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Discussion Should big games be given the Metroid Prime Remastered treatment of release, in the wake of TOTK leaks/piracy?

Christo750

Christo750

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NO TEARS OF THE KINGDOM SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD PLEASE!!!!



I think I agree with Kit here. Some conversations are definitely happening. And I think it's a good idea.

Some pointers:
  • This doesn't have to coincide with review copies; meaning review copies can still go out at any time, embargoes can be adjusted, w/e. Reviewers would be crazy to upload the rom before release.
  • This can be considered during the planning stages of marketing.
  • It stops mom & pops from breaking street date.
  • Retail stores would take a hit but tbh, launch day sales are the biggest because of pre-orders but anyone that wants to buy physical will probably wait. IMO it's foolish to plan things around retail anymore because some of these stores (that aren't big multipurpose department stores like Target and Walmart) aren't going to be around in 5-10 years. And retail knows it too; they'd be foolish to cut ties. (EDIT: for clarification I don't mean mom & pop stores. I mean GameStop and equivalents)
  • We don't know Nintendo's digital to physical split but industry-wide, digital is a safe majority of sales. People are primed to buy digitally; it's literally never been easier for people to buy shit. The general audiences aren't always there at launch and wait for a sale, or a birthday, or a holiday. And those people aren't locked into physical media anymore. Parents who buy stuff for their kids will still do it at retail.
  • Only people who really lose are the mom & pops, as much as I hate to see it, but #1, they're the ones Nintendo probably has to reign in especially in this case, and #2, they're not as focused on modern releases as much as they are retro products.
How do people feel about this? Speaking anecdotally, if Nintendo wanted to counter the piracy of TOTK by saying "hey give us an additional $20 on top of your preorder and you can get it a week early" with no hesitation or apprehension I'd say yes. I bought Metroid Prime immediately when it launched. I buy shadowdrops pretty regularly.

I think it's mostly a win for everyone.
 
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fuck no

it'd be pointless to do at this point anyways, since soon they'll be moving to Switch 2, and there's not really any other games we need to worry about this for
 
No

And this would happened either way, it just happened a few days sooner this time. People are forgetting that Smash Ultimate leaked even sooner than TotK.
 
It would break my heart too to see the mom & pop shops lose out, but given the history of people who can't keep quiet it would mean everyone misses out, it seems like a logical decision to come to.

I had a friend who managed to get Assassin's Creed IV two weeks before release because another friend owned a stall at a flea market and was able to sell it to him early. He enjoyed the game, gushed about it, but never once felt compelled to spoil shit or upload the entire game to torrents.

Hell, I remember when New Super Mario Bros. came to Wii, someone made a post online how they got the game early and was challenged online. Could they have just posted a pic of the receipt and the game case? Sure, a normal human response I'd imagine.. Did they do something fucked and upload the game to torrents instead to prove they had a copy? Bet your ass they did.

It's the actions of those people who make it impossible to enjoy things just that little bit earlier. Nintendo's only reacting accordingly and whether or not I agree, I wouldn't be surprised to see physical game copies get a delayed release date going forward.

Slight ramble on the subject of smaller retail stores knowing they're on death row: I'm not entirely sure if they're aware they'll be gone in 5-10 years unless it's willful ignorance. Given the digital/physical split it does seem pretty inevitable. Hell I'm looking to start go more digital myself going forward; I only go physical by necessity because I want some physical rewards with special editions but I really wish the trend of collector's editions of games minus the games themselves caught on instead of people bitching about it. Best of both worlds; a neat little statue or an artbook, maybe custom controller/hardware, some pins and buttons, and then the game easily accessible from onboard storage.
 
That's a nice way of pissing off your audience for a problem that doesn't exist.
 
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So because one game leaked a bit early OP suggests we rid ourselves of day one deals due to multiple stores competing with one another to being restricted to just the eShop price? Wow.
 
Christo750 said:
if Nintendo wanted to counter the piracy of TOTK
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Piracy barely affects game sales. Especially when talking about million-sellers.

