LogFAQs > #907035826

Calwings posted...

This. I always gladly buy games that interest me if Nintendo gives me a method to buy them and support them, such as re-releasing them on the Virtual Console. Hell, I re-bought every single gen 1/2 Pokemon game when they re-released them on 3DS in the last couple of years. But if Nintendo doesn't offer a way to buy the game, then to Nintendo it doesn't matter whether I buy the old game at Vintage Stock or download a ROM of it, because Nintendo gains nothing and loses nothing either way. But if they make more old games available, then more people will buy them for the convenience of not having to search through pirate sites to find ROMs.

The problem there is that it DOES matter to Nintendo insofar as they want to deny access to old games. IP laws in countries like the US also demand that they seek to deny access. Otherwise, all of their old stuff can potentially get dumped into the public domain, necessarily precluding most options to monetize said stuff in the future. It doesn't matter that, realistically speaking, Nintendo has ZERO de facto interest in making the old stuff available since the profit margins aren't high enough.

So it really comes down to how much leverage you're willing to give companies to restrict access to content that is no longer being actively used for monetary gain, both in terms of breadth and duration.
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"I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me." -Cao Cao