Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

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rainwarrior
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by rainwarrior »

olddb wrote:How hard could it be put a quality nes homebrew on the Switch and charge $9 for a digital download?
The hard part is getting enough people to want to buy an NES homebrew that it's worth the overhead of selling on the Switch. That part isn't actually Nintendo's fault. I don't think such a homebrew yet exists.

(...though if I can eventually get enough sales going for Lizard, I'll apply and let you know how it goes. I'm registered as a Nintendo developer, but to get Switch access you need to pitch them a viable business plan, which in honesty I don't have at this point.)
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olddb
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by olddb »

rainwarrior wrote: The hard part is getting enough people to want to buy an NES homebrew that it's worth the overhead of selling on the Switch. That part isn't actually Nintendo's fault. I don't think such a homebrew yet exists.
How much is the overhead?
rainwarrior wrote: (...though if I can eventually get enough sales going for Lizard, I'll apply and let you know how it goes. I'm registered as a Nintendo developer, but to get Switch access you need to pitch them a viable business plan, which in honesty I don't have at this point.)
You could become nesdev publisher for the Switch. :D
...
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rainwarrior
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by rainwarrior »

olddb wrote:How much is the overhead?
I don't have a figure for it at the moment, though if I did it'd probably be an NDA violation to write it here. :P

In my estimate, it would be at the very least a few thousand. I think just the devkit itself is ~$500, that was publicly announced at some point. Even if that was the only thing you had to directly pay Nintendo, there's still a lot of other things that have to be involved in this that easily cost $$$$.

For comparison, aside from any development costs, Wii U had a large minimum sales amount before any payout (can't remember, was probably like $10k). This is probably lower for the Switch (and they may have dropped that threshold policy entirely, actually), but should give you some idea of what kind of sales were expected of your game for it to be viable there.

At any rate, it's not even in the ballpark of feasible for me at the moment, which is why I haven't pursued it. You could ask other makers of NES homebrew about this, but I would imagine they have similar feelings about it.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by calima »

When Sega was asked a related question (whether they would sign off on Pier Solar as an official release IIRC), they said that Genesis is so old they don't do that anymore. However Sega isn't Nintendo, they're a lot more friendly towards fan projects.

@rainwarrior
Have you considered porting Lizard to 3ds? Even if it's a sunset platform, I read that it's now easy to get things to its store, and it'd be an easy platform to port to.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Banshaku »

@FrankenGraphics

Yes, I think the part about non profit was inappropriate for the current context of this thread. I wrote this message very fast after a company party so the alcohol could be to blame :P

What I had more in mind was about the recent take down of the screenshot because of possible infringement. Since they have a contact form for legal questions, asking if the usage of that picture to explain how it works was an infringement or not could have been a possibility. I would not expect not much of an answer but it cost nothing to ask.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Haha, don't drink and post! :wink:

If the question is that specific, then i suppose it wouldn't hurt.. but i sitll wouldn't expect a definitive answer, or the answer to have any bearing on future legal action.
Maybe: "This article contains a GIF file depicts the beginning of level 1-2 in Super Mario Bros. Is it considered fair use to use this depiction on a wiki site such as this?"
To make a bit more watertight, maybe even post a generalized article stub on nes scrolling to wikipedia, attach the gif there, and then post the link in your question?
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by tepples »

Wikipedia would probably delete the SMB GIF, claiming it's replaceable with the NtS GIF.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by tepples »

How should we apply this to excerpts of documentation that was originally provided under a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), such as that which was posted to this topic?
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Banshaku »

I guess nobody realized what you are talking about since you posted in an unrelated thread with almost no information why you mentioned another one ^^;;;

What Tepples is talking about is the snes memory map thread mentioned above, the pictures shown at the top is from an NDA document which in that case is 100% an infringement so what should we do about it? In the case of the Super Mario bros animation it was still a grey area but this one is very clear that we shouldn't reproduce content of such document.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by koitsu »

tepples wrote:How should we apply this to excerpts of documentation that was originally provided under a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), such as that which was posted to this topic?
You'll need to go through all my posts from the past several years that contain attachments and start nuking stuff.
Edit: Or I can do it sometime this weekend when I supposedly have this mysterious thing called "free time".
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Banshaku
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Banshaku »

