I’m no business graduate but you’d think Nintendo and Xbox who have closed their marketplaces on specific consoles I.e. 3DS market and 360 market.
There are some absolute bangers on there and old games in their possession as well. Since some of those games are still cherished, you’d think they would be helluva easy to profit by re selling or making a super duper old game free!
That would up both their PR and Profit.
I mean sure, there IS emulation, but we’ve all seen Nintendos stance on that clearly and their own product is a bit shoddy at best, subscription seems half baked and the mini consoles were overpriced pi zeros. Looking at you PlayStation Classic.
So how the hell are these giant firms not realising this despite the retro aesthetic of games going up these days?
Companies don’t want you to play games already out it’s about controlling what you do play and breaking an old game from running is a feature not a bug. If I could develop a game where customers get nothing and you are required to pay them money. It would be the top funded game by every AAA publisher. Remember the people at the top and especially the shareholders don’t care about games.
They care about money and vendor lock in and planned obsolescence is how they get it. Because enough people have yet to say enough is enough. They do that with Legacy IPs because most people say well I bought the first one I wouldn’t be a real fan if I didn’t buy the next one.
I hate how accurate this is. However, it can also hurt them because there have been many franchises I’ve refused to buy because I never played the first games and I don’t want to jump into the middle of a story I’m unfamiliar with. I’m a bit of a completionist like that.
I wonder if this is why a lot of games are no longer numbering their new releases and just giving them unique titles. So people don’t think of them as a series and are more willing to buy the latest releases.
On a related topic, I HATE how Call of Duty just made a totally new game and called it Modem Warfare, then started up a new franchise with MWII, MWII, etc. We already had Modern Warfare 1-3! It’s like they’re trying to erase/overwrite their old franchise so when people look them up, they just find the latest games. Very sneaky!
EDIT:
This is where microtransactions and DLC (like useless character/weapon skins) come from. The customer gets practically nothing, but they pay the company so much money for it. There are tons of games that thrive on this model (especially mobile games) because selling microtransactions and extra downloadable content that’s just a recoloring of a skin makes way more money than just selling the base game.
oh it will definitely hurt them long term but shareholders and therefore leadership bonuses only think in terms of quarter by quarter. So any long term sustainably gets thrown out the window. Same goes for energy companies and the planet.