Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak • Hacker News Board

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#131

Post by sshumaker » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

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…

Adding to this - for much of the pre-digital distribution era, piracy+retailers+rentals sucked out nearly 80% of the profits of the ecosystem. It made it impossible to break even as a studio unless you had a top 20 title released that year. The economics always sucked there - publishers fund development against royalties, break even happened after recouping this advance plus whatever costs the publisher larded on, per-unit royalties were often as little as a few bucks per game sold, and the publisher owned the IP. As a studio you had to get a continuous string of big hits as a single flop might put you out of business.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#132

Post by lprubin » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

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…

Is the reason for the flat structure saving space? I know on older games, space is at a premium and referencing files from the root might save some bytes so maybe that's the reason due to shorter file reference names.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#133

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#134

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #112

sgift wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5/6 sounds interesting to me. On the one hand Nintendo is the IP holder of the original ROM, so they would be the only ones allowed to legally download it if I understand it correctly. On the other hand the ROM was modified and contains a header which was made by someone else. So, to that part they don't hold the rights to download it? Or is it okay, because it's a derivative of their work?

You might be able to argue the header was implicitly licensed because the author knowingly distributed it.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#135

Post by kube-system » Tue, May 05, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

cycloptic wrote: post #101

tinus_hn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that a company like Nintendo has absolutely nothing to gain from all this effort.

With many companies easing into open source recently, we have seen that just isn't true. If we're still trying to spread the idea that the community is dumb and is going to ruin everything and will remove value from the product if they get access to the code, that assumption is going to be tested now regardless of what they do, and it probably will keep happening because the incentive for leakers and illegal aftermar…

"Not gaining something from it" != "Afraid to do it"

The decision to open source is not as dichromatic as it might seem. In between the "yes we want to open source" and "no we don't" there is a huge chasm of "IDGAF".

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#136

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Tue, May 05, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #25

EvenThisAcronym wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However I MUST say this is from 4chan so BE CAREFUL about what you download and how you play with stuff. The only danger in downloading something leaked on 4chan is that you run the risk of learning a little more about dolphins than you might have liked.

Or Having a virus sneaked in. Through it's very unlikely. But you always have that risk when downloading anything (from anywhere). 4chan is a very special place, it has many "good" people but it also has "bad" people. (Note that both "good" and "bad" are very opinionated, which is why they are quoted).

I've always viewed 4chan as hardcore chaotic neutral. They're quite happy to find novel solutions to mathematical problems, DDoS people they don't like, openly work with leaked source code, create a new chat system (tox), troll celebrities... they don't care about good/bad, they care about whatever strikes them as interesting or fun. Which is... a very mixed bag:)

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#137

Post by T-hawk » Tue, May 05, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

ginko wrote: post #125

dragontamer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The difference there was that the Dreamcast could play burned CD-R copies unmodded, while the PSX needed a hardware mod to break the protection against that, a significant barrier to entry. Later it could be done with a plug-in to the expansion port, but early PSX mod chips required soldering.

The Dreamcast also came four years later, which mattered; many more people had broadband connections capable of downloading a full CD-ROM in 2000 than in 1996.

That said, I agree with your first point - Dreamcast piracy really only became a thing after it was clear it would lose the market battle to the other consoles. Piracy didn't kill it, at most hastened the death by a few months.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#138

Post by inyorgroove » Tue, May 05, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

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?

I might be wrong but it would make sense to me that the second gen games (Gold/Silver) would share a far bit of code from the first gen (Red/Blue/Yellow). In that sense in this case, the code did infant live longer than the release of the first game.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#139

Post by Grazester » Tue, May 05, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

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…

SEGA's history with their previous console and console add-on completely burned consumers. There was the 32x addon for the Genesis and the SegaCD which SEGA did not support very well. This burnt consumers. There was also a lot of fighting between SEGA of Japan and SEGA of North America at this point.

They then did a surprise launch for the $400 Saturn months earlier than expected. Retailers were not prepare, developers were not prepared and consumer were not prepared. Due to the shortage of available units SEGA only allocated unit to big box retailers. K.B. Toys was so angry that they vowed never to sell the Saturn and really never sold it. Developers did not have their games ready for the surprise launch and were pissed off about it.

SEGA handles the launch so badly that at E3 that year for the Playstation keynote on the upcoming launch Sony just went up on stage and said "$299" and left the stage after. Here is the clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExaAYIKsDBI

The Saturn was horrible to develop for due to its complex and cobbled together design and SEGA's development tools were lacking and developer had to make their own tools. Sony on the other hand made sure developers got everything they need to take advantage of the system. SEGA then prematurely announced the death of the Saturn before the Dreamcast was even officially announced.This was a fuck you to developers once more who still had games under development for the system. The Saturn did not even get an original Sonic game....likely really

SEGA later would announce the Dreamcast and got everything right with this console but at this point the damage was already done. Consumer wanted nothing to do with SEGA, developers were skeptical, EA never supported the Dreamcast and SEGA had already burnt through all their cash. Their president had to bail them out with his own money, he would later die.

Sony and the Playstation 2 hype machine was now in full effect. People were waiting to see what Sony could offer to compete. Sony was promising Toy Story graphics and all sorts of nonsense and people ate it up, foregoing the Dreamcast to wait for the Playstation 2 launch the following year.

There was an in depth analysis of Dreamcast sales done a very years ago and it was determined that the sales of the console did not increase when the system was "cracked". This meant people were just NOT buying the console period as opposed to buying it to just play pirated games. So it was not the piracy that killed it.

SEGA just could not compete against itself and Sony any longer.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#140

Post by jwandborg » Tue, May 05, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

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.

> If one of your engineers has to download and study the leaked source code, they've infringed Nintendo's copyrights.

Is this an accurate interpretation of copyright law? I thought copyright was meant to prevent books from being copied, not to prevent books from being read.