@Koitsu

Well... If there is copy of the documents spread in other post since a while then I think we shouldn't do much of a fuss about it then. It would just be a waste of your time.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by Oziphantom »

rainwarrior wrote:
olddb wrote:How much is the overhead?
I don't have a figure for it at the moment, though if I did it'd probably be an NDA violation to write it here. :P

In my estimate, it would be at the very least a few thousand. I think just the devkit itself is ~$500, that was publicly announced at some point. Even if that was the only thing you had to directly pay Nintendo, there's still a lot of other things that have to be involved in this that easily cost $$$$.

For comparison, aside from any development costs, Wii U had a large minimum sales amount before any payout (can't remember, was probably like $10k). This is probably lower for the Switch (and they may have dropped that threshold policy entirely, actually), but should give you some idea of what kind of sales were expected of your game for it to be viable there.

At any rate, it's not even in the ballpark of feasible for me at the moment, which is why I haven't pursued it. You could ask other makers of NES homebrew about this, but I would imagine they have similar feelings about it.
Yeah all of that info is NDA'd ;) But I've seen the ~$450US talked about for the Switch Devkit, but you then need SDK, you then need to pay for Nintendo to test and approve it, you need a publishing agreement which takes solicitors etc, its not the Apple iOS store where you just upload any old garbage and get it mostly passed as long as you don't compete with Apple.

However I would think the 3DS is the better target as the 3DS has the VC and hence you would try and get the NES ROM published as a NES ROM.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by 8bitMicroGuy »

Hello, everybody. Long time no see. I'm sorry for just dropping in randomly like this, but I really have a lot to say about this.

You see, in the past before the computers, there have always been parodies about songs and books and novels and other things way before copyright existed and nobody had a problem with that. It's so natural to go and remix other people's work in order to enjoy them. I mean, it happens with jokes and puns all the time! There's no copyright on jokes or on linguistics. So why should there be copyright for the things that are our jokes and puns today? Such as video games, movies, comic books, memes, etc.. Yes, it is true that these things need protection from blatant piracy, but this huge concern about piracy is an attack on PRIVACY and creativity! Just imagine how awesome it would be if fan works were legalized. Every company would have to have a section for fan stuff. And imagine what if fans can share their works together like how Minecraft mods are shared.

Unfortunately, such thing doesn't exist. There's also such a problem with game consoles even though all the NES hardware that we use isn't under copyright or patent protection because it has no copyrightable code and no nonexpired patent for the hardware design. This is why we always have this shadow hanging over us. We're doing what we love. We've always wanted to make our games for our loved consoles from childhood. But we simply cannot do it.

So I have an idea. How about we all make OUR OWN console? Our own market and our own thing. Look at Gamebuino and MAKERbuino! Look at Pokitto! Gamebuino META! They're making their own games, educating young on how to build their own consoles and games, and they all share their work together and build amazing things! So what if we could make our own thing? Now, our market would be very small if we were just targetting a small group of people who are creative. Finding other creative people who like fandom stuff and derivative work stuff and general modification and editing of things is really hard. So what if we simply made our own console and our own development kit and licensed it all under the MIT License so that people can make whatever they want while also making such awesome games that we can sell to children who will make fan works of our works when they grow into teens. If we start our own fandom with this, we will be victorious! No more copyright, no more EULA, no more strings attached, no more legal nonsense!

What do you say?
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by gauauu »

8bitMicroGuy wrote: What do you say?
There's lots of projects doing that sort of thing. But we're here because we like writing code for the NES. I don't WANT to write my game for some new niche console, that takes the fun out of it for me.
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Re: Nintendo continues crusade against ROM sites

Post by 8bitMicroGuy »

gauauu wrote:
8bitMicroGuy wrote: What do you say?
There's lots of projects doing that sort of thing. But we're here because we like writing code for the NES. I don't WANT to write my game for some new niche console, that takes the fun out of it for me.
There is??? Can you give me some examples? Hopefully not being some GPL crap.
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