1w ago

Nintendo’s aggressive legal tactics and pricing strategy ultimately protect the quality and value of their games.

Nintendo, while aggressively litigious, do so to maintain the value and exclusivity of their IP.

Their games also never go on sale, and all sell really well over time, unlike many releases from other publishers.

The result is that Nintendo are able to release a solid cadence of high quality, first party games free of other forms of aggressive monetisation, maintaining the value of the games as art.

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Unpopular for sure
- Thank you. My switch collects dust btw, mostly play PC and on the steam deck.
  But Nintendo definitely aren't releasing an NFT loot box driven live service game any time soon, which almost seems to be a necessity for the other big publishers.
  
  They just released a gatcha-style pokemon TCG for mobile a month ago, and they've released a bunch of them previously based on most of their big IPs. They focus those on mobile instead of their consoles is the only difference.
  
  Nintendo is just as bad as the "other big publishers" and your sentiments aren't founded in reality. Their gacha practices, frivolous licensure of hardware, and constant patent trolling bring the games industry as a whole down as people like you paint them as a forerunner. I'll try not to write a whole TED talk but no promises.
  Someone mentioned just the Pokemon TCG, but almost every mobile game nintendo has released has had one of the worst dollar spend ratios out of the genre they chose. Fire emblem? Obscenely expensive. Pokemon go? LONG time gating unless you cheat or pay. Dragalia Lost brought in tens of millions annually - 1 in 200 chance from the average loot box for a dude. Don't get me started on pokemon quest, one of the most "get mom and dad's credit card" games ever devised. Literal loot boxes were only removed from mario kart tour late 2022.
  Nintendo has a couple of exceptional quality teams but those teams would be that quality with or without the Nintendo brand attached to them. There is nothing special about the company or the manner it is run when you compare it to the other major gaming companies, right down to release quality being low for many games because of crunch and share-driven deadlines. Hell, some of their flagship franchises have been victim to it recently (Pokemon titles).
  Nintendo puts their seal of approval on peripherals for their systems - have you ever bought a nintendo brand microSD for the switch? Grandma has paid 4x+ the price every year for a nintendo switch branded microSD that might not even come in a file format that works on the switch. All this, of course, to support the console with bar none the worst online connectivity that you must pay for, that cannot be improved by any means. Seriously, the ethernet dongle makes absolutely 0 difference in stability or quality if one player is using it, and it hardly improves things even when all connected players are using it. Insane waste of money.
  Anyway Nintendo literally does do that. They are greedy (mobile game cost:return ratios), corner-cutting (trash licensed peripherals), and draconic in the way they patent vague game interactions and prosecute anyone for trying to innovate in "Their space" (see the recent patents locking everyone except nintendo out of the sleep game space). They lock access to their games away from the public, and what they HAVE done is re-release, at full price, decades old games for limited times (Mario collection).
  There's interviews confirming they have interest in NFT and Metaverse titles going back to 2022, it is a matter of time. TL;DR the corporation is not your friend and you are only considering a tiny fraction of what they do.
  
  This is an incorrect way of looking at it. It's not an all or nothing circumstance. Nintendo is simply the flip side of the same coin of publishers abusing consumers. The PC gaming world is filled with good publishers selling high quality games at full price with no abusive practices (heavy litigation or mtx). As well as indie developers who do sales and dlc but are ethical in their design. You just have to look away from the marketing behemoths who want to syphon your wallet dry.
  
  Its not a neccesity for anyone, its just a cash grab. Nintendo doesnt do it because if they did, people would simply stop playing their games. Outside of the good reputation they somehow have, their game quality is fairly low. They do pioneer a lot of new ideas afaik, but they are far from doing them the best. BOTW and TOTK are their most impressive games, which arguably dont have a real competitor, but between Palworld, Genshin Impact, and Fenix Rising(which i think is also nintendo, oof) they arent particularly impressive.
  My point is that nintendos reputation and good consumer side service, they can take risks that other companies cant, because they will sell regaurdless. Hence, if they reduce their consumer side service(loot boxes, microtransactions, paid dlcs, etc.) they dont really have anything to stand on.
  
  Same boat as you but I've also got a shelf with thousands of dollars of switch games :S.

Their games also never go on sale, and all sell really well over time
_free of other forms of aggressive monetisation_
My brother in christ Nintendo titles are of the most emulated and pirated of all game companies. They're constantly the point of ridicule by sitting on the largest troves of only illegally playable video games in history.
- And yet used Nintendo games rarely ever go down in value, and eventually tend to go up.
  
  they go down... on devices that dont sell well. its why systems like the gamecube and wiiu had players choice or nintendo select prints. for example, DK Tropical Freeze was 50$ on the WiiU, 20$ as a Nintendo Selects. the launch price of the game on the Switch was 60$. They do it because they can get away with it because of the common sentiment that the WiiU had no games.
  nintendo is generosity is inversely related to the devices sucess.

Nintendo’s aggressive legal tactics and pricing strategy ultimately protect ~~the quality and value of their games.~~ the vast profits their corporate owners enjoy
Quarterly profit in Yen
\ 100 billion Yen is roughly 650 million USD

Upvoted because of actual unpopular opinion
- This is "Darth Vader did nothing wrong" IRL

How does going after emulators protect the quality and value of their games?
- The emulator in question was profiting off of using their proprietary encryption key.
  You notice how they haven't gone after Dolphin?
  
