• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

What is Nintendo and sony’s rationale behind not allowing you to play many of their legacy games on modern hardware?

Umbasaborne

Banned
I was thinking this morning how much id love to replay paper mario on the nintendo 64. I own the wii u vc version but i didnt feel like hooking my wii u back up just for that game.

Its sort of wild that there isn’t a way to play n64 games on switch, well besides mario 64 (if you got 3d all stars) and a few third party games that are on the eshop. I would gladly pay an extra ten dollars a month to have an n64 app as a part of my nso subscription.

Better yet maybe they can add more snes games. Its wild that im not allowed to play mario rpg, or earthbound on switch. And nintendo doesnt seem interested in making any of those games availible on switch. Ocarina of time is one of the most celebrated games they have ever made. Yet its unplayable on switch.

i also wish sony would treat their legacy games better. Ps5 and ps4 are great pieces of hardware. There are so many good game availible, yet they dont have the legacy support that the ps3 had. I wish i could buy and play ps one games and more than a small handful of ps2 games. I wish they had a better solution to ps3 bc than streaming.

ultimatley both of these corprations have alot of money. And both the switch and ps5 are more than capable enough for emulation. So, if technology isnt the barrier, what is. Do they have numbers somewhere telling them that there is a great business reason for not making more legacy titles available?

ps: this is not a wars thread, Microsoft is doing great with this but i didnt make this thread to talk about them. Keep that shit out of here, thanks!
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I was thinking this morning how much id love to replay paper mario on the nintendo 64. I own the wii u vc version but i didnt feel like hooking my wii u back up just for that game.

Its sort of wild that there isn’t a way to play n64 games on switch, well besides mario 64 (if you got 3d all stars) and a few third party games that are on the eshop. I would gladly pay an extra ten dollars a month to have an n64 app as a part of my nso subscription.

Better yet maybe they can add more snes games. Its wild that im not allowed to play mario rpg, or earthbound on switch. And nintendo doesnt seem interested in making any of those games availible on switch. Ocarina of time is one of the most celebrated games they have ever made. Yet its unplayable on switch.

i also wish sony would treat their legacy games better. Ps5 and ps4 are great pieces of hardware. There are so many good game availible, yet they dont have the legacy support that the ps3 had. I wish i could buy and play ps one games and more than a small handful of ps2 games. I wish they had a better solution to ps3 bc than streaming.

ultimatley both of these corprations have alot of money. And both the switch and ps5 are more than capable enough for emulation. So, if technology isnt the barrier, what is. Do they have numbers somewhere telling them that there is a great business reason for not making more legacy titles available?

ps: this is not a wars thread, Microsoft is doing great with this but i didnt make this thread to talk about them. Keep that shit out of here, thanks!

MS is doing much better with their OG Xbox and Xbox 360 catalogue, but they have stopped adding games to it a long long while ago… :/.
 
Last edited:

kingkaiser

Member
Nintendo is all about value. The hate to sell their games for cheap, but that's exactly what they would have to do with N64 games in the year 2021 sold separately and outside of a subscription program. Obviously they do not see the current price for their online service as sufficient for delivering their classics that came after the SNES era on said service. I am pretty sure they are even holding those legacy games back in case they should feel the need to increase the subscriptions prices in the near future and thus ease the potential backlash with including N64 games.

Sony on the other hand doesn’t give a rat’s ass about their past titles. We all could witness it with how they treated the PlayStation Classic with subpar emulation. And to be quite frank, their legacy titles are just not very good to begin with. There is actually a very good reason why a certain individual asked not long ago "why would anyone want to play these?“
 
Last edited:

Naked Lunch

Member
because literally no one playing those shitty looking games.
Such a dumb take - sick of hearing this garbage.
Even if that post is a joke there's plenty who post this and mean it.

People are literally playing $100's of dollars a piece for classic games right now (especially Nintendo and Playstation games which this thread is about).
Since the pandemic people dipped into gaming's past and the retro scene exploded. Whens the last time you went into a local retro store? - shit is crazy.
The demand is there for classic games.
 

Codes 208

Member
Well I know for sure ps3 games pretty much need to be retooled from the ground up to work on ps4/PS5 due to the complications of its cell processor, Sony isn’t going to bother up-porting these games unless they know they can make more money on it like demon souls, TLoU, uncharted 1-3 and GoW3.

nintendo is just weird, running on their own schedule. They know we want it but they only bother when they feel like it from the looks of it.
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
Such a dumb take - sick of hearing this garbage.
Even if that post is a joke there's plenty who post this and mean it.

People are literally playing $100's of dollars a piece for classic games right now (especially Nintendo and Playstation games which this thread is about).
Since the pandemic people dipped into gaming's past and the retro scene exploded. Whens the last time you went into a local retro store? - shit is crazy.
The demand is there for classic games.
only boomers play those classic games.

Next generation young adults prefers next generation games.
 

