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Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

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Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#61

Post by Affric »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #54
acdha wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was some way to tie it to copyright where if you want to lock the rights up, you have to provide the game in a playable form at a reasonable price. I’ve seen proposals which would implement that as a kind orphan works tax with a threshold so a small indie game wouldn’t be expected to provide unlimited support.

I don’t know why this would be a tax? If you’re going to go down this path, why wouldn’t you just require that the title needs to be purchasable on a primary market and usable on hardware/software that is currently supported in order for a copyright to be enforceable. If I can’t purchase and enjoy a copyrighted work legally, the copyright is unenforceable. In response to sibling comments, I don’t know why you’d do a…

Artificial scarcity is a scourge but I think for some works, say where you only want them to be available in a specific time and place, then perhaps as the author of that work you have a right to enforce that, at least to the extent that others shouldn’t be able to say record a live performance and then sell it with some kind of rights later.

All that is to say I think it’s slightly more complex than what can be contained in a single HN comment but agree with you in principle.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#62

Post by easton »

slowhadoken wrote: post #55
daydream wrote: post #37

I wonder long will the backend infra supporting the Switch will last. Especially now that they’re selling download-only versions of the games. Online services for earlier consoles like the Wii were more basic, and IIRC in some cases were developed and maintained by third parties, not Nintendo themselves? I understand wanting to get rid of that overhead especially if it wasn’t driving incremental revenue. But now the…

Valve has the perfect setup right now. Your desktop, laptop, or Deck can connect to Steam.

Unless it’s a 32-bit Mac come January or a machine running windows Which I’m fine with, but it’s not like Valve is magical somehow. If your machine isn’t still getting Chromium builds they can’t build Steam for it, you still need to buy new hardware. And the game consoles (less) often let you play old games on new hardware.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#64

Post by mysterydip »

philistine wrote: post #47
daydream wrote: post #37

I wonder long will the backend infra supporting the Switch will last. Especially now that they’re selling download-only versions of the games. Online services for earlier consoles like the Wii were more basic, and IIRC in some cases were developed and maintained by third parties, not Nintendo themselves? I understand wanting to get rid of that overhead especially if it wasn’t driving incremental revenue. But now the…

Look at the one company who owns a vibrant operating system: Microsoft. They dropped the original Xbox like a box of bricks. They shut down those old servers quite rapidly. With the Xbox 360 however, they will stop the ability to buy games on an original Xbox 360 next year. That's a long era of support! https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/08/17/xbox-360-store-will-c... I'm fairly convinced new credit card standards are…

WiiU and 3DS eShops are already closed: https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/... but to your point, you can still download owned games and DLC "for the foreseeable future", just purchases have been removed. You still have the option currently to migrate any leftover funds to a newer Nintendo account.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#65

Post by acdha »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #54
acdha wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was some way to tie it to copyright where if you want to lock the rights up, you have to provide the game in a playable form at a reasonable price. I’ve seen proposals which would implement that as a kind orphan works tax with a threshold so a small indie game wouldn’t be expected to provide unlimited support.

I don’t know why this would be a tax? If you’re going to go down this path, why wouldn’t you just require that the title needs to be purchasable on a primary market and usable on hardware/software that is currently supported in order for a copyright to be enforceable. If I can’t purchase and enjoy a copyrighted work legally, the copyright is unenforceable. In response to sibling comments, I don’t know why you’d do a…

Because taxes are how we typically set incentives and the government is well-configured to use them. This is common in other contexts: for example, in many cities leaving your property vacant will trigger additional taxes because they don’t want empty buildings impacting the surrounding neighborhoods.

> If I can’t purchase and enjoy a copyrighted work legally, the copyright is unenforceable.

That’s not true in the United States, and if it were you’d still have the problem this thread is discussing where you need the servers (or DRM systems, etc.), which is why I’d like to change the incentives so it’s cheaper to release things you no longer intend to use even if they weren’t directly distributed to users.

