We recently reported that Game Freak suffered a security breach which led to a huge amount of confidential data being leaked such as game source codes and internal design documents.

During the cyber attack, the hackers also obtained native PC builds of Pokémon Legends Arceus as well as builds of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Pokémon Shining Pearl.

Now these official PC versions of the games have been cracked and are available to find online meaning they can be played on PC without the need for emulation though it seems compatibility may be an isuse with specific Nvidia cards and drivers being required.

The builds of Pokémon BDSP appear to be close to final debug builds, and Pokémon Legends Arceus is an early prototype build. These PC editions, made during internal testing and development of the games were most likely never intended to be publically released on PC and their releases are sure to further infuriate Nintendo and Game Freak who have already seen so much data leak.

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[ChronosNotashi]

These sales are not additive. Let’s say 10 million people buy the new Mario Kart on PC for $60. Congrats, Nintendo made $600M! Except… they actually lost money here. Because, how many of those people would’ve bought the game on Switch 2 had it remained exclusive? Let’s say 50%. Assuming $400 for the console, that’s $2B solely from console sales, plus another $300M from game sales. So, 2.3B or 600M in profits?

Don't forget to factor in the 20%-30% Valve would take with every purchase of Mario Kart, which would reduce the total by $12-$18 per copy. While the 20%-30% cut is not a bad thing (Valve does a lot more with that 20-30% cut than Epic does with a 12% cut), selling exclusively on Switch means that Nintendo only has to worry about physical retailer cuts when it comes to selling their games. So we're looking at even bigger losses there.

 

[MayorBryce]

Again, they could start with games from older systems which Nintendo does not even sell directly any more. That's pure profit from absolutely nothing. If we're talking about new games, you go with a one-year exclusivity period.

I guess I forgot to address this. Nintendo does make money from older games via NSO. You could call this a dirty tactic of selling you games you bought on an older console, but every other console and even PC does this. You pay the $20 a year for NSO (FAR cheaper than other online subscriptions and Game Pass) and get access to some older games. The ones people want to emulate or play on PC are likely the ones that are already on NSO, and more niche games… well, there you go: the only time Nintendo has a service problem, with old, niche, exclusive games.

 

[Xzi]

I’ll admit that most of Nintendos consoles can be easily emulated, but emulate for cheaper than the Switch outright? That can’t be done with where tech is at.

AYN Odin 2 was recently on sale for $269 and can emulate Switch, along with every other Nintendo console. The Anbernic RG556 is $185 and can emulate Switch as well, albeit not at full speed.

I guess I forgot to address this. Nintendo does make money from older games via NSO. You could call this a dirty tactic of selling you games you bought on an older console, but every other console and even PC does this. You pay the $20 a year for NSO (FAR cheaper than other online subscriptions and Game Pass) and get access to some older games. The ones people want to emulate or play on PC are likely the ones that are already on NSO, and more niche games… well, there you go: the only time Nintendo has a service problem, with old, niche, exclusive games.

That's $20 per year versus $20+ per purchase to the tune of tens of thousand of purchases. Moreover, the number of people subscribing to NSO specifically for the virtual console games is probably a fraction of a fraction. Selling the games individually would be better for both Nintendo's bottom line, and also for customer satisfaction.

 

[BlusterBong]

AYN Odin 2 was recently on sale for $269 and can emulate Switch, along with every other Nintendo console. The Anbernic RG556 is $185 and can emulate Switch as well, albeit not at full speed.

That's the rub, one's on sale, which has a base price of $340, which is 10 dollars cheaper than a non-refurbrished Switch OLED through Nintendo's store (Refurbished ones are $320), but 40 dollars more expensive than the base switch which is $300 and $260 if you get it refurbrished and even more than the $200 Switch Lite, which is $170 refurbushed. All of these are taken right from Nintendo's official site by the way. and one isn't even full-speed emulation (and again, there's no practical reason to emulate non-nintendo switch games when you can just buy the PC version).

 

[MayorBryce]

That's $20 per year versus $20+ per purchase to the tune of tens of thousand of purchases. Moreover, the number of people subscribing to NSO specifically for the virtual console games is probably a fraction of a fraction. Selling the games individually would be better for both Nintendo's bottom line, and also for customer satisfaction.

I’ll admit NSO probably doesn’t make very much money compared to releasing on PC. In that case, consider remakes/remasters/rereleases. If you buy the game on PC, you’ll never want to upgrade to a remaster. But if Nintendo can sell get a higher res version of the game on a future system, why mot do that? Luigi’s Mansion 2 and DK Country Returns both were rereleased for full price, something they couldn’t do in the PC space.