Jubenhimer

Member
In Sony's case, it's because the PS4 was the first clean break from previous PlayStation consoles. The PS3 was notoriously complicated to develop for, and thus, is very difficult to emulate, which means its library of PS One and PS2 classics couldn't be carried over. Nintendo's case is similar, but they also wanted to go the Netflix route this time, rather than have you pay individually for each game. Both can do a lot better with re-releasing their older catalogue, but It's important to understand the technical challenges as well.
 

Tschumi

Member
They remake their best legacy games, and try to get full price or something close wherever possible... For everything else, there's master card hacked ps3/wii u
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
Give Me Money GIF by Jen Atkin
 

Zeroing

Banned
There’s this thing called exotic hardware and licensing of the platform.
meaning Game A was made for system A
It would need the developer A to allow the game to be on system B. Game A is intellectual propriety of developer A.

then to the exotic part hardware, Nintendo and Sony had those, it consumes resources to port it to another system with a completely different hardware.

so if you combine the licensing and the porting, it’s logical Sony and Nintendo aren’t too inclined to port anything.

business wise it is logical to remaster or remake it if the games are Nintendo’s and Sony property
 
the same reason the Skyrim is the only bethesda game that didn't become Backwards Compatible.

can't resell it to u if ur allowed to play the version u already own
 

SinDelta

Member
"I and many others will pay you for Twilight Princess HD, Wind Waker HD, Xenoblade X DE, Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, Black and White 1/2 on Switch. I will happily pay to buy games off a 3DS/DS/GBA/Wii/Wii U VC.

Nintendo to customers wanting to give them money for products-
iu
 
Last edited:

Markio128

Member
Such a dumb take - sick of hearing this garbage.
Even if that post is a joke there's plenty who post this and mean it.

People are literally playing $100's of dollars a piece for classic games right now (especially Nintendo and Playstation games which this thread is about).
Since the pandemic people dipped into gaming's past and the retro scene exploded. Whens the last time you went into a local retro store? - shit is crazy.
The demand is there for classic games.
There will always be collectors of any physical historical piece, however, this does not necessarily mean they play the games. I have a mate who has a staggering collection of physical RPG classics from yesteryear and she has probably played a handful of them. Therefore, my argument is that there is not such a large want for digital classics. The SNES games on the Switch I may play for 10 minutes just as a reminder, but I never play them with the same interest I did when they were current.
 

Krappadizzle

Gold Member
the same reason the Skyrim is the only bethesda game that didn't become Backwards Compatible.

can't resell it to u if ur allowed to play the version u already own
I dunno. Seems weird to me. It's been said before, but they are leaving free money on the table. Skyrim's rerelease was at least upgraded to a 64-bit system which offers a lot more modding and future legs for game. I'm sure converting the system from 32-bit to 64-bit wasn't a crazy huge undertaking, but it's not like it was exactly a lazy release. Plus they gave Skyrim Remastered away for free on Steam if you already owned the previous versions so I had no qualms with it whatsoever.

It's a strange state of affairs that the best place to play a majority of Sony and Nintendo's first party offerings is on a platform they've traditionally put no support on in PC. Emulation has become the de facto way to play these games at this point with a ton of fan-hack improvements and upgrades that unless Sony and Nintendo were to at a minimum match what's on offer for free from Emulation groups, they're re-releases would be seen as nothing but less than in my eyes.
 
Last edited:

sainraja

Member
Sony was the first to push for and offer backwards compatibility for two generations in a row. It was during the PS3 era where they changed their focus towards it. To say Sony has completely neglected backwards compatibility is false because the PS5 supports PS4 games and PS2 games via the PS2 on PS4 program they started last gen and streaming.

Basically their approach and implementation has been different than Microsoft and Sony didn't focus on full native or software emulation for PS3, the reason, I believe, they get flak for it but they do support their back catalog where possible. Also, you can play PS3 games via streaming which many of you count when it comes to speaking about xCloud so you can play PS3 games on the PS5, just via streaming.

What I think we should fault Sony for and I can't think of why or a good reason we don't have it is PS1 backwards compatibility. They should add that to the PS5. That was software right?
 
Last edited:

blacktout

Member
I can't speculate about Sony, but in Nintendo's case I think we're stuck in an awkward transitional moment right now. They decided to pivot away from the Virtual Console and towards a subscription service, but something is obviously preventing them from making the most of the subscription model. Maybe it was more challenging to implement than they anticipated. They initially planned to launch the service with both NES and SNES games in fall of 2017 but didn't actually launch it until a year later and didn't add SNES games until a year after that. Seems like something must have gone awry. It's also possible that they planned to add a new console every year and then COVID screwed those plans up.

Or maybe Nintendo, who are notoriously afraid of devaluing their IPs, want to roll out a more expensive retro subscription service add-on for Switch Online with N64, Game Boy, etc. but it has either run into technical issues or they're having trouble securing enough third party titles to make it worth the subscription fee they have in mind.
 

Umbasaborne

Banned
I can't speculate about Sony, but in Nintendo's case I think we're stuck in an awkward transitional moment right now. They decided to pivot away from the Virtual Console and towards a subscription service, but something is obviously preventing them from making the most of the subscription model. Maybe it was more challenging to implement than they anticipated. They initially planned to launch the service with both NES and SNES games in fall of 2017 but didn't actually launch it until a year later and didn't add SNES games until a year after that. Seems like something must have gone awry. It's also possible that they planned to add a new console every year and then COVID screwed those plans up.

