Virtual Console games are too expensive . . .

[Onyxmeth]

Senlis said:

Onyxmeth said:

Khuutra said:

 

It's still a relevant comparison, because players had to buy from collectors up to this point.

I don't believe it is. The most popular emulators on the PC are rather good at emulating games, and the majority work without a hitch. There was no moral reason to not use them since the market had been dead for years and no one was making money on the sale of games. Someone that wanted to play a game could have used that method. Many did. I'm sure many of the people using the "eBay/Amazon" argument in this thread used that emulator method themselves.

It's also not fair to use a collector's market to justify the prices of downloadable titles, because then when is it not fair? So long as Nintendo charges under the standard price of a used cartridge, they'll always be in the right, regardless of how high the price is or how low the competition prices their own ROMs. The bottom line is this. Sony has a sliding scale from $5.99-$9.99 for PSN games, meaning everything under the $9.99 price point is better priced than comparable VC titles. Xbox Live has new enhancements on old classics and still generally comes under the price of comparable VC titles. This is direct competition. ROMs against ROMs. Downloadable content vs. downloadable content. Not collector's cartridges vs. ROMs. We have justifiable comparisons with Xbox Live and PSN, making the Amazon/eBay argument largely useless now.

I agree with everything except for the "There was no moral reason to not use them since the market had been dead for years...."

Besides the point emulation is illegal and therefore wrong (before you ask, i'm not a boyscout), there were people making money off of older games.  The people making new consoles, whatever they are called.  The ones that can play 2-3 classic systems at a time.  Therefore, you cannot claim that illegal emulation is not hurting companies' sales.  Besides the point that now Nintendo is selling thier older products now.  They have the right to do that at any price they want.  If you don't want to pay that price, you don't have to play their games. 

If a console was made that could play 2-3 systems at a time, then obviously it merely replaces my point of the emulation as the cheaper alternative to going into online auctions. Regardless of the method of retreiving them, my point stands that going through auctions was not the only method, and has always been the unecessarily expensive one for the gamer.

Nintendo can do that any price point they want, but it seems to me they are forcing their third party partners to follow this method regardless of whether the third party wants to or not. It seems Sega would want to sell their Genesis titles cheaper, since they do so on two other consoles. Also, this is a discussion and using the argument that Nintendo can do what they want is not productive at all in explaining whether or not their games are too expensive. In fact, it's more of a copout because you don't seem to have a better argument at hand to explain why the pricing is isn't too expensive.

It's very simple. Either the Virtual Console is too expensive, or PSN and Xbox Live are too cheap. Which is it? Considering that Nintendo themselves seem to be backing away from the Virtual Console in favor of WiiWare, it would appear enough people aren't buying to justify pumping titles in on a regular basis, and a very good explanation as to why could be a poor pricing model.