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Virtual Console Offers 100 Games, 4.7 Million Sold
GameDaily reports on new numbers from Nintendo, discussing their ongoing success with the Wii's Virtual Console offering. According to the piece, there are now over 100 games available on the service, and some 4.7 Million downloads have been transacted since the system's launch late last year. "Nintendo has been updating the Wii Shop with new Virtual Console games every Monday. The top five downloads worldwide to date have been Super Mario Bros. (NES), Super Mario 64 (N64), Mario Kart 64 (N64), Super Mario World (SNES), and The Legend of Zelda (NES). 'With an Internet connection rate reaching 40 percent, Wii owners have more options than ever to find the kinds of games they love to play,' says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. 'Beyond the Wii Shop Channel, all types of people are getting connected and checking out the information and entertainment options available on the Wii Menu. Whether voting, creating a Mii or just checking the weather, everyone has a favorite channel.'"
This sounds more like success for Nintendo in general rather than success for the Virtual Console. Sure, as Nintendo did with the N64, they have the ability to basically support the VC on their own, but in order to make it a true breakout success, they need the support of third parties. The only way they're going to get more of that is if the third party games actually sell. Maybe third parties don't care as much because of the extremely low development costs. That's possible. I can't imagine a company feeling too good about itself when it sees that it sold 7 copies of a game though.
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
I'm one of those morons who ditched their old consoles with the advent of each new one. Now, Nintendo, Sega and the rest get to sell me nostalgia at top dollar.
I've purchased 4 NES games, 2 SNES, 2 Sega Genesis and 3 N64 games thus far. It's not an average, but assuming it is we divide 4.7 million by 11 and get 427,000ish people like me in the world.
Scary, eh?
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Too bad there's no program for someone with the original carts to enter into a program that allows them to download their games onto the Wii. Maybe someone could come up with a reader that plugs into USB for the NES, Genesis, TG16, N64, SNES, etc that allows you to use your originals. I like having all my games accessible on one system so I don't have to have them all set up, but I have a lot of games and paying for them all twice would suck, especially if the Wii's successor won't allow you to transfer them...
Twinstiq, game news
Where's Phantom these days?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Now if they could just find a way to actually create the consoles to run those nifty downloaded games.
File Deletion is Murder.
One of the great things way back when home consoles became available was the ability to play until your heart's content without paying any additional money other than buying the console and the cartridge (hey, I started out with the Atari 2600). Of course I still would occasionally go to the arcade, but now I didn't have to.
Now that consoles (not just the WII of course) connect to the internet and there are shops (and advertisements) it's only a matter of time until someone rolls out a pay to play model. Of course there already are the online communities/games which require monthly subscriptions but c'mon, these companies can milk much more money out of us. It's only a matter of time before they do and it's very, very sad.
Yes but the Opera Browser and Everybody Votes are not Virtual Console offerings. This article is about Virtual Console offerings alone. Otherwise, surely the Opera Browser or Everybody Votes would have made it into the top five downloads... on account of, you know, being free. But they didn't. So it is clear to see that non-Virtual Console offerings have been left out of the tally.
Unless Nintendo is planning on creating new VC offerings (or find ballsy enough third party developers to join them), at a certain point, they'll run out of titles to put on there. How many AAA titles (that they have the rights to) are really left from NES/SNES/N64? I'd have to think that the majority of these buys are for Mario or Zelda properties, and they've put almost all of those onto the VC already.
Article Headline: Virtual Console Reaches 100th Game Milestone; 4.7 Million Sold
From Article Subheadline: "more than 4.7 million Virtual Console titles have been downloaded so far"
From Article text: "more than 4.7 million games have been downloaded by Wii owners".
So, unless you consider your web browser and Everybody Votes channels to be Virtual Console games, then yes, they have sold 4.7 million games. For money.
Except in the headline? "Virtual Console Reaches 100th Game Milestone; 4.7 Million Sold". From text: "more than 4.7 million games have been downloaded by Wii owners" (not other software: games). RTFA before commenting.
Lalala
Lets have less Turbographix games, and more Secret of Mana.
That is all.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The fantastic Retronauts podcast talked about this milestone recently. They determined that as ownership of the Wii increases, Virtual Console purchases per person decreases. They surmise that all the hardcore fanboys who rushed out to buy the console bought a disproportionately large number of VC titles. It will be interesting to see the numbers after a year.
It's not nostalgic until I can struggle through Battletoads!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
RTFA before commenting.
You must be new here.
Why would Nintendo need third party support to be successful? Every single platform Nintendo has released (well, aside from Virtual Boy) has been a financial success... meaning Nintendo is making money (Nim$).
Nintendo does not need third party support to be successful: they have been successful for decades without NEEDING it.
