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.'"

Comments

Blame me.

[MeanderingMind]

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?

Re:Blame me.

[AdamWeeden]

Well you are actually an anomaly. I've only bought 2 VC titles so far, and going by the sale totals it looks like 7.4 million Wiis sold compared to 4.7 million VC downloads which actually mean that on average there are about 2 VC downloads for 3 Wiis.

Re:Blame me.

[AKAImBatman]

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 have 8 to 10 classic game consoles at home, and yet I have purchased about 6 games from the Virtual Console. There are a variety of reasons for this:

• Convenience - It's a lot easier to boot the Wii and play a quick NES title than it is to pull out the classic console (which you lovingly repaired the pins), snake the cables behind the furniture, and hook it up to the television.
  
• Availability - I never had a Sega Genesis, nor have I ever felt the need to own one. The system didn't have much in the way of lasting appeal, but it did have Sonic. Now that I can purchase Sonic from the Virtual Console, I have even less reason to own a Genesis.
  
• Price - Believe it or not, TurboGrafix systems and games are not that cheap in the wild. $8 a pop is a pretty good deal for many of these games. Especially uncommon cult classics like Military Madness and Blazing Lasers. If the rumors of Nintendo adding Neo-Geo games turn out to be true, the value of the Virtual Console games will go through the roof! (Neo-Geo carts still cost upwards of $30 used.)
  
• Storage - I try to keep my games and systems neatly organized. Playing games on the VC allows me to do less to disturb that order, and can even save me storage space for titles that I don't necessarily want to invest in physical copies of.
  
• Authenticity - Playing games on the Virtual Console feels much closer to playing them on the original system than playing them on an emulator does. Nintendo seems to make an effort to replicate the experience as closely as possible. The NES-style controls of the Wii Remote and SuperNES/Playstation feel of the Classic Controller help heighten that sense of authenticity.
  

Nintendo may not have the most original idea with their VC service, but they've struck gold in terms of its implementation. :)

Re:Blame me.

[maxume]

It'd be interesting to see how many people even have their wii hooked up to the internet. It wouldn't surprise me if it was less than 50%.

Re:Blame me.

[Tofystedeth]

The summary said connection was approaching 40%

Original carts

[HalAtWork]

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...

Re:Original carts

[AKAImBatman]

Making a copy for use and keeping the original as a backup is legal.

This is not strictly true. The decision in the Atari v. JS&A case was that cartridges were not susceptible to accidental damage in the same way that magnetic media was. As a result, there was no need for an archival copy of the software.

A modern judge might see things different given the age of many cartridges, but you should be aware that they are currently NOT covered under the "archival" clause. (Now if only Nintendo would figure out that CDs/DVDs *are* volatile media and stop printing that stupid "backups are not authorized" warning in their manuals.)

Re:Original carts

[AKAImBatman]

Legally, a backup is different from a space-shifted copy. A backup for "archival purposes" as defined by copyright law is to protect against media failure. In the Atari v. JS&A case, the court referred to the original report that Congress used to draft the archival exception. The report had focused on the volatility of magnetic media as a key concern, and pointed out that copying of software could be done for nearly no cost in comparison to the huge cost of developing the software. Since cartridges could not be cheaply copied, nor were they at risk of failure, the court decided that a backup was unnecessary.

The court *might* have found JS&A's cartridge copier legal if there was a substantial use for it beyond piracy. JS&A tried to publish 9 of its own carts that were free for copying, but the judge didn't buy it. The decision was that there was no fair use argument for the device.

Now copying your cartridges for emulation is a different ball of wax. Just as you can legally space shift your music into MP3s, you should be able to space shift your ROMs into images for emulators. The roots of this definition of fair use come from the Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. case, also known as the "Betamax case". The Supreme Court later held that the betamax case applied to space shifting of MP3 players, CD burners, and other new technologies in the MGM v. Grokster case. (In applying the test, they found that Grokster was NOT a party to that standard and was intentionally trying to circumvent copyright law.)

These cases should pave the way for emulation to be legal. However, there is a catch 22. In order to space-shift your legally-owned games, you must rip the image yourself. If you download the games from a ROM site, you are in violation of copyright law. Ergo, 95%+ of people who use emulators to play games they own are actually violating the law.

And now you know... the rest of the story. Good day! </Paul-Harvey>

Speaking of...

[WED Fan]

Where's Phantom these days?

In home arcade.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:_nowhere_ does it say 'sold'.

[AbsoluteXyro]

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.

Re:Success?

[AKAImBatman]

FTA the top five are all Nintendo games.

