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Games Entertainment

Nintendo To Sell Old Consoles To China? 327

Posted by timothy from the one-billion-plus dept.
drfishy writes "An interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata on IGN hints at the possibility of Nintendo entering the Chinese market with their products soon. The most curious part of the interview is that Satoru Iwata says Nintendo is considering releasing older generation hardware to combat piracy, could this mean the big N is going to start making Super Nintendos again? Will there be new games? How would this fight piracy?"
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Nintendo To Sell Old Consoles To China? More

Nintendo To Sell Old Consoles To China?

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  • how i wouldnt mind buying a older nintendo, if it is 1/3 of the price....
    • I'll be looking into reverse exports for those with a nostagia itch. At 1/3, everyone can make a profit, I'm sure :)

    • Well, go over to FuncoLand [funcoland.com] and buy one!

      Use the store locator, they've been selling and buying used systems and games for quite a while.

      Once in a while I'll buy an older system and a few games, then discover they weren't as fun as I remembered.

      It's either that or start finding ROM's and emulators.

  • Piracy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:32PM (#5060608)
    The cartdrige systems are harder to pirate because it requires more hardware than a CD burner. That alone prevents casual copying of games.

    They are using the older (N64 I assume) generation because it was the last cartdrige based system.

  • Look at all the SNES games for GBA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by benzapp ( 464105 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:33PM (#5060611)
    The Gameboy Advance is clearly based on the Super Nintendo. Given that many Chinese probably do not even have televisions, having an all in one unit like the GBA is probably a great idea. I doubt we will see the actual console as it once was, the unit will probably be very much like gameboy advance. Perhaps it will have a TV out or something of the kind.
    • hey, don't casually assume that the Chinese people aren't technologically advanced. GBA's are already available in China, also. So I do think that the big N is going to ship older consoles, if at all.
    • The GBA is a 32bit machine. Much more powerfull then the SNES, and not physicaly based on it at all. It's mostly designed for 2d games. but not based on the SNES's hardware.

      Remember, the SNES was slow but had a lot of acceleration. The main CPU was just 3mhz!!

  • Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jaysyn ( 203771 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:33PM (#5060613) Homepage Journal
    ... cause it's so easy to copy a GameCube Game.

    Jayysn

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:34PM (#5060614)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:"Fighting" piracy (Score:5, Interesting)

      by entrippy ( 14141 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:41PM (#5060647)
      Nintendo are the one company (at least that springs to mind) that can completely legitimately claim that it still gets use out of its ROMs.

      Now, whether or not you think "abandonware" is a valid concept, you have to agree that if the software is still doing the rounds then it's not "keeping old software from dying" it's "piracy". Now, where you stand on piracy is a different matter, but the FACT of the matter is that Nintendo use thier old ROM's.

      Recent examples include the E-Reader for the GBA that lets you play old games and the various unlockable ROMs in Animal Crossing.

      Why, by the way, do you think Nintendo would want to shutdown ROM piracy just for the hell of it? Why do you think they would spend the money to deploy SNES's into China *just* to crackdown on ROM piracy?

      Nintendo cracks down on ROM piracy because they plan to use the IP as they see fit (bonuses for other games, deploying old hardware into new regions) and because they therefore view it as piracy, pure and simple.

      You don't get some god-given right to copy software just because it's a few years old. You might like to, but that's not the way it is. If you wanna pirate, that's your call - but don't call it anything else.

      This is not a critique of MrBrown, by the by, just an expansion of the points he brought up.
    • By re-releasing older consoles, Nintendo can shutdown ROM piracy by claiming that the games are actively on the market.

      Actually, they're already doing that with their E-Cards for GBA. The 2-D, 16-bit games, anyway.

      Perhaps they're thinking that the cartridge system of the Nintendo 64 is preferable to the CD system of the GameCube, because it's a lot harder to duplicate a cartridge.