  They've threatened Dolphin, but they know going after Dolphin won't be as easy as Yuzu. That's why they handed the guy who made Ryujinx a bag of money and asked him to shut down, because it would be a lot of trouble, like Dolphin.

Pricing, yes. I don't think legally harassing youtubers reviewing their products or games helps them in any way. Even taking down fan projects doesn't help them. In the early 90s they sued blockbuster for renting games with manuals.
- Came here to say this. Their pricing strategies definitely are justifiable but their petty lawsuits do little-to-nothing to protect their bottom line.

I think the reason is Nintendo views themselves as a toy company, not a video game or entertainment company. They don't do sales because that's not a thing for toys, you sell the production run and move on. You aggressively attack anyone using your toys in media, because it makes them more accessible without buying them. It's why their consoles are weird, have bright colors. It's also why there games are generally better, as you can't release a half finished toy and update it later.

Nintendo fucking people over doesn't increase the quality of their games in any way whatsoever. Feel free to try and come up with an argument that says otherwise 🤷‍♂️

I agree they care about the perceived quality of their product, but don’t think them litigating has anything to do why the product is of the quality it is.
I would guess their litigiousness is a holdover from the 90s with them being afraid of being branded as “generic” because every parent/grandparent called their video games “the Nintendo” and they don’t want to be seen as not being protective of their IP as to allow unlicensed products. Maintaining the perception of quality from their products.
I think you’re conflating correlation and causation. They release good stuff, and don’t want to be associated with anything without their approval / lose legal ground of something of theirs, therefore they’re lawsuit happy.
- I'm no expert, but I think it's also a quirk of how copyright law works in Japan. Apparently if you don't consistently restrict other people from using your stuff, you weaken your case when you DO try to stop it.

I can tell you don't play Pokemon .

I think you're in the right neighbourhood with that opinion! Remember folks: upvote if you think it's unpopular.
Also, they do have games on sale from time to time, but it's never more than 33% if you're lucky, and only a few select titles. You're better off buying second hand. No money to Nintendo and cheaper for you.
- It's easy to have an unpopular opinion when its just flat-out factually incorrect. Nintendo's lawyers have literally no effect at all on the quality of their games.
  
  They are saying the litigation is to maintain value and exclusivity, and that they are able to push out high quality titles without aggressive monetization because of that.
  Not that the lawyers impact quality.

You mean like Pokemon quality? Lmao
- And joycon wireless communication problems quality?
  
  Don't get me started on joycon and pro controller stick drift quality

This would only make sense if Nintendo's legal actions either actually prevented emulation or piracy of their games or recouped the lost revenue (lol).
But they don't you can still emulate the switch and still get games for it (which was never a grey area unlike emulators). You could do for most of it's lifetime. You could also pirate on original HW, sometimes without HW modification at all.
Emulators have existed and still exist for older nintendo systems and you can still get old nintendo games despite decades of nintendo's legal efforts, just like you can get pirated movies or music despite decades of legal efforts..

releases essentially the same games for like 50 years
"quality"

Nintendo as a publisher having high standards of what is allowed to be published onto their systems from 1st and 3rd party developers is what contributes most to quality of the games.
Devolver Digital is a publisher well known for publishing similarly very high quality games from 3rd party devs without being nearly as exceptionally litigious as Nintendo is going after everyone and everything that even remotely infringes on IP protections, however there is a point to be made that IP law in Japan functions very differently from the US and that plays some roll in how litigious Nintendo is.
- Yeah it seems like if a kid says "It's a me Mario" while playing on a playground some Nintendo lawyer is going to be there to smack their family down with a 30 million dollar lawsuit.

this is unpopular opinions, not wrong opinions

Didn't have Mario Cart strange Mercedes Tie-Ins? I think that your conclusion is solid, but money is money.

I like a lot of Nintendo's stuff, but I fail to see how anything lawyers do is in any way related to what their development studios do. You're gonna have to explain how you think these affect each other.

I support their prices but most of the lawsuits are bad.
The switch emulator scene did fly too close to the sun, since they were taking donations and pirating games on day 1. Most places wait until the console generation is over before getting to work on software preservation

!vga@hilariouschaos.com

Just a fact.

If we're referring to restricting who can use your IPs as a form of quality control, I can see where you're coming from. I fail to see how jealously guarding consumers from accessing games released years ago has anything to do with the quality of what they release today.

Tears was mid and not only did it ignore series lore, it ignored lore in a game it's a direct sequel to, that and both games feel like "design by intern" when it comes to puzzles and direction.
Odyssey was... O.K. Not as tight as a Galaxy, but also not as enjoyable as the usual Mario linearity for every objective as Nintendo has more control over every experience the player has.
Samus Returns was good fun. Dread.... Wasn't a Metroid game.
Splattoon and Pokemon both fall into the categories of games they could tweak slightly and rerelease for $70 under a new title, as they do.
Other than that, what do we have to talk about, Animal Crossing? The 3DS version was better and had more to do.
...and... Then there's Kirby. What do we even do with him!?
A+ work. They've never made a bad Kirby game. Bad and Kirby doesn't exist. It's like they could try and it would still be fun.
They did, it was canvas curse, and somehow it was still fun.
No one has any idea why.

Has Nintendo been interesting in terms of art or gaming innovation in the past ten years? Apart from pokemon when I was a child, I only ever played some small party games at friends and I was never impressed by the games depth nor feeling the desire to get them at home.

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