Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?

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Carlos
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PostWhy don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by Carlos » Sun May 22, 2022 4:23 pm

This came up in a discussion with a friend about emulation and what should and shouldn't count as piracy. I argued that abandonware and games you cannot legitimately purchase anywhere should be fair game.

This led to a thought: if a company like Sega purchased an existing emulator (in this case Redream on PC/Android) and offered it as a portal to either buy games or offered an all-you-can-play subscription, would you use it as a legitimate way to play old games?

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kerr9000
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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by kerr9000 » Sun May 22, 2022 4:46 pm

Carlos wrote:This came up in a discussion with a friend about emulation and what should and shouldn't count as piracy. I argued that abandonware and games you cannot legitimately purchase anywhere should be fair game.

This led to a thought: if a company like Sega purchased an existing emulator (in this case Redream on PC/Android) and offered it as a portal to either buy games or offered an all-you-can-play subscription, would you use it as a legitimate way to play old games?


You do get some monitored retro, for example there's s lot of megadrive games on Steam that I'd bet are on an emulator.

You also get a lot of data east orjaleco stuff banged on repro carts and stuff that's all legal and above board

I have a few legal modern SNES multi carts one with jaleco games on, a couple of cheap legal handhelds with data east games on and some megadrive stuff in my steam library

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Lagamorph
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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by Lagamorph » Sun May 22, 2022 5:21 pm

kerr9000 wrote:
Carlos wrote:This came up in a discussion with a friend about emulation and what should and shouldn't count as piracy. I argued that abandonware and games you cannot legitimately purchase anywhere should be fair game.

This led to a thought: if a company like Sega purchased an existing emulator (in this case Redream on PC/Android) and offered it as a portal to either buy games or offered an all-you-can-play subscription, would you use it as a legitimate way to play old games?


You do get some monitored retro, for example there's s lot of megadrive games on Steam that I'd bet are on an emulator.

You also get a lot of data east orjaleco stuff banged on repro carts and stuff that's all legal and above board

I have a few legal modern SNES multi carts one with jaleco games on, a couple of cheap legal handhelds with data east games on and some megadrive stuff in my steam library

The Mega Drive classics collection on steam is literally ROM files and basically a fancy emulator and front end. You can just copy and paste the roms out of the folder to use in another emulator if you want.

Didn't Nintendo also get caught selling a pirated ROM in the Virtual Console once?

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Herdanos
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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by Herdanos » Sun May 22, 2022 5:29 pm

They do, they're just awful at it. See: Nintendo's drip feed of old games via NSO. They'd have more buy-in from their core base if these people hadn't bought the games multiple times already on previous consoles.

MS and Sony are generally better at this (their stores, AFAIK, allow you to retain credentials and purchases across generations) but they don't have the "retro" back catalogues as companies who've been in the industry longer.

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kazanova_Frankenstein
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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by kazanova_Frankenstein » Sun May 22, 2022 5:37 pm

I’m pretty sure a uk company did this (for 8 and 16 bit home computer games) a couple of years ago. I can’t remember the details of it, but it got some coverage and praise from the Metro site (amongst a couple of others) as I recall.
It may have been streamed content though, and I’m not sure how big the library ended up growing to.

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Lagamorph
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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by Lagamorph » Sun May 22, 2022 5:55 pm

I am fully on board with the thinking that games abandoned on old consoles thst you can't legitimately buy brand new anymore are fair game for emulation though and can't be considered piracy. Especially when it's becoming more and more difficult to get working hardware for some older consoles, and for some games that had very limited print runs.

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kerr9000
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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by kerr9000 » Sun May 22, 2022 6:20 pm

Lagamorph wrote:
kerr9000 wrote:
Carlos wrote:This came up in a discussion with a friend about emulation and what should and shouldn't count as piracy. I argued that abandonware and games you cannot legitimately purchase anywhere should be fair game.

This led to a thought: if a company like Sega purchased an existing emulator (in this case Redream on PC/Android) and offered it as a portal to either buy games or offered an all-you-can-play subscription, would you use it as a legitimate way to play old games?


You do get some monitored retro, for example there's s lot of megadrive games on Steam that I'd bet are on an emulator.

You also get a lot of data east or jaleco stuff banged on repro carts and stuff that's all legal and above board

I have a few legal modern SNES multi carts one with jaleco games on, a couple of cheap legal handhelds with data east games on and some megadrive stuff in my steam library

The Mega Drive classics collection on steam is literally ROM files and basically a fancy emulator and front end. You can just copy and paste the roms out of the folder to use in another emulator if you want.