    • Hm. It says that they are dumping old hardware onthe chinese market. I can't see how I'd be fighting piracy dumping my old hardware on a junkyard. Not even if it's configured in such a way it would nly run my own legacy trash.

      Can anyone explain the idea?

      • It will fight piracy by being cheaper. Ideally Nintendo has already recouped development costs on the systems and the games. That means they can reproduce an older system, and all that needs to be covered are manufacturing, business, and shipping expenses - all relatively low and constant. Manufacturing methods have probably also progressed so that the hardware is cheaper (look at the $20 10-in-1 Atari & Activision games). Nintendo can offer the system and games at competitive rates to pirates. So given the choice between a real $15 cartridge and a shady $10, most people will do the right thing and buy the $15. (Numbers are made up.)

    • Re:"Fighting" piracy (Score:5, Interesting)

      by farnsworth ( 558449 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:50PM (#5060684)
      By re-releasing older consoles, Nintendo can shutdown ROM piracy by claiming that the games are actively on the market.

      By not re-releasing older consoles, Nintendo has nothing to lose by people pirating roms because the games are not on the market.

      More than likely, they are counting on the difficulty of copying cartridge media.

      • Re:"Fighting" piracy (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Saturday January 11, 2003 @12:41AM (#5060846)
        Also, even if Nintendo were to lose 100% of the SNES in US market to the pirates, that's not much at all to have lost compared to what they're making off the GameCube now.

        Remember, the reason for DVD region codes is so that if a copyright-lawless region started pumping out auathorized copies of the locally available DVDs, those DVDs would be useless in an American Region 1 player. (So, that's the reason why the lawless land that is Antarctica gets its own DVD region...)

        By keeping curent generation technology out of China, it's a lot harder for China to export anything that's useful to the US piracy market.

        • Complete BS (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Goonie ( 8651 ) <robert.merkel@b[ ... g ['ena' in gap]> on Saturday January 11, 2003 @06:37AM (#5061727) Homepage
          The reason for DVD region codes was so that the studios could change different prices for DVDs in different countries without parallel imports undercutting prices, and delay cinema releases without the risk that people would import the DVD beforehand. That, and sheer bloody-mindedness.

          You probably believe Palladium is designed to protect your privacy and security, too...

        • Remember, the reason for DVD region codes is so that if a copyright-lawless region started pumping out auathorized copies of the locally available DVDs, those DVDs would be useless in an American Region 1 player.


          What do you think whould stop someone in a "copyright-lawless"-region from first importing an american region disc and then pumping out illegal copies of that?

      • Yeah, as opposed to a proprietary and unique inch and a half wide disc...

    • Re:"Fighting" piracy (Score:2, Informative)

      by Huogo ( 544272 )
      Gamecube uses a propritary disk, I don't see how you could easily copy it. It uses a mini 1.5 GB dvd type thing. I don't know anyone that can copy those, but I do know it is VERY possible to get blank cartridges, some hardware at radio shack, and some parts from a SNES and make your own carts.
      • there is no reason it has to read the data off of a dvd though. I see no reason why one can't bypass the dvd reader and put some kind of gc to pc cable on and make it read from an ide harddrive.

  • Pricing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:35PM (#5060621) Homepage Journal
    If Nintendo starts manufacturing old hardware again that will mess up the prices of used games in a big way. I we at the mall days ago and they has NESs for 40 bucks, SNES for 30 and N64s for an amount I forget, but cheap. They might have been cheaper than the NESs I dont' remember so well. Bit it was messed up! We've got like 3 NESs in the house. Well actually 1 physically here. I own one that is far away. We won one at a duck hunt tournament (people SUCK at duck hunt!) and my roomate's got one. We gave one to his brother.

    Oh yeah, that's another thing. At that very same duck hunt tournament there was a guy who was collecting Mario/Duck Hunt cartridges. He had so many he made a suit of armor out of them. However, he performed very poorly compared to us in the tourney. Apparently he collected so many that the price went from 15 cents to 95 cents a cart in his time. If nintendo manufactures more old Nintendo stuff wont that not work. I mean people can get carts for 95 cents they aren't going to pay more than that. And making more supply just lowers prices.

