I think you're missing the point of the parent's suggestion.
> Regulators should force companies to open source any games and associated server software that consumers paid to "own", yet companies are no longer willing to maintain.
Nintendo shouldn't be forced to support them, but consumers should be able to continue using them. The hardware still works great, and even if not, we have virtual hardware. This should be no different from me being able to pick up a game of Clue that my parents bought in the 60's and play it. These 3DS and Wii-U games were purchased by millions of people, and they are part of our global culture. People should not have to worry that they are legally prohibited from finding ways to play them.
They're no longer conceptually different in the case of discs (though maybe for the cartridges Nintendo still uses). Inserting a disc into a ps4 for the first time often just triggers a download for all of the game data, rather than copying from disc. Add to the fact new releases are heavily patched these days which requires download. At least in the ps3 era launch titles were a fairly complete product.
Once Sony phases out support for the ps4, the console is rendered useless for playing anything that isn't already installed. Hence my copy of Bloodborne is staying on there. I know they'll probably release some "remaster" but I'm not keen on re-purchasing what I already own (there are gamers that do this... buying a game multiple times, even in the same console generation, it's crazy).
I understand and agree, but I cannot fathom why anyone invests on Nintendo's digital platform, as they cycle completely every 5-10 years (e.g. Wii Virtual Console).
The games are great, but the way they milk their pĺayers on recycled content on _____ platform is insane.
The 3DS wasn't discontinued until 2020 and the Wii U 2017. Games were still released for a few years after too. There are older Switches than some 3DSs.
Damn, I didn't realize it happened so recently. So it only took 2.5 years after discontinuation for eshop to be taken down, and 3 years for the remaining online services (other than redownloads of owned games) to be shut down.
At the rate Nintendo is going, I wouldn't be surprised if Switch online services are shut down less than a year after they stop manufacturing it.
Nintendo is happy to make money off the NES intellectual property, defending it more aggressively than anyone else in the industry. They will do the same for the 3DS and WiiU.
That they are releasing emulator-based ports shows that the platform is still alive, and yet, they stop supporting the actual hardware.
It is totally within their rights to discontinue support, and it is not even unreasonable, but unlike some companies that offer some nice "parting gifts" when they do that (ex: open source, DRM free version, or just free credit), you will get nothing but lawsuits from Nintendo.
At least, you will still be able to play the game you bought, there are more evil companies out there.
The Atari 2600 launched in 1977. If you can get your hands on a working console and cartridge, they will still play regardless of the status of Atari's company software infrastructure. You can even transfer ownership of the cartridge to other people at no cost. The license even permits resale!
Cloud-based software allows corporations to rewrite ownership rights however they see fit.
edit: Aside, marking the lifespan of a product from launch is wrong. It should be marked from the date of distribution of the last product from the manufacturer, because that's the last time somebody was able to buy a "new" one, and a buyer has a reasonable expectation of long-term-support for buying a new piece of hardware. For example, I can buy a 2022 Moto G Stylus from the Motorola website today. They promise 3 years of security updates... but that phone was released a year and a half ago, so they're actually promising 1.5 years of security patches.
Do you think a person’s cartridge of Pokemon Sun is going to stop working after this?
Online services means multiplayer games won’t work anymore, but single player physical games won’t magically stop working just because the online services shut down.
> Do you think a person’s cartridge of Pokemon Sun is going to stop working after this?
Actually… I have a legitimate question here. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was broken on launch for the Wii U, and required a day one patch to play. It’s been stated that people who bought a game from the eShop will retain their ability to download it. But has it been clarified whether people who buy cartridges or discs secondhand will still have access to patches? (The fine article implies yes. So the obvious next question is, when will those capabilities be shut down?)
> Do you think a person’s cartridge of Pokemon Sun is going to stop working after this?
No, but some of the game's features will stop working. It's not a huge deal for Pokemon because it's primarily a singleplayer game, but that isn't the case for all games. Splatoon, for example, is a primarily online Wii U game that will no longer be playable at all after this shutdown (they had already shut down the servers for this game earlier this year due to a security issue, and took 5 whole months to fix it before bringing them back).
As time goes on, more and more games become reliant on online servers to function, more and more of their functionality is lost once those servers are shut down.
Do you expect companies to keep their online servers running indefinitely? For the benefit of a few dozen players playing at a time, at best? Splatoon was released almost a decade ago, barely has any players active, offers a single player mode and has had two sequels released since.
Also, if online functionality was available 50 years ago, the exact same problem would have hit Atari games. The technology just hadn't matured enough back then.
> Do you expect companies to keep their online servers running indefinitely?
I expect the games I paid for to continue to be playable with the same features they had when I bought them, I don't care what the developer thinks or how many other people are playing it. If they don't want to host the servers anymore, they should give me a way to host my own. Plenty of multiplayer PC games released 2 decades ago can still be played online just fine today because the developers included the option to host your own games.
Exactly. That's why I come back to a simple set of requirements for "physical media equivalent" software:
- Transferrable interminable software license (blockchain is a decent way to implement this but by no means the only one).
- Free dedicated server binaries for both game-servers and master-servers.
- Configurable server (or masterserver) connection within the client.
Old FPS 90s games actually hit pretty close to this. Binaries were easy to copy, dedicated server binaries were free and you could connect by IP, and realistically if you uninstalled first you could give somebody else the CD key and CD and it would probably work.
The only missing piece is that if the master/auth server went down the party was over.
Yes the security issues would make it unsafe to play with strangers, but the game would exist in an archival form that is no longer a thing for newer games.
My complaint is not that companies shut down their servers, but that reverse engineering to create your own compatible server is likely to get you sued and forcibly shut down.
Yeah, I mean I "bought" my Godfather DVDs two decades ago, so it's totally fine that I lose the ability to watch it now, of course.
This sort of well-we-have-planned-obsolescence-built-into-our-product should be a hard red line that's worth fighting now, because pretty much any game released today from AAA studios have at the very least lip service online functionality. If we continue down this path, it'll be like the dark ages of tv where entire libraries of important cultural works were lost due to neglegent preservation (see BBC tape reuse).
It's likely that when this comes to a head, there will be countless titles gone forever and nobody with the skill/licensing to repair the loss of culturally relevant material. If EA decides dragon age is no longer worth their servers kicking, will I lose my BioWare collection? Probably.