Christo750 said:
We don't know Nintendo's digital to physical split but industry-wide, digital is a safe majority of sales.
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We've calculated that the digital shares of Nintendo games over on Install Base at around 30%-40%. They're already pretty high and still rising.
 
Hell no, it was stupid when it was asked in the resetera thread, it's stupid here.

They could do that with Metroid prime remaster because they had low expectations and didn't even realise the demand there was going to be for the product.

All this would do is piss off your audience, piss off your retail partners, piss off your advertising staff (because now they need to advertise around two different launches), and all for some imagined amount of piracy and worries about leaks that no sane person would be concerned about.


Edit: and there's another reason you shouldn't waste your time listening to that Kit person, they don't know anything and have routinely span things way out of proportion to push their own hot takes.
 
I don't understand why people are factoring in piracy for literally the best selling Nintendo hardware with over 1 billion software sales. It really isn't a problem lol
 
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BGBW said:
So because one game leaked a bit early OP suggests we rid ourselves of day one deals due to multiple stores competing with one another to being restricted to just the eShop price? Wow.
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jesus lmao i don't suggest we do anything. just trying to get a discussion going.

Linkstrikesback said:
Edit: and there's another reason you shouldn't waste your time listening to that Kit person, they don't know anything and have routinely span things way out of proportion to push their own hot takes.
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????? one of the former heads of NOA marketing for like 10+ years doesn't know anything??? disagree with him all you want but that's silly.
 
all i'll say is it felt so nice to not have to dodge any leaks with the Xenoblade 3 DLC recently and it felt like such a sharp contrast to the base game
 
Depends on much life is left in the regular Switch. I don't think they could get away with it while their only device is the Switch. Once the Switch 2 releases, on which games won't have this problem, they would only have to worry about games that are crossgen with the original Switch, which they could very easily release later or as digital only initially for the Switch 1 release. Similar to how BotW WiiU, and Twilight Princess GC were handled, except at a larger scale probably. In general I think they'll be questioning the value of crossgen based on what's been going on.

BGBW said:
So because one game leaked a bit early OP suggests we rid ourselves of day one deals due to multiple stores competing with one another to being restricted to just the eShop price? Wow.
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This isn't a new thing with TotK though. See Xenoblade 3 last year for example. Leaked a couple weeks early, heavily emulated prior to release, with the added bonus of a bunch of FUD being spread about the games visuals and performance because the initial emulation of the game was not particularly good.
 
Christo750 said:
Only people who really lose are the mom & pops, as much as I hate to see it, but #1, they're the ones Nintendo probably has to reign in especially in this case, and #2, they're not as focused on modern releases as much as they are retro products.
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And there it is, the ultimate proof you didn't think this through at all. You know who loses out in your imagined idea? EVERYONE WHO WANTS THE PHYSICAL VERSION. You're going nuts over a handful of pirates playing it early while you want every single person who wants it physical to either (A) Buy it twice or (B) Have to deal with your problem but with tens if not hundreds of thousands of times as many people playing it.

Christo750 said:
????? one of the former heads of NOA marketing for like 10+ years doesn't know anything??? disagree with him all you want but that's silly.
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What's silly is thinking they're having any sort of serious discussion about this because of some retail copy getting out early when this happens with every single release of note, or that Nintendo didn't know this would happen, or that it's something they would stick their middle fingers up at over 50% of their audience over.
 
At the end of the day ... does a game leaking early really impact ... anything? Other than some enthusiasts being upset that they got "spoiled" (which no one really forced them to get spoiled anyway, no one's forcing anyone to click certain threads)? While I'm sure Nintendo would rather it not happen, I don't think they're like that bothered by it. The game is going to sell what it's going to sell, I doubt it's going to lose sales because a handful of people got early copies some how.
 
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As long as software sales aren't being impacted Nintendo isn't going to change anything. If anything based upon how much better Prime remaster did across the board compared to Nintendo's expectations, I'd argue they probably lost money not giving the game a normal release cycle.
 