    I'm fairly certain Nintendo will only be manufacturing N64 stuff if anything. They aren't that stupid.

    • Re:Pricing (Score:2, Funny)

      by baba ( 105606 )
      Wow man, your English is short of the mark even by /. standards. I'm impressed.
    • Yeah, but it'll be in Chinese markets - not sold in the US. So it won't significantly impact the legacy market here. I'm sure there will be folks who'll want Chinese imports. Also, remember that we're dealing with economies of scale. A hot-selling high-priced cartrige in China might sell for the equivalent of US$4.
  • 1) There is a reduced market for newer (i.e. more valuable) titles because there aren't many consoles which support them.

    2) In order to profit, pirated copies of new games must be exported, requiring more effort

    3) There is less chance of pirated copies of newer games coming out of China, since there are fewer of them.

  • Fighting piracy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Joe Rumsey ( 2194 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:36PM (#5060626)
    Their older consoles need cartridges, cartridges are relatively expensive and difficult to produce. They cost less per cartridge if you are making a lot. Combined with the fact that by releasing older games there are no development costs needed, Nintendo can probably sell their old cartridge games cheaper than the pirates and still make a modest profit. If the pirated versions cost more than the real versions, there's no profit in piracy.

    • u should see the insides of the cartridges for my GBC that I bought in Thailand.. Pretty cheaply produced for sure!!!
    • "cartridges are relatively expensive and difficult to produce."

      And yet GBA cartridges sell for $20.00 less than console games on "cheap" DVDs.

      Part of what drives up the cost of cartridges is trying to squeeze as much information into them as modern technology allows. While the price of SNES cartridges stayed steady for most of the SNES' lifespan, the size of SNES cartridges went up exponentially, just like RAM.

      In a world that produces 128 Mbit N64 cartridges, I don't think it's going to be too terribly expensive to start making 16 Mbit SNES cartridges again.

  • Ya, this will work. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by chipset ( 639011 )
    Newer video games displace older games and systems. Let's face it. I got my playstation 2 and haven't touched my dreamcast.

    To say that having older, cheaper systems will prevent piracy is lunacy.

    Look at it this way, I can get many of the games and ROMs from systems of yesterday (many of the games were simply better), but does that mean I won't download today's latest? Hell no. (tho, I have to admit, I don't play computer games very much, anymore. Mostly console).

    It simply means that Nintendo is trying to cannibalize piracy by offering a cheaper, yet different, alternative. It is like saying people are stealing music, so the music industry is going to re-release old LPs so we have a cheaper alternative.

    Ya, this will work.

    • Re:Ya, this will work. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      "Newer video games displace older games and systems."

      Yeah, that explains why SNES games remade for the PSX were so popular. After all, who the heck would want to play Chrono Trigger in this day and age? It's so... two-dimensional...

      "I got my playstation 2 and haven't touched my dreamcast."

      On the other hand, Metroid Fusion got me all nostalgic and I was forced to play through the original on my NES several times recently.

      "It simply means that Nintendo is trying to cannibalize piracy by offering a cheaper, yet different, alternative."

      The idea is to sell good games cheap enough that it's not worth pirating. We're not talking about a few bored Chinese teenagers downloading ROMs, we're talking about the world famous Hong Kong knockoff industry. You know, the real IP criminals. The kind of people that are against ROMs as much as Nintendo because it cuts into their sales.

      Remember that "new" Harry Potter book that came out in China? The one that looked like it went through Babelfish three or four times before publication? That kind of "piracy."
  • This is easy, you make the consoles and "dead" games relatively cheap. Most people tend to not pirate things they can easily afford. If Nintendo really does do this you can expect the cost to be low enough to make pirating not profitable. Any money makes on this over cost is basically gravy so there is nothing to lose here.
    • Also, people tend not to pirate things when the legit sales of the title have already hit zero.

