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Some Revolution Downloads Will Be Free
GamesRadar has the details from an interview with Nintendo of America VP George Harrison, in which he passes on the very good news that certain past-gen Nintendo titles will be free for download onto the Revolution. The article seems to imply that primarily the games available for free download will be Nintendo created titles. From the article: "This is a clever move by Nintendo: regardless of the final power of Revolution and the frequency of new titles, Nintendo knows that its loyal fans will cry tears of joy over a free service that lets them download previous Nintendo classics straight out of the box."
Nintendo are often crititised and being "for kids", this move looks like it's aimed at an older set of gamers who don't have the time/inclination to figure out the emulation scene but want to relive those games they grew up on.
Smart move in my book.
Hey, the article that reported this misunderstood the point that the interviewee was trying to get across.
Past-Gen Nintendo-Created Titles will not be downloadable for free.
From the original interview:
1) They contradict that it will be free:
"GS: Do you plan on having like a per-download pricing model along the lines of the microtransactions that will be used in the next-gen Xbox marketplace?
GH: Well, we can use it in a variety of ways. We've used some of the older games already as little bonuses, either as bonus gifts or hidden in levels of games. Certainly for the first-party titles we'll be making some of those available. We haven't really talked about whether we would sell them. The third parties can make their own decision whether they want to sell them, or maybe they will add it on as sort of a free benefit when you buy a current version of the game. "
2) The part of the interview that was misunderstood:
GS: To continue with what's so revolutionary about the Revolution...
GH: Well, I think certainly being wireless out of the box is revolutionary. People sort of picked on us for not jumping in prematurely into online or Internet gaming, but we just looked at it, the way it was evolving, and just felt that it was not time to jump in. But certainly with the next console it would be, with a couple of important changes like eliminating the access fee so there's not really a monthly subscription, and making use of first-party games, downloadable for free.
He speaks of eliminating access fees then says "making use of first-party games" outside of the context of backwards compatability; he could have meant that downloadables, such as new maps for a Nintendo FPS, would be downloadable for free because access fees would be eliminated.
I'd love to be wrong.
This is the feature that will make the Revolution sell to current non-Gamers. For instance, my wife, someone who is decidedly not a gamer, said we are definitely getting a Revolution as soon as I told her about being able to play all the old school Nintendo games.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
except that the games are about 10 bucks a pop!
Namco Classics (Galaga, Dig Dug, and Pole Position) is 15 bucks, and you can't buy the games seperately
i downloaded a few demos, but the price was too high for the games, $2 would have been my limit for most of those
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
Has it occured to anyone else that this might be a move by Nintendo to bolster their third party support? I mean, if Nintendo can demonstrate that enough people are willing to pay a small ammount for an 'clasic' game ($1 Nes, $2 Snes, $5 N64) than many third parties (Sega, Namco, Konami, Square) may end up releasing both new and clasic games and using the revinue generated from the clasic games to offset development costs. If it is successful (and new 'clasic' games can be made) then companies could even end up having a small development team make a 2D game that is released at the same time as their New big budget game; for example square could Make Final Fantasy XX (at an enormous cost) and at the same time make Final Fantasy XX - 2D (at a comparitively smaller cost) and use the 2D version to tell another portion of the story.
To a certain extent, what I am saying is that if this works than Nintendo may have found a setup that is similar to how TV acts compared to Movies.