuff if anything. They aren't that stupid.
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This might be a little off-topic, but I got to thinking (uh oh):
Assuming that Nintendo (or anyone else for that matter) re-released an old console & games, what kind of editing would be necessary to make a game fit the culture?
Take for example, the classic NES games Rush N' Attack (say it out loud) and Contra. Those were clearly marketed toward the anti-communism sentiment prevalent in the US in the 80's. How would the Chinese take to that?
Or even something say like GTA3... which very vividly portrays a modern western society (scary thought). For the most part, that's stuff we believe the Chinese can only dream of. What would they think of it? How about games like Wall Street Kid ?
For that matter, what kind of Chinese-only games are there? Damn, I wish I knew more about the culture... I'm sure they would have games that are pure fun in context to them, but would have no chance of being appreciated over here.
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"The slave thinks he is released from bondage, only to find a stronger set of chains" - NIN
[quote]
"Given that many Chinese probably do not even have televisions..."
Did you pull that one out of your ass?
China has roughly 300 million televisions. The US has around 215 million.
[/quote]
China has 1.5 billion people, the US has 300 million. I beleve he's accurate
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
How's this justification for you: I like the products but I don't like giving up money. So I won't, unless I like the product so much that I want to finance future development of similar products from the same people.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actually a better analogy would be to refuse to pay for some food because you claim it's awful, but still stuff your face full of it.
"The most curious part of the interview is that Satoru Iwata says Nintendo is considering releasing older generation hardware to combat piracy, could this mean the big N is going to start making Super Nintendos again? Will there be new games?"
Who cares if there will be new games? The very concept of putting NES and SNES hardware and software back on the assembly line is teriffic news as far as I'm concerned!
Nintendo retired these consoles because they had reached the point where their sales didn't justify the cost of manufacturing them any more. But now we have the possibility of introducing these systems to a new, relatively untouched market. A market that may very well fund the continued manufacture of these consoles and cartridges. The NES and SNES markets will (with any luck) be self-sufficient again. Especially when you consider the advances in both hardware and manufacturing in the past decade or so (ie. they're cheaper to make than ever).
And if the cost of manufacturing the older consoles is being justified by the Chinese market, what could they possibly have to lose if they, say, start selling them in North America again? I'd finally be able to have my very own copy of EarthBound!
(WaReZ kiddies: No, ZSNES is not the same. It lets me play the games I wish I had, but I still wish I had them. If you can't understand the difference, I truly pity you.)
(Moral self-righteous twits: No, I will not mortgage my first-born on eBay for a used copy of the game. Nintendo makes no money off the sale of used cartridges. I'll buy it when Nintendo re-releases it.)
It's a lot cheaper to produce CD's and DVD's than it is to produce solid state storage (like a videogame cartridge). At the prices you can get pirated stuff for in China--depending on how you bargain, under 0.70USD for a DVD last time I was there--it just isn't economical for someone to produce illegal carts.
`which fortune`
Release them here. And get Sega on board - man, I would have killed to have been able to play Warsong on my actual Genesis.
.iso through paid download.
This is a question I've long had for console makers: Why not create an emulator, package a shitload of games on the same disc as it, and sell it? Hell - you could even offer the
Sure, just like music and movies - there are people who simply wouldn't pay for it.
There's also a lot of people who would. I'll admit, I've downloaded games whose cartridges I don't own. The problem is - I couldn't find those cartridges back in the day. They're impossible to find now.
I have a hard time finding decent Sega CD and Saturn hardware. The games? Well, they're few and far between, aside from the massively craptastic ones. If used game places have a *good* game in stock, they'll have jacked the price up to the point where it's higher than it was when the game was new!
That's just Sega CD. If you look for anything earlier than that, good fscking luck. You're reliant on dodging e-bay fraud and looking in the local paper's classified section.
Selling an emulator and roms would be quite easy for game manufacturers. Hell - look at the lack of cost! No packaging, no cartridge/disc, no printed instruction manual.. Distribution? Toss it on a website and let it cook.