      If China were to copy carts like crazy and export them over here, they won't exactly be able to do much damage to sales of present Nintendo products... nowhere near the damage pirated GameCube ROMs would do.

      So, by withholding GameCubes from the legal Chinese market, it's harder for the pirates to get the orignal materials to work from. Nintendo's goal isn't to keep the copy protection solid forever, just long enough so that by the time it's busted they've already moved to something else.

  • While I was back in China (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sonny Yatsen ( 603655 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:41PM (#5060648) Journal
    While I was back in China last year, I was able to get a look into the state of gaming there. Right now there aren't many game consoles sold since everything is so expensive. However, there are these keyboard consoles with controllers plug in. They utilize the cartridge system. From the looks of it, they have a limit at producing 8 bit graphics (I played Contra on it). These cartridges also holds at least 10-20 games each. If Nintendo does indeed release an SNES system to China, I'd predict that it'd be a mixed thing. An SNES' graphics would vastly improve on anything commonly available to the people there. However, Nintendo must be able to provide consoles at a relatively cheap price. If they are able to provide a console for, say, 80 yuan, in order to appeal to the public. In addition, the children there are very pressured to concentrate on schoolwork rather than games. Unless it's marketed to the wealthy, this wouldn't go at all. Just my .02
    • I have a friend in China, she said the original playstation games cost about $300 US each. She wasn't sure how much the actual console was. But she has a decent PC at home and she said the people at work like to have Counter Strike tournaments after work. So I guess if you can afford a PC, you can just skip the console, especially if you can acquire the roms of the old systems and play them on MESS or something similar.

  • Most Chinese DO have TVs (Score:5, Informative)

    by grainofsand ( 548591 ) <grainofsand@@@gmail...com> on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:43PM (#5060658)
    Having lived in China for three years, I can assure you almost every Chinese household has a TV. Sets are cheap with a domestic 29-inch selling for around $US90.

    A Hong Kong-based market research firm recently suggested television set penetration was around 92 percent on the mainland, compared with 42 percent for refrigerators!

    All of the major consoles (inc XBox) are available in China as "grey imports". A PS2 sells for about US$200 and an XBox for about $US300. Pirate games galore and easily available for around $US2.50.

  • That's very nice of him (Score:5, Funny)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:46PM (#5060669) Homepage Journal
    to think about the children in underdevelopment countries. I'm sure my nephew in China will dump his PS2 once he could have given chance to taste the power of.....an old Nintendo. The Nintendo emulator on his dual Athlon-MP 2600 definitely can't compare to a real one. However Mr. Iwata must take into consideration whether there's enough electricity to power up one Nintendo there, because people are still using dynamo to power up lightblubs.

    Exactly what parallel universe is Mr. Satoru Iwata living in?

  • You're missing the point... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by silvaran ( 214334 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:47PM (#5060673)
    I see a lot of people linking cartridges to combat piracy. This is not at all what Nintendo has in mind. People are pirating Nintendo hardware/software because they simply don't exist on the Chinese market. So if you introduce them to the market, some of the people who are pirating Nintendo merchandise will start to purchase it, and piracy will decrease. Granted, in some cases it may be cheaper to pirate, but by giving people what they want, they may be willing to pay for it.

    Cartridges are just as easy to copy as CDs with the right hardware. A friend of mine paid $300 Canadian for a blank cartridge (can hold, on average, 8 GBA games), a cartridge copier, and a GBA. He can store a bunch of games on a CD or on his hard drive, and dump them to the blank cartridge whenever he wants to play them. The games are smaller, the cartridge is rewritable (although yes, there are CR-RWs available) and hooks right up to his computer.

    Introducing their products on the market won't make copying harder; if anything, it'll make it easier. It's giving people another incentive to not pirate these products that Nintendo is after.

