I'll never understand why Nintendo went from giving us their classic games through eShop to locking them behind a subscription. One of their all time stupidest decisions.

I'll never understand why Nintendo went from giving us their classic games through eShop to locking them behind a subscription. One of their all time stupidest decisions.

TBH I prefer the subscription model. In either case you'll only own a copy of the game up until Nintendo closes their servers for good. It's not as though you own a copy of those games when you buy them digitally... just look at WiiWare for instance. Yes you can still access your digitally purchased games, but even Nintendo themselves say that there will come a day where you cannot redownload the games (and if your OG Wii ever breaks (which happens quite frequently, I should add), then there's no way to transfer your games at this point).

The $50USD/year sub fee is far more affordable than $10-20USD per SNES/N64/GCN game. You'd literally be paying more to have the same amount of ownership.

That all being said, however, if you've already purchased the game once, why not just emulate it at that point? You already gave the business their due fees, you've just gone out of your way to use the product you purchased in a manner perhaps not as originally intended via dumping onto a PC and running through an emulator.

Money. Pretty simple, unfortunately. So many games I doubt were being purchased as many were smaller classic titles. Most players would've mainly bought the big hitters. And then it's just a one-time purchase.

Nintendo has now infinitely monetized their classic games behind a sub service that also bundles in online play and cloud saves. 2 things that console players have come to rely on.

All companies would much rather have an infinite source of revenue rather than a one-time purchase.