This is because the Nintendo titles have greater mass appeal than the Genesis/TurboGrafx titles. That does NOT mean that the Genesis/TurboGrafx titles are doing poorly. In fact, Hudson originally announced only 5 TG-16 titles destined for the Virtual Console. Since then they've expanded the list to some of the best titles ever made for the system. This includes: Bomberman '93, R-Type, Military Madness, Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge, and Blazing Lazers.

While Nintendo and their partners have been keeping hush-hush on a lot of the VC sales data, Hudson's strong support for the VC certainly suggests that they've been having good success with the service. Sega seems to be becoming similarly infatuated with the service.

It's also interesting to note that there hasn't been a strong Nintendo title released for the VC since Starfox 64.

I bet the top ten are as well.

I'm not sure I would be so quick to say that. Nintendo's games will always dominate simply because they dominated back in the day. (e.g. 3 of my 6 VC games are Nintendo titles.) But that doesn't mean that the third parties aren't doing exceptionally well. Sonic, for example, was exceptionally popular back in the day. I would be surprised if it wasn't on a top 10 list.

When 3rd party titles dominate the top 5, THEN we can say they have good 3rd party support.

That, I'm afraid, will never happen. The customers are Nintendo players downloading titles on a Nintendo system, and have fond memories of playing Nintendo games. Combined with the timeless reputation of some of their games, Nintendo's classics library cannot be beat. As I said, though, this does not mean that third parties aren't seeing wonderful sales through the VC.

Anecdotally, I have heard a lot of excitement from friends/acquaintances over TG16 and Genesis titles. (Though the 600 points for TMNT got a big 'WTF?') The only catch is that there's more of a spread between which titles they're interested in. Some like shooters, some like beat'em'ups, and some like platformers. Nintendo's appeal tends to be more universal.

Re:Success?

[NiK0laI]

I'd say that the VC has been successful for Nintendo, I mean they are selling games for $5 minimum a pop, it's not like they spend any significant amount of time developing the games. At $5 a piece thats $23.5 million dollars they made doing practically nothing.

Re:Success?

[Maul]

I've purchased TG16 and Genesis virtual console titles. In addition, I've purchased SNES titles that were 3rd. party produced, such as Castlevania 4 (Konami) and Street Fighter 2 (Capcom). The 3rd. party titles are there to purchase.

In my opinion, there reasons Nintendo titles dominate the top five are:

1. Purchasers of the Wii might have a bias towards Nintendo titles.
2. Many of the first party NES and SNES titles have withstood the test of time better than 3rd. party titles, in my opinion.
3. A lot of the popular 3rd. party titles can't make it to the VC due to licensing issues, or the fact that they've been rereleased on the GBA. (The reason you likely won't see FF4-6 on the VC is due to the GBA rereleases).

What were the most popular SNES games of all times? You probably can't track this info down anymore, but I would wager that if you asked a bunch of gamers who played during that era, they're answer is going to be a first party title or a Square game.

I buy VC games despite owning the carts/consoles

[Vandil X]

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.

Re:For now...

[Wdomburg]

Erm, there's a fair number of Mario titles left:

    Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (orig SMB2 in Japan) (NES)
    Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)
    Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
    Dr. Mario (NES)
    Super Mario Kart (SNES)
    Yoshi's Safari (SNES)
    Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES)
    Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)
    Mario Party (N64)
    Mario Party 2 (N64)
    Mario Golf (N64)
    Mario Tennis (N64)
    Paper Mario (N64)
    Mario Party 3 (N64)

As well a number of Zelda titles:

    Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES)
    The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64)
    The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (GBC)
    The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (GBA)

Then there are other franchises, like Metroid:

    Metroid (NES)
    Super Metroid (SNES)
    Metroid Fusion (GBA)
    Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)

Or Kirby:

    Kirby's Avalanche (SNES)
    Kirby Super Star (SNES)
    Kirby's Dream Land 3 (SNES)
    Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64)
    Kirby & the Amazing Mirror (GBA)

There's plenty of other games out there - the original Super Smash Bros, the entire Megaman series, the Wario games, the remaining Castlevania games, the first Star Fox, etc.

And of course there's plenty of games left from other platforms. Plenty of titles continue to roll in from the Turbographix-16 and Sega Genesis. There are MSX games in Japan that could potentially be introduced to the US market. Neo Geo games are in the pipeline.

Given their current strategy of trickling the top tier games one a week (or less, some weeks) they've got enough material for a good while, even if they don't add any more systems to their repetoire.

Bigger issue than most realize.

[Cyno01]

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.

Re:We Want Bubble Buble

[juletre]

When Bubble Buble comes out, I will be happy. Until then.. it's Mario Strikers Charged.