  • Possibilities beyond gaming (Score:5, Funny)

    by Samir Gupta ( 623651 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:47PM (#5060674) Homepage
    We've done a lot of research into uses of Nintendo consoles other than gaming, such as using it as a inexpensive terminal for Internet access, or more compellingly, education, and we have done preliminary work with various Chinese governmental bodies and NGOs to make games such as Super Marx Brothers and The Legend of Deng Xiaoping to teach Chinese youth in new and engaging dynamic ways.

    Using older game consoles such as N64 and even SNES/SFC enables schools, particularly in rural areas, to immediately gain the benefits of technology without the cost and maintainence expense associated with traditional PC platforms. We look forward to seeing the results of this experiment in China, and will likely expand to other developing countries if it goes well.

  • ROMs Prevent Piracy ? What About Emulators? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by syntap ( 242090 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @11:57PM (#5060704)
    If there isn't a current working emulator for the N64, there will be (just like everything else). ROMs aren't a problem to dump, so it will actaulyl be EASIER to pirate those than to duplicate the special small GameCube titles. Not sure why Ninetnedo wants to go this route...

    Actaully, given reports of their diminishing profitability, I'm not sure why they don't flood China with GameBoys instead. Or maybe that's what "old hardware" meant...
  • Think about it... suppose they re-release the SNES over there.

    Now, think back to the days when *you* were playing SNES. Suppose consoles as powerful as the XBOX, PS2, and GameCube were available elsewhere in the world but they weren't available to you, thanks to your government.

    Holy crap! I'd be plotting to overthrown that bastard in a minute!

  • Stopping piracy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) <dchase@hotmailCHEETAH.com minus cat> on Saturday January 11, 2003 @12:04AM (#5060744) Journal

    Actually I think what he means is that in China you can get burned DVDs and CDs a dime a dozen, so they're afraid to release Gamecube in China. ROMs are much more difficult to copy so they'll release N64 instead.

    I don't think it's got to do with preventing ROM piracy since no matter how long a game's been off the market it's still technically illegal to copy it.

    • N64 piracy mechanisms have been available for years now, be they zip drives or CD-based systems. Likewise for the SNES and NES systems, piracy has been done to death.

      The Gamecube, on the other hand, his seen no piracy at all. The reason is that pirating would require the ability to read Gamecube discs on something other than a Gamecube, and would also require some medium to copy the contents onto that could then be played back on the cube.

      If Nintendo is really worried about piracy here it would seem like rather than rereleasing a system that the HK folks have pirated to death for years they'd release their as yet uncracked current system.

      More likely it seems to me that they're shipping inferior products to China because they'd be cheaper to make and sell and the Chinese don't have huge disposable incomes. Blaming it on piracy might be a way of sparing someone's feelings.

      • >N64 piracy mechanisms have been available for years now, be they zip drives or CD-based systems. Likewise for the SNES and NES systems, piracy has been done to death.

        But these are all hardware solutions so they'll always be the realm of a few enthusiasts. However when you can buy an exact copy of a game or movie, that worries the content oligarchy immensely.

        >The Gamecube, on the other hand, his seen no piracy at all.

        I don't know a lot about GameCube drives but my understanding was they were just small-format DVDs, my assumption with encryption. Well mini-CDs were uncopyable for the longest time until someone realized they were part of the redbook standard and the only issue was lack of media. I'm sure GameCube is somewhat more complicated but isn't their hardware standards-compliant? Last time I was in Beijing you could buy a stack of burned movies for $20USD on the side of the road, I think this is what worries Nintendo...

    • Do the copyrights on games expire in the same way that copyrights expire on everything else? Or, since the company theoretically will still be around in [X] years, is the copyright thus interminable?
      • Game copyrights expire like anything else, but that'll be 95 years assuming Congress doesn't change the law in the next couple decades to add more years.
        • God! 95 years is ridiculous! What better to restrict the development of knowledge than to prohibit its use? Good job, America!