 

[ChronosNotashi]

AYN Odin 2 was recently on sale for $269 and can emulate Switch, along with every other Nintendo console. The Anbernic RG556 is $185 and can emulate Switch as well, albeit not at full speed.

The two issues with your recommendation of the AYN Odin 2 is that 1) that price point is an on-sale price point, so it's obviously for a limited time (in fact, main site for it that I found currently has it listed at USD $299.99 new, so same price as a new base Switch with dock included), and 2) the Switch Lite is still cheaper than that at $199.99 (less refurbished) when looking at purely portable-only options. And I'd rather take the Switch Lite, which I know will play most Switch games at full speed (as far as docked mode), than an Anbernic RG556 that may or may NOT run my favorite Switch games at full/optimal performance.

 

[Xzi]

I’ll admit NSO probably doesn’t make very much money compared to releasing on PC. In that case, consider remakes/remasters/rereleases. If you buy the game on PC, you’ll never want to upgrade to a remaster. But if Nintendo can sell get a higher res version of the game on a future system, why mot do that? Luigi’s Mansion 2 and DK Country Returns both were rereleased for full price, something they couldn’t do in the PC space.

In an ideal, consumer-friendly world, those types of incremental remasters and re-releases shouldn't exist, they have no reason to. If Nintendo thinks they can make more money selling the same games to the same audience over and over again than they can by going multiplat, they are sorely mistaken. That said, remasters still get regular releases on PC, like with Horizon Zero Dawn.

The two issues with your recommendation of the AYN Odin 2 is that 1) that price point is an on-sale price point, so it's obviously for a limited time (in fact, main site for it that I found currently has it listed at $299.99, so same price as a new base Switch with dock included), and 2) the Switch Lite is still cheaper than that at $199.99 (less refurbished) when looking at purely portable-only options. And I'd rather take the Switch Lite, which I know will play most Switch games at full speed (as far as docked mode), than an Anbernic RG556 that may or may NOT play my favorite Switch games at full/optimal performance.

Difference of course being that you can emulate all the games free, and at $60 a pop, that savings adds up quick. The impact of readily-available pirated games may be minimal at times like these when Nintendo's latest console is selling in record numbers, but it's much better to address it with a lasting solution now, rather than wait until they have another Wii U-style flop on their hands. Or don't, but if your strategy is to do nothing, then piss off altogether and don't be attacking the people who will inevitably step up to fill the void you've purposefully left there.

 

[Snintendog]

I’ll admit that most of Nintendos consoles can be easily emulated, but emulate for cheaper than the Switch outright? That can’t be done with where tech is at. Your phone is more than $300, your Steam Deck is more than $300. Nintendo out-competes piracy by making their games easily accessible through the Switch, and by occasionally shutting down emulators that pose a serious threat to sales. The latter is the exact same as a company shutting down a repacker.

The point of shutting down emulation is to prevent piracy, not because the PC space isn’t profitable.

Again, do you have any decent arguments?

The Raspberry Pi Even the RPI 2b could do all the way to gen 5 for 30$ and even then that was kinda Pricey for a SYSchip device at the time. Now we have Gen 7 on 300$ budget Phones and Gen 9 barely on them you need a bit of a leap from Budget but If you buy a simple Desktop noting fancy you can do EMU to the latest Console AKA steam deck a 600$ investment will do all of them better than the OG Console at this point + Native PC ports on steam. Face it The console only saving Grace of "CHEAP" is a dead ideal as well.

Now If oh I dont know Companies stop sticking their heads in the sand and open up a ROM STORE for the GOLD MINE they sit on That would INSTANTLY Put them into the good graces of the Consumer. Backlogs of Games to tide a consumer over during Droughts. A Stream of Revenue on Old work and a way to entice programmers to make Emulators FOR YOUR HARDWARE maybe even have it monetized for Every New Console that releases all while lowering the "Piracy Problem" All for Partials of Pennies of server load and space? While also Developing New Games and allowing Risky ones to be made thanks to the cushion made. My The only other thing left is to allow fans to REVIVE SERVERS for you instead for those Pesky Online Titles that are old.

 

[ChronosNotashi]

Difference of course being that you can emulate all the games free, and at $60 a pop, that savings adds up quick.

