Dear Game (and nearly every other) Industry,
With very, very few exceptions, good will is not a free resource. It’s precious and valuable, but ever so fragile, and seemingly small decisions can set it ablaze like so much kindle.
Even after a over a decade of ubiquity, digital goods are still in a rather nebulous proposition. A gamer’s decision to spend cash on a non-tangible product lives and dies on a) whether it’s worth it, and b) whether they want to walk into the digital storefront in the first place.
And here’s a textbook example of how not to do it: Nintendo’s Virtual Console
When Nintendo announced the virtual console and 3DS, and far more importantly, when they announced the transition from Wii to Wii U on the matter, they dumped kerosene onto the service and kicked it into an open bonfire.
It was a perfect storm about how to do things wrong:
- The existing Wii library, a year in, had not made the transition, and games would be released anew, with no guarantees about the rate of release
- For the games that did make it into the Wii U’s separate library, owners of the Wii release would need to spend $1.50 to unlock the Wii U version.
- Purchases of classic games made on Wii U will not show up on the 3DS, and vice versa, and there is no way to transfer save data between the two.
I’m not about to make any arguments as to what anyone, as a gamer, is owed by a publisher for a previous purchase. However, what I will say is that, for many people, and whatmore, the very people who were most likely to want to spend money on this content, Nintendo essentially made two statements with this:
- We have zero investment in the Virtual Console as a platform.
- None of these “classic” games will have any longevity.
People are just beginning to understand how creator-centric digital services can be. Even the least technologically-capable luddite you know probably has some understanding that PS One classics aren’t arriving on the 3DS anytime soon, and that their iOS games won’t arrive on their new Android phone.
But we do see those PS One classics going from PSP to PS3, and now to PS Vita. We do see our old iPhone and Android apps arriving on their respective successors, and their larger tablet cousins. And regardless of how sloppy the handling of the transition from PS3 to PS4 and Xbox 360 to Xbox One was, we still see a lot of carry-over, with Xbox 360 games keeping DLC when purchased on Xbox One, and PS3 games magically unlocking when ported to the PS4.
So when people see the Virtual Console storefront selection whither away with the launch of a new console, and the few remaining scraps slapped with an upgrade fee, with no interoperability between Nintendo’s only two platforms, not only is there little incentive to spend the buck-fifty, there’s monumentally less incentive to ever spend a dime there again.
Quick aside: I have zero financial entry into the Virtual Console on Wii. But I have spent, at this point, nearly a couple hundred dollars on iOS, about as much if not more on PSN, and more than I care to admit on Steam.
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