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Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

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Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#121

Post by user5994461 »

lidHanteyk wrote: post #16
gregjw wrote: post #2

Is this bad? Am I misunderstanding? What financial damage does this do when Nintendo no longer manufacturers this console or actively developers for it and hasn't for years, or a decade in the N64/GameCube's case?

You might be missing the concept of "face" [0]. This is only bad in that it causes Nintendo to lose face, and Nintendo hates losing face. For example, examine Wikipedia; Nintendo's page about legal disputes [1] is whitewashed to reword all of Nintendo's abuses towards Free Software and the public domain as "protection" of Nintendo's "property". Face allows Nintendo to take their holier-than-thou attitude. It is why t…

As far as I know the concept of face is for people, not corporations.

(It's an Asian concept that might be grossly explained to Westerners as social reputation or honor.)

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#122

Post by MAGZine »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #109
colejohnson66 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that what clean room reverse engineering is?

No, that wouldn't be clean-room. Wikipedia's definition: > Clean-room design (also known as the Chinese wall technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights associated with the original design. If one of your engineers has to download and study the leaked source code, they've infringed Nintendo's copyrights.

It is (un?) fortunately impossible to tell whether someone obtained some knowledge from leaked source or by reverse engineering. Especially when looking at assembly (or RE through other methods) could in theory produce the same bugs/quirks as the original.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#123

Post by ptmcc »

dehrmann wrote: post #102
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #66

Modern Vintage Gamer just released a video [0] discussing this leak in greater detail along with its expected implications. Anyone who's curious can find the download links by backtracking through all the Pokemon Prototype General threads under the Pokemon board on 4chan. One of the leaks that caught my attention was the source for Pokemon Blue, partially because of nostalgia and partially out of curiosity to see wha…

I have zero experience in the video game industry, but I'd think that since video games get ~zero attention after they're shipped, writing maintainable code is less of a priority. I'd be really curious to see how the Pokemon Red/Blue split was done. Is it a C precompiler flag? Build config? Actual config? Cloned repo?

In the old days that was probably more true than it is today, since so many games are "as a service" now with shared engines, online platforms, continual updates/patches, tons of expansions and DLC, supporting mods, etc.

The downside is that we'll never really be able to play today's games nostalgically like we can with old burned-to-ROM games.

Online multiplayer games have a shelf life of sorts that depends on the servers being available and having other people to play with. There's a few examples of community-driven projects to revive classic online multiplayer games with mixed success but it'll just never be the same thing.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#124

Post by MaximumMadness »

One of the most interesting parts of this is the story behind Nintendo's use of friend codes rather than Gamertags.

There was a presentation [0] leaked that outlined that usernames "weren't simple enough". It's a great look into Nintendo's Wi-Fi Strategy

[0] https://www.docdroid.net/Qr3JNsl/wi-fi-concept-pdf#page=11

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#125

Post by ginko »

dragontamer wrote: post #120
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it, Nintendo had huge success from the NES classic precisely because of their absurdly protective attitudes towards old games. They've managed to retain some level of serious value onto 35 year old games in an industry where many games are being given away for next to nothing within a few years of release. I think they've pushed the NES stuff about as far as they possibly can and the NES classic was something…

Case in point: it was Dreamcast's ability to be hacked and run CD-ROMs illegitimately which probably killed it. "Open Source Video Game Hardware" is a misnomer. Video game developers (ie: EA or Activision) demand DLC and DRM models to extract more money out of "whale" video game players. A leak like this harms the #1 customer of a console: the 3rd party developers. Even if a console is a hit with consumers (ie: Dream…

> Case in point: it was Dreamcast's ability to be hacked and run CD-ROMs illegitimately which probably killed it.

I'm not convinced. I only heard about the ability of playing regular CD-ROMs on Dreamcast way after it was already dead. If anything Dreamcast is a great example of terrible mismanagement by SEGA.

And if CD copying killed the Dreamcast then the PSX would have been dead 3 times over. I knew tons of people that shared burned games for that one.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#126

Post by mostlysimilar »

DanTheManPR wrote: post #67
izzydata wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Nintendo offered N64 games to be purchased for the Switch people would still pay for them in droves. It's weird that they don't offer so much of their past works in any legitimate capacity.

It's genuinely weird that they still don't have a virtual console for anything other than a select few NES games. We're midway through the Switch's lifecyle already!

I've never heard a compelling reason for Nintendo not doing this. Why don't they have a full catalog available on the Switch? It's technically feasible and would make them boatloads of cash.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#128

Post by chongli »

dehrmann wrote: post #102
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #66

Modern Vintage Gamer just released a video [0] discussing this leak in greater detail along with its expected implications. Anyone who's curious can find the download links by backtracking through all the Pokemon Prototype General threads under the Pokemon board on 4chan. One of the leaks that caught my attention was the source for Pokemon Blue, partially because of nostalgia and partially out of curiosity to see wha…

I have zero experience in the video game industry, but I'd think that since video games get ~zero attention after they're shipped, writing maintainable code is less of a priority. I'd be really curious to see how the Pokemon Red/Blue split was done. Is it a C precompiler flag? Build config? Actual config? Cloned repo?

That’s not my experience of modern games. There are loads of games out right now that get patches constantly, sometimes even weekly. It’s not just multiplayer games; lots of roguelikes are in constant development as well.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#129

Post by bobajeff »

dragontamer wrote: post #120
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it, Nintendo had huge success from the NES classic precisely because of their absurdly protective attitudes towards old games. They've managed to retain some level of serious value onto 35 year old games in an industry where many games are being given away for next to nothing within a few years of release. I think they've pushed the NES stuff about as far as they possibly can and the NES classic was something…

Case in point: it was Dreamcast's ability to be hacked and run CD-ROMs illegitimately which probably killed it. "Open Source Video Game Hardware" is a misnomer. Video game developers (ie: EA or Activision) demand DLC and DRM models to extract more money out of "whale" video game players. A leak like this harms the #1 customer of a console: the 3rd party developers. Even if a console is a hit with consumers (ie: Dream…

I think the SegaCD, 32X and Saturn killed the Dreamcast. Maybe if they had done market testing before manufacturing and marketing and abandoning several different systems that people didn't buy they wouldn't have been so badly in debt by the time Dreamcast launched.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#130

Post by MaxBarraclough »

MAGZine wrote: post #122
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that wouldn't be clean-room. Wikipedia's definition: > Clean-room design (also known as the Chinese wall technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights associated with the original design. If one of your engineers has to download and study the leaked source code, they've infringed Nintendo's copyrights.

It is (un?) fortunately impossible to tell whether someone obtained some knowledge from leaked source or by reverse engineering. Especially when looking at assembly (or RE through other methods) could in theory produce the same bugs/quirks as the original.

Sure, but I was speaking to whether it breaks the law, rather than whether you're likely to get caught. If you don't care about the law, why bother to go halfway to the clean-room methodology?
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