The indie carve out reflects that there is some real cost here (packaging things up, vetting the rights for a release, etc.) If you have an old game which never went big, you don’t want a solo developer getting hit with a bill they can’t afford because they didn’t back up everything well or life happened and some planned work took longer than they thought it would. Again, remember this proposal is for a legal mechanism to compel action and you want to think about how it could impact people with the least resources.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#66

Post by grumbel »

slowhadoken wrote: post #55
daydream wrote: post #37

I wonder long will the backend infra supporting the Switch will last. Especially now that they’re selling download-only versions of the games. Online services for earlier consoles like the Wii were more basic, and IIRC in some cases were developed and maintained by third parties, not Nintendo themselves? I understand wanting to get rid of that overhead especially if it wasn’t driving incremental revenue. But now the…

Valve has the perfect setup right now. Your desktop, laptop, or Deck can connect to Steam.

Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam store, which won't run well or at all on a Windows10/11.

So not exactly perfect either as far as backward compatibility is concerned.

[1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-80...

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#67

Post by hx8 »

philistine wrote: post #47
daydream wrote: post #37

I wonder long will the backend infra supporting the Switch will last. Especially now that they’re selling download-only versions of the games. Online services for earlier consoles like the Wii were more basic, and IIRC in some cases were developed and maintained by third parties, not Nintendo themselves? I understand wanting to get rid of that overhead especially if it wasn’t driving incremental revenue. But now the…

Look at the one company who owns a vibrant operating system: Microsoft. They dropped the original Xbox like a box of bricks. They shut down those old servers quite rapidly. With the Xbox 360 however, they will stop the ability to buy games on an original Xbox 360 next year. That's a long era of support! https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/08/17/xbox-360-store-will-c... I'm fairly convinced new credit card standards are…

I think this approach is fine as long as

* Backwards compatibility is maintained

* The company doesn't exit the console business and shut down their servers.

I'm pretty regularly playing 20+ year old games, and plan on playing them for the next 40 years. On this timescale I have serious doubts about the stability of online first platforms.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#68

Post by zamadatix »

lbourdages wrote: post #46
daydream wrote: post #37

I wonder long will the backend infra supporting the Switch will last. Especially now that they’re selling download-only versions of the games. Online services for earlier consoles like the Wii were more basic, and IIRC in some cases were developed and maintained by third parties, not Nintendo themselves? I understand wanting to get rid of that overhead especially if it wasn’t driving incremental revenue. But now the…

I bought physical copies of my Switch games for that exact reason. I can dump the carts somehow and play the games legally using an emulator if/when they pull the plug on it.

You can do the same with the eShop versions with the advantage you keep at lest some (if not all) of the post-launch patches for the game.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#69

Post by daydream »

philistine wrote: post #47
daydream wrote: post #37

I wonder long will the backend infra supporting the Switch will last. Especially now that they’re selling download-only versions of the games. Online services for earlier consoles like the Wii were more basic, and IIRC in some cases were developed and maintained by third parties, not Nintendo themselves? I understand wanting to get rid of that overhead especially if it wasn’t driving incremental revenue. But now the…

Look at the one company who owns a vibrant operating system: Microsoft. They dropped the original Xbox like a box of bricks. They shut down those old servers quite rapidly. With the Xbox 360 however, they will stop the ability to buy games on an original Xbox 360 next year. That's a long era of support! https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/08/17/xbox-360-store-will-c... I'm fairly convinced new credit card standards are…

Looks like the Xbox 360 will get more than 18 years of online store support. That's a really long time considering it launched in 2005.

I would take 18 total years online support for the Switch. It's been out for 6 so far, so even if I "only" got 12 years out of my unit (I just bought one recently) that would be pretty good...

...but not excellent. I bought a Wii in 2008 and after a long time in storage I pulled it out again a few years ago. Since then it's been used at least once every two weeks and mostly weekly. It's 15 years old and everything including the game CDs have held up surprisingly well.

Will I want to use my Switch and the digital games I purchased, in 15 years? Can't rule it out based on past history.

Wikipedia says >132 million Switch units have shipped, and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom just launched 6 months ago. Adding it all up, shutting down the Switch backend services in even 4 or 5 years seems insane at best.

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