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TalkBack / Re: Hard Questions for Nintendo

« on: May 07, 2012, 01:36:28 PM »

2.    This issue plagued the Wii in North America and Europe: toward the end of the system’s life, we just aren’t seeing Virtual Console games anymore. Europe went through months without a VC release, and North America was even worse. And there was never any explanation as to what titles were chosen and why, or reasons given for such a severe dry-up in the service. For example, there’s always been a high demand for EarthBound (SNES), but it was never released. Instead, Nintendo of America gave us Ice Climbers, which nobody wanted, or Pokemon Puzzle League (instead of, say, Tetris Attack). Could you explain the process for getting VC games onto the Wii Virtual Console, and why things tapered off so harshly?

 
We weren't seeing VC games anymore on the Wii most likely because they just weren't selling well. Publishers lost interest in releasing games that weren't selling. Sega's current support seems more like a gamble based on the feedback towards the lack of games.  If the current games don't sell well either then Sega will probably not release many more releases.  Its been six years since the Wii was released, releases were expected to dry up.
 
Earthbound wasn't released due to the legal issues and Nintendo's unwillingness to alter the game so that they could release it. High demand is irrelevant in this case. Ice Climbers would have been released simply because it was an early NES game. There are several of those on the VC - quality and demand didn't much matter much in the early days, they just released as much as they could.
 
Tetris Attack was not released because it had the Tetris name in the title. The Tetris Company is now quite protective of the Tetris name and have gone on record to saying that they deeply regret ever allowing Nintendo to use the Tetris name for a game that clearly wasn't Tetris. And since Nintendo didn't do alterations to the games, a title change would have been out of the question (although yes, I am aware of a few minor alterations to other games).  They probably figured why bother going through the process of getting the name changed when they could just release Pokémon Puzzle League as a substitute.

3.    It took four or five years for the Wii’s Virtual Console to grind to a halt, but the process seems to be happening much faster for the North American eShop Virtual Console, which is terrifying. The Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Game Gear, combined, must have hundreds of perfectly good games to release on the service, so it’s unclear and worrying how weeks will go by—weeks—without any Virtual Console releases at all, and when the smoke eventually does clear, it’s something like Qix or Lock & Chase. Nintendo of Europe and Nintendo of Japan have had no problems in this area—both localities have Wario Land and Kid Icarus: Myths & Monsters. I guess the biggest Virtual Console question I have is this: why has Nintendo of America been so reluctant to support the Virtual Console, both of the Wii and the 3DS?

 
There is no hard rule but Nintendo generally supports the 3DS Virtual Console when there are no 3DSWare games to release that week. The weeks when both or neither VC and 3DSWare have had new games are quite rare although they do exist.
 
Japan gets favorable treatment because its Nintendo's home country while Europe seems to get favorable treatment just because there are fewer 3DSWare games released there.