One might wonder about the ratio of Nintendo’s legal budget to actual piracy losses.
Having been a college student back in the days of Napster (and ignoring the complete dearth at the time in physical stores of the sorts of music I was getting into), $20 CDs with one good track were not a value proposition. So when I downloaded a track, there was zero actual financial hit to whatever label or the RIAA … it’s a sale that never would have happened. You didn’t lose money; you gained exposure.
My last console was an SNES, so I have no horse in this race. But being actively hostile to your customers generally ends poorly.
As a grown-ass adult, I’ve spent more than $2,000 on music on Beatport, mostly $1.29 at a time replacing the stuff I pirated for better-quality versions.
When you have to take away rights that used to be guaranteed by the first-sale doctrine, it’s likely a sign there’s something wrong with your business model moreso than users causing so much chaos (and profit loss) that you have no choice.
This isn’t some fly-by-night AI toaster company that’ll shut down services in a year and leave you fucked. It’s Nintendo. They’re going to survive just fine.
Given the switch is exploitable at the hardware level, i doubt there is anything nintendo can do beyond not allowing use of their online services.
They said a similar thing about 3ds cfw, yet we dont see any reports of it actually happening.
What I took away from the story is that they’re still going to sell cartridges, but the games won’t actually be on them … they’re essentially bulky, overengineered QR codes to be able to download the game you just bought a physical copy off. So, services gone? Congrats on your useless $80 piece of plastic.
The game key cards are only an option developers can use. Afaik no Nintendo published games are using them. Most games still have the game on the cartridge