          Side note: what if someone comes up with a very similar idea, so similar that it resembles copyrighted material? Are they not allowed to develop their own creation just because someone else came up with something similar?

          Gah, America can be such a horrible place to live... except for everywhere else.

  • What kinds of games? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by goingincirclez ( 639915 ) <goingincirclez@NosPam.msn.com> on Saturday January 11, 2003 @12:21AM (#5060791)
    This might be a little off-topic, but I got to thinking (uh oh):

    Assuming that Nintendo (or anyone else for that matter) re-released an old console & games, what kind of editing would be necessary to make a game fit the culture?

    Take for example, the classic NES games Rush N' Attack (say it out loud) and Contra. Those were clearly marketed toward the anti-communism sentiment prevalent in the US in the 80's. How would the Chinese take to that?

    Or even something say like GTA3... which very vividly portrays a modern western society (scary thought). For the most part, that's stuff we believe the Chinese can only dream of. What would they think of it? How about games like Wall Street Kid ?

    For that matter, what kind of Chinese-only games are there? Damn, I wish I knew more about the culture... I'm sure they would have games that are pure fun in context to them, but would have no chance of being appreciated over here.

    • Re:What kinds of games? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Saturday January 11, 2003 @12:39AM (#5060843)
      "Those were clearly marketed toward the anti-communism sentiment prevalent in the US in the 80's. How would the Chinese take to that?"

      Well, for starters, Rush N' Attack would probably be fine because the PRC hated the USSR almost as much (if not more) than we did.

      Contra should be alright because everybody hates aliens. (I mean, really, how are you going to associate a giant, disembodied beating heart thing with communism?)

      "Or even something say like GTA3... which very vividly portrays a modern western society (scary thought)."

      It will do nothing more than cement existing stereotypes. Much like it did with you.

      "For that matter, what kind of Chinese-only games are there?"

      I would suspect that they're all bad, to the point where "focusing on a Chinese theme" was designed to be their only selling point. It's really hard to put a finger on what the really good games are based on. Is Super Mario Bros. 3 centered about Japanese culture? US? Wait, there are pyramids involved, maybe it's Egyptian...

      "Damn, I wish I knew more about the culture..."

      Don't worry, it changes every few decades anyway, with bloody purges in between.
    • Isn't every title mentioned in the parent post a game that came from somebody other that Nintendo in the first place?
    • Contra was the most popular game along with Mario in 80's china console. I still remeber having numerous fun sessions with my buddies during summer break when I was in high school.

      Maybe that will disappoint you a lot, but Chinese gamers are just like gamers around the world. They will simply pick games because it's fun to play with. And no, Government has not much influence over what people play, since 98% gamers get their games from priated market anyway.

      Regarding your question, there is not too much home-grown games in China . Piracy has simply killed off most home-grown game studios. There is a few home-grown games set up at ancient China might falls into your "pure fun in context to them, but would have no chance of being appreciated over here" category. But I think it's more a knowledge of history thing instead of Culture thing, and I've saw American players who know that part of history like those games.

      Oh, by the way, GTA III was 2002's #1 seller in China pirated console game market . And GTA III: vice city has been sold out around the country.
    • Or even something say like GTA3... which very vividly portrays a modern western society. . .

      . . . where they're a character that trashes and bashes western citizens and authorities.

      I'd think that'd go over even better over there than here!
  • Well, I suppose cartrages are a bit harder to pirate, but that never stopped anyone in east asia before.

    On the other hand, while the chinese economy is on fire, I doubt many people would be able to afford $100 consoles anytime soon, but SNESs could probably be made for $10-20 MSRP these days.

    My guess is there will be new games, but only in chinese from chinese 3rd parties, while nintendo puts out translations of their popular games.
  • As long as I get a copy of any new Super Mario games that may be released, I will be the happiest boy on earth! (And a 22-year-old boy before any of those games saw the light of day.)

