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Boycott Nintendo! (Read For More Info.)

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wizkid32:
Well, this is what I meant in my original post.  Whilst other companies may share Nintendo's "official" stance, they are a whole lot more lenient in real life.  And by lenient, I mean they are willing to cooperate with emulation-based products.

Gray_Area:

--- Quote from: hypernova on December 23, 2011, 02:11:10 pm ---
--- Quote from: Benevolance on December 23, 2011, 01:20:39 pm ---I am disappointed that my original Nintendo Entertainment System died this year. Talk about engineered to fail. I refuse to buy another NES system until they design them better.

--- End quote ---

I *almost* fell for that.  Sarcasm meter peaked at the end of that post though.

--- End quote ---

At the END of the post?.....

Howard_Casto:

--- Quote from: 404 on December 26, 2011, 10:56:54 am ---
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on December 22, 2011, 12:33:39 pm ---You know actually you WILL be able to get many of the games for free in the future.  Starting in Janurary you can use your club nintendo coins to purchase select virtual console titles.  Some will even be exclusive imports and custom games!

Also if you bought a 3ds last year, you get 20 free virtual console titles.

You keep ragging on nintendo for not giving away games but as far as I know they are the ONLY big company to give away games. 

I mean sure once every 5 years you might get a low budget title from m$ or sony, but that's because their online service went down or their servers got hacked and they don't want you to sue or cancel your subscription.  ;)


I've never lost sleep over my console roms because my physical games collection is massive.  I might not legally have the right to a smb3 rom, but I've got the cart sitting right next to me, so I hardly feel guilty for downloading the rom to play on my pc.

--- End quote ---

I have to somewhat disagree with you here. Some companies have been far more forthcoming when it comes to emulators and roms. Sega for example has been very open about using its older intellectual property in conjunction with emulators and the like. They began working on their own modified version of the old genesis emulator KGen many years ago and used it in various commercial properties such as their genesis collections.

Sega has also been very very lenient in terms of their sub licensing agreements. Many of the emulation system on a chip systems seem to be openly bundled with tons of games. One such device even allowed users to load their own roms via an sd card slot.

Yes, most if not all companies have the same exact stance when it comes to illegal roms but not all of them are so blatantly hypocritical about emulation as Nintendo is. If one is to take Nintendo's stance as 100% lawful and legal cannon across the world, Nintendo would require a license for every single console manufacturer that is currently emulated in the virtual console. Nintendo should probably mull over some of their licensing agreements and make sure that not only are the emulators licensed but that the original companies are being properly compensated for the simulated use of their "intellectual property". While so far, nobody has bothered to disassemble some of the virtual console emulation software, i can pretty much bet you that in one form or another, there is a GPL violation in there somewhere. I can't imagine that the folks at Nintendo would not be tempted to peek at some GPL code out there that took "evil" emulation authors years to produce and perfect only for them to have perfectly capable emulators in just a matter of months.

Nintendo has already been implicated in a legal situation where they are on the receiving end against emulator authors. There is an illegal wii port of ScummVM bundled with classic lucasarts games sold commercially. Atari, Nintendo and Majesco have all attempted to pass the blame to each other and have used complex non-disclosure agreements to keep things quiet.



--- End quote ---


Yes, because Sega is now a much much smaller company than they used to be and to be blunt, they need the money so badly that they will part out their ips to anybody that wants them, even if the device or company is a little shady.  That isn't being emu friendly, that's being profit friendly. 

You are making assumptions now.  There is no way of knowing if a glp liscense was violated.  But I can tell you this, I was on the ground floor of the wii hacking scene and I can assure you that nintendo's emulators are indeed made from scratch.  The n64 emulator, in particular is basically a wholely complete emulator for each chip type.  It is highly specialized to get n64 games to run on the "puny" wii specs.  The NES emulator is almost pixel perfect.... it properly emulates the flicker and slowdown, and other graphical quirks that other emulators equate to "bugs" and remove.


So while I can't prove that a GPL wasn't violated any more than you can prove one was, I can assure that these are NOT off the shelf pc emulators ported to the wii as you are suggesting.  A great amount of time and care were involved in making them.  Some of them are the finest emulators I've ever seen.  The reason they managed to get them assembled so quickly while working so well is simple...they are Nintendo.  Nintendo saves all of their hardware and software designs and they have been in continuous operation since entering the video game industry.  This is NOT the norm.  You are confusing Nintendo quality with piracy.  ;)

Just an example of this:  A few years ago Nintendo decided to re-release the first Game & Watch device as a prize for Japan's club nintendo.  They still had the hardware schematics and original ink cells on file!  This is a cheap toy made in 1980 and they kept detailed records of it!

