Virtual Console games are too expensive . . .

[ameratsu]

Senlis said:

Onyxmeth said:

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. 

 

You're right, they can charge whatever they want. The thing is, in order for me to legally play classic Nintendo games through emulation, I need to buy a Wii and a classic controller. That's $270 as a starting point for legal emulation. That makes zero sense financially unless you already own a wii or want one for other games. The fact that you're saying that I need to buy a Wii (or a classic game system) or abstain from playing classic Nintendo games because of legality isn't very realistic on your part. The restrictions imposed by licensing and by Nintendo on their operation of Virtual Console mean that not only will games I want never appear on the service, but the ones that I do want are tethered by DRM and inconsistent pricing, with it being unclear if future Nintendo consoles will support VC games. I have no problem with paying for older games, but the virtual console vs. emulation thing isn't nearly as black and white as you make it out to be.