BassForever said:
If anything based upon how much better Prime remaster did across the board compared to Nintendo's expectations, I'd argue they probably lost money not giving the game a normal release cycle.
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Yeah, any potential losses from early leaks/piracy are massively offset by the additional sales you get from the marketing of a proper release cycle.
 
Nintendo have always valued their relations to physical retailers (they’re japanese, they used to be a toy company, and all that) : they will never, nor they should imo, do that, especially for such a non-problem. Big games leak in advance, always has been the case, never has been a big deal.

Also, saying that mom and pops stores will not be around in 5-10 years is a pessimistic and defeatist point of view that I don’t necessarily agree with, but that’s another topic.
 
The thing about pre-release leaks is that it makes dodging spoilers hell. As someone who always buys physical if possible, this is just gonna lead to the same issue if not actually make it worse, since people will be looser with spoilers due to the game being out officially. So no thanks.
 
Retailers wouldn't be happy with this move but I think they should.

As I customer I hate needing to block all of my social media everytime a new game I care launchs.
Though I only buy digital for games I really want as there's no midnight release here in Brazil.
 
Party Sklar said:
Nintendo have always valued their relations to physical retailers (they’re japanese, they used to be a toy company, and all that) : they will never, nor they should imo, do that, especially for such a non-problem. Big games leak in advance, always has been the case, never has been a big deal.

Also, saying that mom and pops stores will not be around in 5-10 years is a pessimistic and defeatist point of view that I don’t necessarily agree with, but that’s another topic.
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I see your point and I don't disagree, but I also didn't say mom & pop stores would be gone; their businesses have equal focus in retro stuff and there's definitely a market for that. I meant more like GameStop would be gone. Edited the OP for clarification.

meatbag said:
Piracy barely affects game sales. Especially when talking about million-sellers.


We've calculated that the digital shares of Nintendo games over on Install Base at around 30%-40%. They're already pretty high and still rising.
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Interesting. Lower than I thought but this is kinda what I'm saying. as it increases, the more reliable digital sales become, the more Nintendo would likely continue talking about this.

And it maybe doesn't cost them sales, but it for sure costs them money. I disagree with the notion that they don't care at all, considering they basically won a guy's income for the rest of his life in court.
 
wakko said:
Movie industry has been doing this for a long time. Digital versions of films (e.g. Super Mario Bros movie) frequently release weeks before the physical Blu-Ray does.
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and yet the blu-rays don't go away or outright disappear from store shelves.
 
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No, because I like physical games and want to play video games at the same time as everyone else and I don't really care if Nintendo has a small sampling of people pirating the game in advance of its release. I was pretty bummed that I had to wait 2 weeks to buy physical for Metroid Prime and I'm sure plenty of others felt similarly.

I guess it makes some business sense for them, but I also don't care about that.
 
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In the distant future, I think we will see more and more games releasing digitally first, with a physical release 2-3 weeks later.

And it won't just be Nintendo doing this. This will become an industry-wide thing.

And before anyone shouts me down, I would suggest reading this article.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/capcom-says-80-of-all-of-its-sales-are-now-digital/1100-6479521/

Resident Evil and Monster Hunter publisher Capcom has revealed that 80% of all its game sales are now digital, and that it is aiming to grow that figure to at least 90% soon.

Answering questions in its annual shareholder meeting, Capcom admitted that it did not expect the share of digital sales to grow so much in a year, stating that it anticipated the figure to be closer to 75%. Just last year, Capcom reported that digital sales made up only 53% of its total. This latest figure encapsulates sales between the beginning of April 2019 and end of March 2020.
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As a result of the growth, Capcom is focusing even harder on digital distribution, aiming to reach a 90% digital share in the medium term.

"While it ultimately depends on how our customers behave going forward, for the time being we are promoting our digital strategy with an objective of 90%, since there are some customers who prefer to own discs," the company stated. "We aim to continue expanding our business performance by maximizing the benefits of digital sales, which include being able to provide our content both for longer periods of time and throughout the world."
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I understand how aggravating it is when a game we're hyped about gets leaked but the problem with this approach IMO is that it becomes punitive towards people who prefer physical copies. Most of whom don't pirate the game and are just as aggravated about the leaks. And I say that as someone who only buys digital. I just don't feel it would be a good practice to punish those folks over the actions of a few.
 