What they would need third party support for is, maybe, to be the number one system. But having yearly crappy sports releases is not required to succeed. Just remember: console makers generate the bulk of their profits from first party titles. And Nintendo's biggest draw has ALWAYS been it's first party titles.
Another facet: half of ALL games sold in Japan in recent months were DS titles. So the DS is, right now, far and away the most popular modern system on the market... and it's portable.
Yeah... no matter how you slice it, the third parties are likely going to need Nintendo more than Nintendo needs them. But seeing as how the bulk of third party games are going to be trash anyway... their games aren't going to be needed very much. Especially on the Wii.
I initially wished for the standard Wii-motes to play the Virtual Console games, but I fear those bluetooth protocols would just compound the problem of response-times even worse.
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It's amazing the life (and bucks) Nintendo is getting out of these titles. Take the original Super Mario Bro, it appeared on nintendo, then later packed with preceding titles (Allstars) then on the GBA, and now on a virtual console. Who else can take the same game and then over abnd over 20 years later still be selling it again pretty much the same as ever. I'll take the free emulator versions over these anyday thank you. I wish more emulators could establish some multiplayer TCP/IP stuff though. I suppose though then you have problems with cheaters. Fucking bastards.
Gaming for over 25 years
I really wish they'd release N64 Re-Volt. That game ruled ...
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Despite having access to the original consoles and carts (in boxes stored somewhere in the house) and emulators/roms, I still picked up quite a few VC games: Super Mario Bros. (NES), Legend of Zelda (NES), Castlevania (NES), Elevator Action (NES), F-Zero (SNES), Super Castlevania IV (SNES), Super Mario World (SNES), Sonic The Hedgehog (Genesis), Kid Chameleon (Genesis), and Splatterhouse (TG-16), so far.
I like VC games because I can play them when I am already in the mood to play a console game, and they save right where I pressed the Home button (in many of these games, there was no save feature and you had to play through the entire game in one sitting!).
I no longer have to dig up the old console, probably having to clean the cart before trying to boot it, or messing with the questionable legality of emulators/roms for computers.
It's worth the few bucks to me.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Though I'm not sure what arrangement was made for XBLA to get the Turtles Arcade game on it for $5, but I suspect that the costs were such on the VC that they charged a premium to the customer to pay Ubisoft (Who currently hold the license to the Turtles property). Both games were Konami games, but Ubisoft has the exclusive Turtles license currently, so without an agreement between both neither game could have been published. Perhaps Nintendo charges rates as 'publisher' on the VC than MS does for XBLA... I dunno.
Whatever it was I'm sure it's because Konami no longer has the Turtles license and there were more cooks in the kitchen that needed to get paid.
That's why I love my brother's Tapwave Zodiac, my Palm T3 and LittleJohnPlayer emulator on those : Genesis & GameBoy games on the move.
Zodiac was specially cool compared to other PDAs, because it had console-like button layout.
There are some homebrew oriented consoles - like the GP32 and its descendant - that feature both handheld button layout and the necessary programmability so lots of emulators are available.
The only problems with handhelds (DS included, although it has 2 processors so it may be to a lesser extent) is that they lack the horse power to emulate powerful console (8bits are usually ok. genesis may still be ok. complex chips on SNES, sprite extravaganza of NeoGeo or anything 32bits is too much). Also, nintendo's handheld tend to have catastrophic resolutions, compared to PDA (T3 & Zod : 480x320). It makes them easier to BE emulated, but they make a bad target FOR emulators (screen must be shrinked, etc).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Does this include the cost of making sure an emulator is dead-on accurate? Or will you claim that Nintendo already incurred this cost as part of the development of Animal Crossing Population Growing for Nintendo GameCube?
And who gets residuals?
Most people who (console) game on LCDs dont even realize theres any kind of lag because they get so used to it. For a couple of weeks at work we had a guitar hero demo set up with a 42" LCD. I played it every day on my lunch and had all the high scores, but then i tried playing at my friends house and i was terrible, coming in early on everything, because id learned to play on an LCD with a lag. This was one of the reasons i bought a CRT HDTV.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Actually, Rare has said that Microsoft-owned franchises on the VC are "a possibility". Personally, I would not bet on it, but I wouldn't count it out, either. Could make Microsoft some money while hurting Sony... They are developing DS games, so you never know.
When Bubble Buble comes out, I will be happy. Until then.. it's Mario Strikers Charged.
"he, who has quotes in his signature, is a douche" - unknown.
I own this on Xbox Live Arcade currently. Contra is also in a newly released compilation pack on the DS. Then again there is Thier PC compilation. There isn't anything from preventing them from publishing it where / however they want. Actually I wouldn't be surprised to see one of these classic compilations in an arcade at some point.