    On a side note, I think that new Super Mario Bros. games should be made anyway. I want a Gamecube disc full of expanded versions of all the old side-scrolling Mario games. Man, I'd buy a Gamecube just to get at that! (Nothing beats the functionality or fun of the classic Mario games!)

  • i don't think nintendo wants to sell old consoles in china to 'fight piracy' - plain and simple old consoles are CHEAPER. The average chinese household couldn't afford a GC, so releasing the SNES or N64 is the smart move - the consoles are cheap to make and there are plenty of great games they can re-release (and make more money on).

  • Piracy Reason (Score:2, Insightful)

    by CarbonCopy123 ( 544011 )
    He says:
    Due to piracy problems, we are studying several marketing methods, such as selling machines several generations old, rather than the latest models.

    Maybe I'm just thinking too simply, but it seems like he means he wants to avoid piracy, not stop what is currently happening. Nintendo's is thinking that due to high piracy in china, if they sell their newest games, they'll be copied and sold illegaly in other more lurcrative markets (US, Japan). If you only sell china old games, nobody is going to bother to pirate them. So sell them SNES and make some extra bucks with no negative effects.

  • Woo-hoo! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Saturday January 11, 2003 @01:11AM (#5060928)
    "The most curious part of the interview is that Satoru Iwata says Nintendo is considering releasing older generation hardware to combat piracy, could this mean the big N is going to start making Super Nintendos again? Will there be new games?"

    Who cares if there will be new games? The very concept of putting NES and SNES hardware and software back on the assembly line is teriffic news as far as I'm concerned!

    Nintendo retired these consoles because they had reached the point where their sales didn't justify the cost of manufacturing them any more. But now we have the possibility of introducing these systems to a new, relatively untouched market. A market that may very well fund the continued manufacture of these consoles and cartridges. The NES and SNES markets will (with any luck) be self-sufficient again. Especially when you consider the advances in both hardware and manufacturing in the past decade or so (ie. they're cheaper to make than ever).

    And if the cost of manufacturing the older consoles is being justified by the Chinese market, what could they possibly have to lose if they, say, start selling them in North America again? I'd finally be able to have my very own copy of EarthBound!

    (WaReZ kiddies: No, ZSNES is not the same. It lets me play the games I wish I had, but I still wish I had them. If you can't understand the difference, I truly pity you.)

    (Moral self-righteous twits: No, I will not mortgage my first-born on eBay for a used copy of the game. Nintendo makes no money off the sale of used cartridges. I'll buy it when Nintendo re-releases it.)

  • It's the media cost (Score:2, Interesting)

    by levin ( 170168 )
    It's a lot cheaper to produce CD's and DVD's than it is to produce solid state storage (like a videogame cartridge). At the prices you can get pirated stuff for in China--depending on how you bargain, under 0.70USD for a DVD last time I was there--it just isn't economical for someone to produce illegal carts.

  • In China? Screw that. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11, 2003 @01:20AM (#5060951)
    Release them here. And get Sega on board - man, I would have killed to have been able to play Warsong on my actual Genesis.

    This is a question I've long had for console makers: Why not create an emulator, package a shitload of games on the same disc as it, and sell it? Hell - you could even offer the .iso through paid download.

    Sure, just like music and movies - there are people who simply wouldn't pay for it.

    There's also a lot of people who would. I'll admit, I've downloaded games whose cartridges I don't own. The problem is - I couldn't find those cartridges back in the day. They're impossible to find now.

    I have a hard time finding decent Sega CD and Saturn hardware. The games? Well, they're few and far between, aside from the massively craptastic ones. If used game places have a *good* game in stock, they'll have jacked the price up to the point where it's higher than it was when the game was new!

    That's just Sega CD. If you look for anything earlier than that, good fscking luck. You're reliant on dodging e-bay fraud and looking in the local paper's classified section.

    Selling an emulator and roms would be quite easy for game manufacturers. Hell - look at the lack of cost! No packaging, no cartridge/disc, no printed instruction manual.. Distribution? Toss it on a website and let it cook.

