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Virtual Console as a name and banner has been discontinued.

Virtual Console Is Dead As We Know It: Good!

Sean Alexander

Virtual Console as we know it will no longer be a thing on Nintendo Switch. Why is this such a good thing?

The announcement from Nintendo that NES games, 20 at launch, will be available as part of the online subscription has people in hysterics. 20 games at launch with more to come, as part of a larger package sounds like a good deal. It sounds like the solution people have been honestly wanting to the lacklustre Virtual Console. So what’s the issue?

 

Virtual Console as a name and banner has been discontinued.

Virtual Console as a brand is dead. Apparently.

 

It’s In The Name

Let’s be honest, Nintendo wants as far away from anything related to the Wii branding as possible. Virtual Console is very much a relic of that time. In 2006 this service was incredible. Buy any available retro game you want. This service continued on 3DS and Wii U starting in 2012, but things changed.

The reaction to this was one of disdain.

“Why should we buy these same games again?”

“It’s too expensive!”

“Why are they releasing the games in this way?”

By this point Virtual Console needed to evolve and modernise. At this time the way we consume small media like TV, Films, Books and Music became increasingly subscription based. Access to an all you can eat buffet where you pick what you want. Instead, Virtual Console acted as buying the meals individually.

So why are people angry it’s gone? Some are even saying they are upset as it was why they bought the system, expecting it, despite Nintendo never saying it was coming.

 

Seriously, Why?

NES games are offered as part of a subscription model

NES games with added functionality will be part of the subscription service

This is perhaps the most perplexing aspect of the matter. People are being very vocal that “Nintendo doesn’t want our money” once they announced Virtual Console would not be returning. To this I can only ask, well what did you expect?

If you spend the better part of a decade telling a company you aren’t going to give them your money, things will change. Nintendo DID want your money and still do, but the loud and constant vocal dissatisfaction caused a change of course. They want your money, but you made it clear they weren’t getting it via that method.

So when Nintendo modernizes their retro offerings, addresses the complaints by adding new features and a different monetisation…people ask why?

It’s because you asked for it. Don’t go to Apple telling them to add the headphone jack again and then ask them “Well what did you do that for?” when they do. Don’t ask me to slap you in the face for six years, and when I do, ask why I did it.

 

The Service Is Simply Evolving…Into a Service!

Xbox Game Pass is a solution to getting games for cheap in a buffet format

Game Pass is another example of a subscription service in gaming

Virtual Console had to evolve. It had to change and this is the evolution they chose. As part of your $20 a year (Or less on the family plan with enough people) you are getting 20 NES games at launch. $1 per game, with added online play like controller swapping and screen sharing. Also included in this is all the future games they will add. Not to mention online play and cloud saves and discounts!

The one concern is that yes, it would be hard to maintain that low price point when more and more games or systems are added. At some point it becomes a money sink. It just depends where that point is for the service. Of course people would much rather just buy the games again, although as noted they spent a long time not wanting to.

Is this an ideal solution? Not really. It leaves a lot of holes but it addresses the immediate complaints of Virtual Console. Perhaps as the service evolves it will develop a stronger library.

 

Virtual Console Simply Had To Go!

Vs. Super Mario Bros highlights the potential danger of retro games handed out piece meal

Vs. Super Mario Bros. refuses to stop selling for over £6

Switch owners love indies. Nindies as they call them. But what you don’t hear mentioned is how Vs. Super Mario Bros, yet another release of the game, is consistently in the eShop charts. What would happen if Super Mario World, or A Link To The Past appeared too?

Indies would be smothered. Heck look on 3DS at the impact the releases of the GameBoy Pokemon titles had. Nostalgia sells but it comes at the cost of something else selling.

Plus, no one can argue that buying the same game for £5 is good value. It isn’t. Sure effectively renting them isn’t stellar either but here we are in a world where every company in every industry does just that. Even software companies do it.

For the sake of the third-party scene and to modernise to how content is consumed in the modern age, the format had to change.

 

The Games Are Probably Still Coming Anyway

Virtual Console as we know it is gone!

Virtual Console as we know it is gone!

I’ll read the statement Nintendo gave to Kotaku in full, as this will highlight a very important final point.

There are currently no plans to bring classic games together under the Virtual Console banner as has been done on other Nintendo systems

In none-PR terms, and in terms a lot of people seem to be missing in a world of skim reading headlines: The classic games will not be sold under the name “Virtual Console”.

Nowhere does it say they won’t be coming. Nowhere does it say “No Classic Games”. Just that the games won’t be sold under that name.

Can we all calm down now?

What form of branding will it take? Probably the Classic range of systems, or the subscription, or compilations like those released by Capcom and SEGA.

Plus, this highlights something. The association that retro games from Nintendo absolutely MUST be branded Virtual Console reminds us of the Wii U. Remember that back then the problem was the name, the branding became too synonymous with one specific thing and became a mess.

Now Virtual Console is the name demanded to be applied to retro releases. They want to break this connection to past brands that frankly shouldn’t be around. Most certainly not if they want to evolve going forward in a modern world.