So what you're saying is that you'd still pirate Nintendo's games anyway, even if they did as you suggested and started releasing their games on PC. Because why pay 60$ when you can pirate and pay nothing? WOW. VERY convincing argument in favor of porting games to PC, pal. What's your next suggestion for them? Taking a leaf out of Epic's book and attempting to push exclusives in the PC market? Because that's working out so well for Epic right now.

 

[Snintendog]

So what you're saying is that you'd still pirate Nintendo's games anyway, even if they did as you suggested and started releasing their games on PC. Because why pay 60$ when you can pirate and pay nothing? WOW. VERY convincing argument in favor of porting games to PC, pal. What's your next suggestion for them? Taking a leaf out of Epic's book and attempting to push exclusives in the PC market? Because that's working out so well for Epic right now.

That's Disingenuous AF dude. Twitter levels of Bulllshittery.

 

[Xzi]

So what you're saying is that you'd still pirate Nintendo's games anyway, even if they did as you suggested and started releasing their games on PC. WOW. VERY convincing argument in favor of porting games to PC, pal. What's your next suggestion for them? Taking a leaf out of Epic's book and attempting to push exclusives in the PC market? Because that's working out so well for Epic right now.

That's not what I'm saying. Piracy itself is a service, and if it's left as the only service available on a given platform, that's the one that people are going to use. You have to start by providing an alternative, and even if it's a bad alternative that continues to get beat out by piracy in the short-term, some profit is better than no profit, and you can always improve that alternative service over the long-term.

 

[ChronosNotashi]

That's Disingenuous AF dude. Twitter levels of Bulllshittery.

And yet it perfectly describes how effectively he defeated his own argument, showing that, based on his argument, Nintendo has absolutely no reason to sell their games on PC, since it wouldn't solve the piracy issue anyway, and would actually make things worse for Nintendo. Unless that's what you want to have happen.

 

[SaberLilly]

this is interesting, a playable PC port of some of their games............but it just leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth because its like "ok you had this thing running fine on PC (probably) and you didn't optimize it for the less powerful switch?!" Shame on you!

 

[ChronosNotashi]

You have to start by providing an alternative, and even if it's a bad alternative that continues to get beat out by piracy in the short-term, some profit is better than no profit, and you can always improve that alternative service over the long-term.

Let me know how that goes for Sony after the failure that was Concord, and the negative response towards the forced PSN requirement for even single-player games (and Sony's attempts to prevent people bypassing it).

 

[Xzi]

this is interesting, a playable PC port of some of their games............but it just leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth because its like "ok you had this thing running fine on PC (probably) and you didn't optimize it for the less powerful switch?!" Shame on you!

In theory that wouldn't be an issue with Switch 2, since both the console and Nvidia PC GPUs utilize DLSS. Highly scalable.

Let me know how that goes for Sony after the failure that was Concord, and the negative feedback towards the forced PSN requirement for even single-player games.

Concord was a flop even on PS5 itself, and despite a vocal minority going crazy over PSN account requirements, Sony games continue to sell extremely well on PC. Not that Nintendo would be obligated to make the same mistake, regardless.

 

[ChronosNotashi]

Concord was a flop even on PS5 itself, and despite a vocal minority going crazy over PSN account requirements, Sony games continue to sell extremely well on PC.

So why did Concord fail so spectacularly on PC that Sony was forced to pull the game after two weeks and refund everyone? Why didn't it do better on PC than it did on PS5? It shouldn't have been hard for Sony to accomplish at least that, assuming your argument is sound and it's as simple as "providing an alternative" for PC players, even if the alternative is "inferior" to piracy.

Edit: Or are you suggesting that one of the major reasons that it failed was because piracy wasn't an option with Concord from the start, even with a PC release?

 

[Xzi]

So why didn't Concord do better on PC than it did on PS5? It shouldn't have been hard for Sony to accomplish at least that, assuming your argument is sound and it's as simple as "providing an alternative" for PC players, even if the alternative is "inferior" to piracy.

PC roughly doubled what Concord's sales would've been on PS5 alone, let's say from 100 to 200. How is that not benefit enough? The platform is great, but expecting it to magically transform the shittiest games into GOTY contenders is a bit unrealistic.

 

[DuoForce]

Would probably be great on the Steam Deck this way.

You gonna need to update your banner after the leaks

 

[dragonmaster]

for educational purposes any pm will be welcome my pretty powerfull laptop will crunch it or rog ally

 

[YuseiFD]

Got ya, you should have a thought from my brain now

Will you stop sending me lewd thoughts, it's making my boner harder !