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Christo750 said:
as it increases, the more reliable digital sales become, the more Nintendo would likely continue talking about this
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wakko said:
In the distant future, I think we will see more and more games releasing digitally first, with a physical release 2-3 weeks later
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It's definitely possible for Nintendo and other publishers to focus on digital. But they'll be doing it because it's just generally more profitable (since they get the full 60/70 bucks instead of giving the retailer a cut), not in order to "counter early leaks/piracy."

Christo750 said:
I disagree with the notion that they don't care at all, considering they basically won a guy's income for the rest of his life in court.
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Of course Nintendo cares about piracy, but they're mostly going to target outfits who are running full scale operations that are literally making thousands of dollars off their work.
 
Piracy sucks, but so does the disappearance of video game stores. It is necessary, from a consumer perspective, to protect the physical releases, which allow the player to pay less than on the eshop AND to really own the game he buys on the long term.

As much as Nintendo deserves to be defended sometimes, for example against piracy or leaks, I find it scandalous that they systematically sell their games more expensive on the eshop, known they are almost never lowering the prices, even though a digital purchase is cheaper for them since it's the players who literally pay for the data storage.
 
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Not for major releases, no; publishers and especially platform holders need carrots to dangle in front of fans and especially the core adopters and enthusiasts.

As successful as the Prime strategy was, it worked because the original game has a legendary reputation and Nintendo knew there was an audience for it. People had asked for it for literal years, and I suspect that's what Nintendo were thinking. It wasn't a 'dump it out because we don't care' thing; they knew there was a solid audience for it and that there would be value in taking people by surprise.

But no, I don't think this would work for other major releases, especially not new titles.
 
As someone who buys games physically I'd be fine with this. I imagine they'd probably release the digital version earlier than what would have been the release day than the other way around. Anything that moves us closer (in terms of like, dates) to Nintendo giving us access to buy and play their games from the date they go gold is a win in my books.
 
GamerJM said:
As someone who buys games physically I'd be fine with this. I imagine they'd probably release the digital version earlier than what would have been the release day than the other way around. Anything that moves us closer (in terms of like, dates) to Nintendo giving us access to buy and play their games from the date they go gold is a win in my books.
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right. basically a deluxe digital incentive.
 
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Shadowdropping major games consistently would be way worse for their bottom line than some leaks, and I don't really care about leaks.
 
wakko said:
In the distant future, I think we will see more and more games releasing digitally first, with a physical release 2-3 weeks later.

And it won't just be Nintendo doing this. This will become an industry-wide thing.

And before anyone shouts me down, I would suggest reading this article.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/capcom-says-80-of-all-of-its-sales-are-now-digital/1100-6479521/
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The problem is that 80% is all sales Capcom does, not specifically full price sales. It's not really that surprising with digital only expansions, digital only releases, and ongoing digital sales of older software the number would skew the way it has. All it really proves is the industry finally accomplished it's goal of weakening the used game market, as now games on digital sales end up cheaper then 2nd hand copies. It doesn't support more companies doing digital first launches with retail weeks later. We've seen "early access with digital pre order" for years now which isn't on the same plane as what Nintendo did with Prime Remaster.
 
If Nintendo was going to do something about it, they would most likely have done it years ago. But for discussion sake...

One solution would be physical preorders coming with a download code for a temporary license while the cart ships around launch date.

Everyone would be able to preload and start playing at the same time, then after ~3 weeks physical owner will have to use their game cards as their license expired.

No more breaking street date, delivery delays won't be a big deal and game cards may even come with day-1 patches included.

It would also prevent used copies for a couple weeks, which would be good for publishers but bad for those who resell asap or are waiting for cheaper used copies.
 
