| Jumpin said: I think it would be more accurate to say it was highly successful in its era - since it generated a lot of hype, press, and games seemed to be selling quite well according to reports - but it became redundant and obsolete with the Eshop - which acts as a rebranding and successor to the VC and Wii Ware, as well as an avenue to purchase retail software. In the era of the Wii, the VC made sense. But it was locked down and limited. Nintendo also had Wiiware. What essentially happened is the two platforms were combined into the EShop and restrategized giving third parties more control over release schedules and strategies. Nintendo itself decided to do three things: 1, bundle software in classic consoles. 2, Use it to incentivize the online service by offering several dozen games to play for free. 3, with more recent releases, Nintendo has found it more lucrative to remaster/update their more recent content - but this includes some older titles like Link's Awakening - and it has been highly successful in volume and revenue. Third parties have taken a variety of approaches on their catalogue software. Sega, Konami, and Namco, bundle catalogue software together and sell it for moderate to retail price; Square Enix, Kairosoft, and NIS, sell their games individually for cheap; and others like Capcom and SNK do a mix of both strategies. Nintendo, on the otherhand, uses their older properties as a perk to help incentivize their online service while taking their more recent ones and updating/remastering them to sell on the EShop... sometimes they do older stuff, like Link's Awakening. In terms of software volume and quality, the Switch has now surpassed the Wii's Virtual console. We're even getting games like Final Fantasy Legend, Romancing Saga, Grandia, Langrisser, Disgaea, Tales Of, Final Fantasy 7-12, the Dragon Quest series, Witcher 3, Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Valkyria Chronicles, Dark Souls, and more - many of which either didn't release outside of Japan or didn't even come out on Nintendo consoles in the past. Instead of buying Sega games one at a time, for the price of 3 of them, during sales, you can get a bundle of 47 classic Mega Drive games. tl;dr/ADD version - The EShop is the main successor of the Virtual Console and has surpassed it in volume and quality of catalogue software. |
Great explanation, i liked that part where you detailed how the different companies manage their own releases as they see fit on the switch, but despite having a service with more volumen, maybe it's because how it is structured that people don't see the clear distinction between what they saw as "virtual console" or "older games" and releases of current games on the online shop, that people still seem to think that there are not enough releases of older games, and some also think that ther is no reason for Nintendo not to put games that were on the previous consoles like some articles titled "10 Great Games That Will Disappear When The Wii U eShop Shuts Down" you can found on the internet that listed: Super Mario RPG, Fast Racing Neo, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Wii Sports Club, Rhythm Heaven Fever , The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker HD & Twilight Princess HD, Pandora's Tower, The Three Game Boy Advance Entries In The Castlevania, Sin & Punishment, EarthBound Beginnings, and like that is obvious that the other companies will handle their games as they see fit, on wii for example some liked the convenience of having access to all the original Mega Man games from 1 to 10 except for 8, in that case people also think that it would be convenient to have all Zeldas available or all Metroids including prime trilogy etc, or having all the N64 games made or published by Nintendo, etc.