Now this goes for the Nintendo VC titles.  The other consoles, like sega and lucasarts have their emulators out-sourced and then they liscense the fully working emulators and games to nintendo.  Nintendo obviously has a responsibility to check for legal issues, but it isn't like they are blatently ignoring the law.  I think the problem is that the VC release of the "scumm" titles was the first time that any real money was made from the titles and thus the original copyright holders got greedy.  I remember ages ago that Scumm was announced to be a free emulator that was endorsed by lucasarts.  That is when the games were obscure relics and nobody would pay for them though.

Long Story short, you can't compare Nintendo to smaller companies like SNK or Sega or any other failed companies from the past, because quite frankly they aren't on the same level.  Neo-geo piracy, for example, runs rampant but you can't equate that to snk having a laxed stance on emulation, you can equate it to the lack of funds for fighting the infringements. 

The two companies you CAN compare Nintendo to are Microsoft and Sony.  Compared to those two... Nintendo is a saint.

ark_ader:
It was my understanding that GPL code could be used in commercial settings, if the company used GPL code and built on top of it or extended it.  I say this with regard to router software, or net top solutions.  The requirement is that any code that is built from GPL source must be freely available.  So with the Wii, perhaps the agreement was made to supply code to the general public, which would be propriety on that platform, but was distributed or available on the company website.

404:

--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on December 27, 2011, 06:37:44 am ---Yes, because Sega is now a much much smaller company than they used to be and to be blunt, they need the money so badly that they will part out their ips to anybody that wants them, even if the device or company is a little shady.  That isn't being emu friendly, that's being profit friendly.  
--- End quote ---

At the end of the day, it makes them far less hypocritical about these things than Nintendo. Who, let's be frank here wants their virtual console to be the only retro gaming service in town.



--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on December 27, 2011, 06:37:44 am ---You are making assumptions now.  There is no way of knowing if a glp liscense was violated.  But I can tell you this, I was on the ground floor of the wii hacking scene and I can assure you that nintendo's emulators are indeed made from scratch.  The n64 emulator, in particular is basically a wholely complete emulator for each chip type.  It is highly specialized to get n64 games to run on the "puny" wii specs.  The NES emulator is almost pixel perfect.... it properly emulates the flicker and slowdown, and other graphical quirks that other emulators equate to "bugs" and remove.

--- End quote ---

I was in the wii scene for a bit too :)


--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on December 27, 2011, 06:37:44 am ---So while I can't prove that a GPL wasn't violated any more than you can prove one was, I can assure that these are NOT off the shelf pc emulators ported to the wii as you are suggesting.  A great amount of time and care were involved in making them.  Some of them are the finest emulators I've ever seen.  The reason they managed to get them assembled so quickly while working so well is simple...they are Nintendo.  Nintendo saves all of their hardware and software designs and they have been in continuous operation since entering the video game industry.  This is NOT the norm.  You are confusing Nintendo quality with piracy.  ;)
--- End quote ---

Let's back up for a second. I never said that they were indeed violating GPL, nobody ever disassembled their emulators as far as i can remember but i would find it hard to believe that they didn't. It's a mere assumption. :)

However, violating terms of a game emulators license easily comes in second or third to companies violating GPL terms for busybox and Mplayer. Many of them go unpunished.


--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on December 27, 2011, 06:37:44 am ---Now this goes for the Nintendo VC titles.  The other consoles, like sega and lucasarts have their emulators out-sourced and then they liscense the fully working emulators and games to nintendo.  Nintendo obviously has a responsibility to check for legal issues, but it isn't like they are blatently ignoring the law.  I think the problem is that the VC release of the "scumm" titles was the first time that any real money was made from the titles and thus the original copyright holders got greedy.  I remember ages ago that Scumm was announced to be a free emulator that was endorsed by lucasarts.  That is when the games were obscure relics and nobody would pay for them though.

Long Story short, you can't compare Nintendo to smaller companies like SNK or Sega or any other failed companies from the past, because quite frankly they aren't on the same level.  Neo-geo piracy, for example, runs rampant but you can't equate that to snk having a laxed stance on emulation, you can equate it to the lack of funds for fighting the infringements.  

The two companies you CAN compare Nintendo to are Microsoft and Sony.  Compared to those two... Nintendo is a saint.
--- End quote ---

This is just where we have to agree to disagree. Just because they are Nintendo, doesn't mean hiding behind NDA's and their own blatant hypocrisy is either politically or morally correct. I merely pointed out the double standards Nintendo holds as opposed to other companies.

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