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Irene said:
Hey there, just as a heads-up, we have decided to ban all discussion about HL on the site.
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It’s strange to discuss this topic without mentioning the biggest launch this year did this. It’s about the consequence not the game itself.

I asked something about this when the game is listed, for example, in sales topics. And that was the response:
PixelKnight said:
What we don’t want is members inviting discussion over it regarding sales or otherwise. If you can’t really get away without mentioning it in a post because you’ve made a ‘top ten sales in my country this week’ thread or whatever, that’s fair enough. But if it seems to be leading towards a discussion of ‘isn’t this successful/not successful and here’s why and here’s other media elements surrounding it’ or ‘x outlet said this in a review’, then we just aren’t interested in hosting those discussions or invites to debate it, even if it isn’t the thrust of the thread. Video game sales just matter less to us than the comfort of our members and previous community discussions around the topic.
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I wonder if mentioning the game is a situation like the sales thread or if the OP discussion is something we aren’t interested on hosting as inevitable the said game already did this. Or maybe other games also did this and I don’t know, so we can shift the discussion to those games.

Whatever is the final decision it’s fine for me. Just it felt like an ambiguous situation.
 
Absolutely not. There's no reason to outside of some people online feeling left out for a week or two, which isn't a good enough justification to make all people who buy physical games wait.

You also wouldn't be able to do reviews, so it doesn't make any sense.
 
I don't understand why this is a conversation now versus when Smash Ultimate and other games leaked an entire two weeks ahead. The game will be fine.
 
Mekanos said:
I don't understand why this is a conversation now versus when Smash Ultimate and other games leaked an entire two weeks ahead. The game will be fine.
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Even though I bought smash day one I didn’t care about stumbling upon spoilers online. Though I really care about Zelda spoilers. Maybe more people feel like I do.
 
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balgajo said:
It’s strange to discuss this topic without mentioning the biggest launch this year did this. It’s about the consequence not the game itself.

I asked something about this when the game is listed, for example, in sales topics. And that was the response:


I wonder if mentioning the game is a situation like the sales thread or if the OP discussion is something we aren’t interested on hosting as inevitable the said game already did this. Or maybe other games also did this and I don’t know, so we can shift the discussion to those games.

Whatever is the final decision it’s fine for me. Just it felt like an ambiguous situation.
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We still aren’t interested in hosting discussion around HL’s release strategy on this topic. As we said in the quoted post, we care more about members not particularly wanting to see discussion of HL at all than about whatever its effects would be on this discussion point around digital/physical sales/launches. That’s absolutely a final, non-ambiguous decision from staff after lengthy consultation with the community last year.

My point in the quoted post was that, in the context of sales threads, we aren’t going to moderate an OP who’s made a ‘top ten sales in x region this week’ thread in good faith, for just having HL in it rather than a blank line. But what we don’t want is an invitation to focus discussion on and around it, which is what would happen here if its release strategy entered debate.
 
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Is it not possible to make the first print of physical copies require an online verification to decrypt the game files? Or alternatively, a small download to complete the game file(s).

I get that this would still upset some people, but it seems like the most reasonable solution to me. If one really cares about having a 100% offline-functional copy that they never need to connect online at any point ever, they could wait a week or two for the second wave of copies to hit the shelves which could have this "DRM" disabled.
 
Metroid Prime Remastered wasn't a huge surprise just because it was a digital release first, but because they didn't announce it ahead of time. No way they do that with a release significantly bigger than "remaster of 20 year old game in C-sales-level series".
 
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Puikko said:
Is it not possible to make the first print of physical copies require an online verification to decrypt the game files? Or alternatively, a small download to complete the game file(s).

I get that this would still upset some people, but it seems like the most reasonable solution to me. If one really cares about having a 100% offline-functional copy that they never need to connect online at any point ever, they could wait a week or two for the second wave of copies to hit the shelves which could have this "DRM" disabled.
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This would infuriate and alienate even more people than just delaying the physical games, all to solve a nonexistent problem. It probably wouldn't be a barrier to hackers either.
 
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