Or maybe Nintendo, who are notoriously afraid of devaluing their IPs, want to roll out a more expensive retro subscription service add-on for Switch Online with N64, Game Boy, etc. but it has either run into technical issues or they're having trouble securing enough third party titles to make it worth the subscription fee they have in mind.
I would pay 50 bucks a year if the service offered even n64/gba/ds, 60 or 70 if they offer 3ds and gc as well
 

blacktout

Member
I would pay 50 bucks a year if the service offered even n64/gba/ds, 60 or 70 if they offer 3ds and gc as well

Ditto. Even though I have a huge fucking backlog already.

What I would really like is a service that includes some impossible to find retro games that haven't been rereleased or included in collections (like Little Samson).
 

Naked Lunch

Member
Sure they dipped. Priorities change when you are unable to buy PS5 :D
More like people were stuck in their house - looking and going thru past belongings. Finding old consoles in storage hooking them up - and having a go - and realizing how good and fun these older games were.

The same thing is happening with the comic book/graphic novel industry too post pandemic. People were writing the comic industry for dead forever last april. One year later and the industry is booming. Even the lowest key series are seeing multiple reprints. Back issues in particular have gone crazy - identical to old games' prices.
 
Last edited:
Money is the obvious answer. Why allow you to play something at no extra charge when they can remaster or remake it and sell it at $70 or tie it behind a PSNow subscription?
 

KAL2006

Banned
They don't want you to waste time playing old games that you bought before. It makes business sense that you buy their new games. Also occasionally they would like to resell their old games as a remaster, remake or collection.

Why should Nintendo give you access to Skyrim Sword their sales data has shown finds love to pay again.
 

chonga

Member
Because the money out is not worth the money in. Simple business logic.

You could combat that with 'but Microsoft...' - but Microsoft is in the losing position, so they have to chase dollars and they also traditionally have weak consistency in churning out high quality new titles. In other words in lieu of new appealing titles, they had to inflate their proposition with old ones.
 

Neil Young

Member
but Microsoft...' - but Microsoft is in the losing position
And this is why I'm a huge fan of MS. They actually give a shit (as much as a soulless corporation can) about their customers in some instances without having to think about their bottom line every fucking time. Gamepass is a perfect example.

Yay, I'm so happy Nintendo values their IPs so much and is stockpiling tons of cash. Meanwhile, we have to wait ten years between Mario Kart games. MARIO KART!! (Let alone YEARS between 3d Mario games and Zelda). And continue to pay for an internet service that is beyond a joke. They should have provided access to their ENTIRE catalog at a reasonable price by now but they have to figure out a way to charge us, once again, for Urban Champion. But they can do it because their fans will pay for it.
 

ShirAhava

Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
Nintendo is a nostalgia pimp having the whole catalog readily available would be mucho bad for their business model...."pimps up hoes down"

Charging $70 for a remaster would make less sense (not that it makes any sense in the first place) if the original could be downloaded from the PS store for a reasonable price

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "scamstation" but those type of polices are indeed for the payers not for the players
 
Nintendo tailors its games for each console there are multiple interviews like from suda51 how the no more heros franchise was made with motion controls in mind kamiya made the 1st viewtiful game gamecube exlusive because the ps2 couldn't render 2.5 anime style graphics at 60 fps with tons of slow down and other stuff in tight coners ect. Nintendo could port some of these games to the switch since the switch has everything besides the wiiu gamepad "which is under rated a second screen". Sony doesnt care vita games are going to be stuck on the vita the ds4 and ds5 doesnt have the ps3 sixaxis or press sensitive buttons so no MGS 1-4 or GT1-6 and many more ps2 games sony also killed there sony branch so any jp game that didnt get a english port from the ps2,3,vita or even ps4 era yea good luck. Sony got the yearly sports and cod kids there set for at least what 3-5 years before the licenses expire.
 

Knightime_X

Member
Nintendo is beyond out of touch.
They can't understand why their older consoles are targeted so much for emulation but fuck you for wanting to play old games on new hardware.

They'll never put 2 and 2 together.
 

Marvel14

Banned
Sony is hiding its shame. Nintendo sraggers its rereleases across generations to give you a reason to buy into the next.
This...one of the enduring exclusives of the Wii U era is going to be Windwaker. They would have ported it over this anniversary year otherwise. Nintendo always wants to give its consoles some exclusives to keep emphasising added value proposition.
 
I just know everyone is far behind MS in this area. I got a Series S this week and instantly had access to every game I ever purchased on 360, and 90% of them I forgot I even owned. Then purchased cheap digital copies of KOTOR, NG Black, Jade Empire, and Panzer Dragoon Orta and they will now follow me forever on all their future systems at no extra cost.
 

royox

Member
Nintendo tries to resell all their past stuff for full price every generation so they never allow full retrocompatibility even in the online shops.
 
Top Bottom