Didn't Nintendo also get caught selling a pirated ROM in the Virtual Console once?



Yep Nintendo was selling one of the NES Mario Bros games I think Super Mario Bros (1) and there was info on it which showed that they had downloaded it from a rom piracy web site as apparently they no longer had a copy of the code themselves.

I assumed the Megadrive stuff would be roms and an emulator, so its nice to learn that this is in fact the case, it just seemed most likely as that's far easier than programming them to natively run on PC.

I grabbed this at one point when it was cheap and its old games put on to a cart nowdays

Image

and this

Image

and this

Image

The System with Joe and Mac cost me £53 New and plays SNES and NES and Megadrive stuff.

Theres all kinds of stuff out there, add to this sort of stuff the whole evercade console and carts

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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by jawa_ » Sun May 22, 2022 7:03 pm

I suspect part of the issue is that the bigger platform holders and publishers don't really want you playing a game more than a few years old, let alone retro stuff. They want consumers to be splashing out increasingly large sums of money on new games and to facilitate this they look to close down access to older games and ensure that physical editions ship in a generally pretty ropey state, with post-launch patches virtually essential and thus lowering long-term play potential.

To back up this approach, the big three console platform holders now also look to cover all bases by making paid subscriptions the defacto way of (legally) accessing retro titles; they love this as it means a constant, consistent stream of income and the consumer owns nothing.

I know that's a tad pessimistic and depressing, but... gaming today :lol: .

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Cumberdanes
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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by Cumberdanes » Sun May 22, 2022 9:23 pm

Lagamorph wrote:
kerr9000 wrote:
Carlos wrote:This came up in a discussion with a friend about emulation and what should and shouldn't count as piracy. I argued that abandonware and games you cannot legitimately purchase anywhere should be fair game.

This led to a thought: if a company like Sega purchased an existing emulator (in this case Redream on PC/Android) and offered it as a portal to either buy games or offered an all-you-can-play subscription, would you use it as a legitimate way to play old games?


You do get some monitored retro, for example there's s lot of megadrive games on Steam that I'd bet are on an emulator.

You also get a lot of data east orjaleco stuff banged on repro carts and stuff that's all legal and above board

I have a few legal modern SNES multi carts one with jaleco games on, a couple of cheap legal handhelds with data east games on and some megadrive stuff in my steam library

The Mega Drive classics collection on steam is literally ROM files and basically a fancy emulator and front end. You can just copy and paste the roms out of the folder to use in another emulator if you want.

Didn't Nintendo also get caught selling a pirated ROM in the Virtual Console once?


Yes, I believe the version of Super Mario Bros on Wii
VC had the file extension .NES which means it’s a ROM dumped from a cartridge.

Image
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kazanova_Frankenstein
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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by kazanova_Frankenstein » Mon May 23, 2022 3:48 pm

https://www.antstream.com/

This is the one I was thinking of.

From their site -

"....try your hat at our casual esports tournaments....."

Is that a saying? I'm not sure that's a saying.....

You "try your hand" or "throw your hat in the ring", but you never "try your hat".

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Carlos
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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by Carlos » Mon May 23, 2022 8:34 pm

Lagamorph wrote:I am fully on board with the thinking that games abandoned on old consoles thst you can't legitimately buy brand new anymore are fair game for emulation though and can't be considered piracy. Especially when it's becoming more and more difficult to get working hardware for some older consoles, and for some games that had very limited print runs.


I know the law as it is but there should be some changes to copyright laws to allow for fair use of abandonware. There is an argument that you could buy a secondhand copy but this doesn't work for digital only games that have since gone the way of the dodo, eg GTI Club Rally on the PSP.

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Lagamorph
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PostRe: Why don't companies monetise Retro Gaming?
by Lagamorph » Mon May 23, 2022 9:39 pm

Carlos wrote:
Lagamorph wrote:I am fully on board with the thinking that games abandoned on old consoles thst you can't legitimately buy brand new anymore are fair game for emulation though and can't be considered piracy. Especially when it's becoming more and more difficult to get working hardware for some older consoles, and for some games that had very limited print runs.


I know the law as it is but there should be some changes to copyright laws to allow for fair use of abandonware. There is an argument that you could buy a secondhand copy but this doesn't work for digital only games that have since gone the way of the dodo, eg GTI Club Rally on the PSP.

It also doesn't work when second hand copies are being sold for ridiculous prices of hundreds of pounds, one of which goes to the original developers/publishers in any way.

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