Now, of course, there might be legal issues with distributing games created by another company. (See all those wonderful licensing blurbs on all console games.) However, I think the console manufacturers could throw enough weight around to get game manufacturers to join on the bandwagon if they wanted to.
Contra was the most popular game along with Mario in 80's china console. I still remeber having numerous fun sessions with my buddies during summer break when I was in high school.
Maybe that will disappoint you a lot, but Chinese gamers are just like gamers around the world. They will simply pick games because it's fun to play with. And no, Government has not much influence over what people play, since 98% gamers get their games from priated market anyway.
Regarding your question, there is not too much home-grown games in China . Piracy has simply killed off most home-grown game studios. There is a few home-grown games set up at ancient China might falls into your "pure fun in context to them, but would have no chance of being appreciated over here" category. But I think it's more a knowledge of history thing instead of Culture thing, and I've saw American players who know that part of history like those games.
Oh, by the way, GTA III was 2002's #1 seller in China pirated console game market . And GTA III: vice city has been sold out around the country.
You probably believe Palladium is designed to protect your privacy and security, too...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The largest N64 Roms were still less than 64megs, and they were also for an existing piece of Hardware that was needed (Doctor V64). The "emulators" of the time could maybe, just maybe, get off a frame every 10 minutes.
Gamecube titles hover around 600megs-1.2gigs, and are using all of the normal Nintendo compressed texture and caching techniques. They are a non-standard disc. Beyond that, disc based media doesn't use a ROM image, like older cartrages did. They use a separate file system, and need some sort of loading system (Windows CE on the Dreamcast, 2k on the X-BOX) to play games. The Cube is no different.
You are right, they already sell these consoles. But I do think they are not legally for sale here. I don't think they are officially approved by Chinese government yet. I could be wrong though.
Also, I was told that they will offer to "mod" it or they come "modded"
Aside from that, the prices at which they are selling for is quite high (kinda low compared to retail in US, but still high for an average Chinese citizen). Companies like Nintendo would probably have to enter the market with lower end systems that will match their spending quota. If they enter with current systems, the price will be too high, forcing them to drop prices in China. Then you get companies outside of CHina importing these units and sell at a cheaper price, hence creating a downward price spiral.
I was there a bit before, I also did see some weird looking consoles that play games similar to SNES games.
going to start making Super Nintendos again? Actually, here in Japan you can walk into most gameshops and purchase a brand new NES or SNES. These game machines are redesigned NES and SNES machines (or should I say Famicom and Super Famicom ?), meaning they are much smaller than the originals, and are still being manufactured by Nintendo. I think the only major Nintendo console not being produced in one form or another is the N64.
I am expatriate living in Shanghai, China. I am posting this from a cyber cafe here. It's obvious to see why this is such a dumb idea for Nitendo and will destory Nintendo in China forever.
For most Chinese, cyber cafe serves as their introduction to computer, Internet, and compuer games. The machine I am on right now is a PIII 800 with Nvidia GeForce. The usage cost is about US$1 for 4 hours. It's 2AM on Sunday morning and the place is packed with young people in their early 20s. Most are playing games, some are watching movies and surfing the net.
The availabe games on this machines:
Now the picture should be clear. Chinese are introduced to computer games with flashy 3D graphics and online gaming. None of people in this room except me have any idea what games look like before 3D acceleration and Nitendo is nobody to them. With their first game experience with such hardware setup and game titles, Chiese customers would hardly be impressed even with next generation GameCube, let along the NES.
Moreover, China and Japan have a really bad history. In general, Chinese hate Japanese. If Nitendo actually bring NES to the Chinese market, all it takes is an editorial in People's Daily provoking the memory of Sino-Japan war history and paint the sales of NES an insult for the Chinese people as second class customers. It will make Nitendo notorious in China and ultimately destory any chance for Nitendo in Chinese market.
I really hope Nitendo be smart about Chinese market. I workship Shigeru Miyamoto. I have already pre-ordered Zelda for GameCube from the states and can't wait to play it. I hope my Chinese friends will eventually have the chance to appricate the art of the master game creator.