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A Nintendo fansite has asked the question "What is it that’s keeping VC sales from really taking off?". Now I don't know the state of Nintendo's Virtual Console game sales, but apparently they are not as good as this fansite thinks they should be. I've talked a lot about VC games, and it all boils down to three simple reasons why VC game sales aren't exploding.

The obvious and most important reason is the price, and if you haven't noticed VC game prices are insane. Nintendo can't justify charging $5 for Super Mario Bros; a game that came FREE with the NES and is over 20 years old. Their most reasonably priced games are from the N64, but even then $10 for games that are two generations old and can be found in bargain bins for a couple of bucks is high. Adding to the cost of these games is the fact that transferring them to another console if a problem occurs is impossible, and there is no guarantee that these games will be supported forever. The likely scenario is that the Wii2 or Wii3 will nullify your VC games forcing you to buy them all over again. If you combine all of these things there is no way a 20 year old game should cost me more than one or two dollars.

The second reason is the poor selection of games. Despite the fact that most people don't care about really old games, a lot of the games on the VC roster are average to mediocre. Who wants to pay exorbitant prices for really old, average games? If you are going to bother selling old games you might as well focus on the best of the best games from our gaming past. Where are the Mario and the Zelda games? Instead the VC list is populated by things that wouldn't make your average person buy it at a bargain let alone a premium price. 

The last reason is because emulation has allowed us to play all of the VC games for FREE, in perfect form for years now. You can argue that emulation is illegal till you are blue in the face, but it doesn't change the fact that it's there and it's better than what Nintendo is offering. Besides the glaring fact that emulation is FREE, emulation also allows us to play these games of old the way they were meant to be played. Nintendo has already proven, with Kid Icarus and Zelda: OOT to name a few, that they are not interested in providing console perfect recreations of the original games. Why pay premium prices for games that have features removed or don't play the same as the original? The worst part is that some of these features that Nintendo isn't bothering to implement (while being very capable), are vital to the games they were removed from.

Unless you've got a money tree in your back yard or are a really big retro nut Nintendo's Virtual Console doesn't offer much. Maybe a miracle will happen and they will lower their prices and provide better, console perfect versions of these games, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  

tags: nintendo  wii  vc  virtual  console  games  online  actraiser  

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