 

So What Does This All Mean?

Perhaps overall this shows that people get too hung up on names? This is the reality of an evolving business, one that faced backlash from consumers. But now those same consumers are missing that they are why it changed, they are why it evolved. Yet they wonder why.

People also fail to see how the market has changed, and how this approach to old games has to change to accommodate that.

Whether or not this is better is up for debate, but one thing that is certain is that it was necessary to change.

Thanks for reading, don’t forget to hit those share buttons! Let us know what you think of thee retirement of this brand, and Happy Gaming!

Xbox Game Pass Has Been Upgraded…Substantially.

Sean Alexander

Xbox Game Pass, the $10 per month downloading of games service, in a Netflix style, just got an upgrade.

 

Update (25/01/18) – Turns out retailers aren’t happy.

As noted by WCCFTech, an Austrian retailer has delisted all Xbox One inventory, stating that if Microsoft wants to profit purely from software, they can do it alone.

So it seems a number of things are happening now.
Microsoft as we know traditionally launches and for a while sells consoles at a loss, making the difference in licensing and software. Lord knows Xbox One X breaks even at most. Naturally because of this, the margins for retailers selling consoles, especially new ones, cant be that high, and we already hear from most places that selling new sealed games isn’t very profitable, if at all, for retailers.
So with the Game Pass announcement that games from Microsoft will be there day and date for that same $10 fee, it seems like MS is moving to a model that allows them to keep making their limited library, and getting a constant stream of revenue from more users, rather than making a handful of games yearly and selling them to a smaller base for $60 a pop. Of course, that latter option will still exist.
Plus MS can easily eat up any potentially lost revenue from other areas of the business. Remember they have done that before.
But what’s apparently more shocking is that according to those who have worked in the retail scene, MS games are historically 30% better with margins than first party stuff from Nintendo and Sony. MS games, for retailers, are the best ones to sell new. They are now losing a potential source of revenue that will shift to MS directly and make MS more money than the $60 per sale.


Basically, $10 per month from 10 million people is better for investors than $60 per game every few months from 2 million people. But one retailer isn’t happy about this it seems. They’ve caught on that this does nothing for them and are dropping Xbox inventory.

 

Original Story

All future first party releases will not only be available via Xbox Live, and in stores, but Game Pass…on launch day.

So now not only do you get Xbox 360 and Xbox One games for $10, you now get included in that price, full price retail games on the day they launch.

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This is an incredible move from Microsoft that has some people scratching their heads. Why would Microsoft release their own games for $60, and give you what is undeniably a better deal for $10 monthly, alongside a host of other games ready to go when you want?

Simple. Retailers, manufacturing, all of that stuff is factored into a $60 price tag. Plus, say a game got 2 million sales for $60. Lot of money, probably recoup development costs at that point. Now imagine 10 million people paying $10 a month.

For a company that hasn’t got the largest portfolio of first party software, this is a great move. They will be making in-house software fairly infrequently, as we have seen in the past few years, so why not sweeten the deal for a constant flow of $10 subscriptions each month?

The pros outweigh the cons it seems for Microsoft. Further, the Xbox brand historically has been covered by huge profits from other hardware and even Windows alone. Microsoft is fine with Xbox being a loss leader and with a subscription service…the bills effectively pay themselves.

I do believe this a way to get more money while not having to buy into more studios and make more games in a shorter time.

XGPgamescomHERO-hero

Of course there are cons to this however. If you stop paying your $10 a month, you can’t access the games, as is the case with PS Plus. You will be able to bulk buy 6 months at a time soon, so there is that for those who need it.

Secondly, the games are in rotation. They are only available for as long as they are up, just like shows on Netflix or BBC iPlayer. If it remains on the server, you can play it. For the new titles this is unlikely to be an issue, but older 360 titles may fall to this.

Finally, and this is the eventuality, what happens when the service ends? Would Microsoft let you play the games offline? Would you just get to keep them as you do with your physical Xbox 360 games?

Xbox-One-backward-compatible-Compress.Photos-1

These are the important questions and sadly they can’t be answered because this day has yet to come. We don’t know and I’m not sure Microsoft does either.

When considering Game Pass at face value, it is an excellent deal, but if you don’t play games much, you’re likely better off paying the $60 for a game outright.

Yes the eventuality of that is even physical copies of games now are subject to patches and updates, so when the servers one day go own, some games will be “unfinished” as it were, or at least unrefined.  But at least you won’t lose access to the games entirely.

 

 

So this is the situation. Microsoft has made an aggressive move into a Netflix like format, and the payoffs are obvious: It’s more money, monthly, rather than per game.

But for us consumers, maybe it’s not so great in the very long-term, or even medium term depending on how the service is received or games are rotated.

 

Maybe we need to wait and see, but I didn’t think this day would come so soon.

 

 

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy this article, and I will be updating everyone on developments as they happen via social media. Until next time, Happy Gaming!