    Now, of course, there might be legal issues with distributing games created by another company. (See all those wonderful licensing blurbs on all console games.) However, I think the console manufacturers could throw enough weight around to get game manufacturers to join on the bandwagon if they wanted to.

  • Wait just a goddamned minute. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rimbo ( 139781 ) <rimbosity@sbcgDE ... net minus distro> on Saturday January 11, 2003 @01:28AM (#5060971) Homepage Journal
    I was in China in September, and I saw everything there. PS2's, XBoxes, GameCubes, GameBoy Advances, and all of the games.

    What's this about -entering- the Chinese market again?

    As far as I can see, they're already there.

    Somehow I don't think that their sales will increase very much as a result of this...

    • The game consoles you saw in China are not officially released in China. Check out the games for PS2. They are either Japanese or English. None of the games is in Chinese. These machines carried back to China from oversea visits and the titles are pirated in China.

    • You are right, they already sell these consoles. But I do think they are not legally for sale here. I don't think they are officially approved by Chinese government yet. I could be wrong though.

      Also, I was told that they will offer to "mod" it or they come "modded"

      Aside from that, the prices at which they are selling for is quite high (kinda low compared to retail in US, but still high for an average Chinese citizen). Companies like Nintendo would probably have to enter the market with lower end systems that will match their spending quota. If they enter with current systems, the price will be too high, forcing them to drop prices in China. Then you get companies outside of CHina importing these units and sell at a cheaper price, hence creating a downward price spiral.

      I was there a bit before, I also did see some weird looking consoles that play games similar to SNES games.
  • Just match the prices the pirates are selling it. I could image a CD based SNES with onboard NVRAM running hundreds of games being sold cheaper than pirates can. When there's no reason to pirate, there won't be piracy.
  • This is all part of a brilliant war strategy against Iraq. Remember a few years ago when Saddam Hussein was buying Sony Playstation 2s [slashdot.org] to reassemble into military computing devices? This is pretty much the same deal, only his top lieutenants will pass out from lack of oxygen when they have to blow on the Nintendos to get them to work. With them incapacitated, the U.S./Japan coalition easily prevails. For Great Justice!
  • Manufacturing costs for the SNES or even the N64 are going to be incredibly low by now. Even the cartridges. Of course they'll need to be, they'll still cost a larger proportion of the average chinese salary, than the current round of consoles do of the average salary in the (more) developed world.
  • There are many comments in this thread that seem to assume China is some backward country with no tech and no money.

    China has more people under 13 than North America(including Mexico) has in total. China's productivity is growing faster than anyone elses. Chinas education system is strong in sciences. There is a big difference in living standards between the coutry and the city, but that is shinking fast.

    If Nintendo chooses to sell old hardware to China, it might work for a while, but china will be demanding the most cutting edge products very soon, and with more money than any other market.

  • Commodore 64s in China (Score:3, Funny)

    by acb ( 2797 ) on Saturday January 11, 2003 @09:13AM (#5061905) Homepage
    I heard some years ago (in the late 1990s) that someone was still manufacturing Commodore 64s for sale in China (or possibly Latin America), where few people could afford modern computers. Anyone know anything about this?

    If they're making C64s for mass use these days, how closely are they keeping to the original designs, and how many cheap-enough improvements have they added? Are they building them all on one chip, or using the original small-denomination RAM chips? Do they have any funky modern enhancements, like ZIP drives which pretend to be 1541s or integrated USB ports/IP stacks or whatever?

  • Old hardware? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Saltypear ( 640374 )
    going to start making Super Nintendos again? Actually, here in Japan you can walk into most gameshops and purchase a brand new NES or SNES. These game machines are redesigned NES and SNES machines (or should I say Famicom and Super Famicom ?), meaning they are much smaller than the originals, and are still being manufactured by Nintendo. I think the only major Nintendo console not being produced in one form or another is the N64.

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