Poll Time, Fellas =]

[femngi]

If you have an idea and are not gainfully employed by Nintendo (this actually goes for a lot of companies that rely on innovation, not just Nintendo) they don't want to hear your idea. It could be the greatest idea in the world, and that would be the problem. If they see your idea, and then someone inside comes up with a similar idea totally on their own, there's no way to prove that they didn't have any contact with (and therefore steal from) your idea, unless they implement and strictly enforce a sweeping "we will never listen to ideas" policy. If you have an idea, there are proper channels that you can go through to have your idea listened to with all the legal documents tightly in place to make sure everyone knows who owns what; an email is not that channel, but a properly worded email could get you on the right track.

Intellectual Property is a volatile business indeed, however I can see myriad other reason for Nintendo not to want to get involved with the distribution of ROMs. Basically this is as likely to happen as EMI starting to distribute music via torrents.

 

[Ksmiler]

Voted: Not going to be using the Pandora to play emulated games...

Well... I lie, maybe for GP2X or GP32 software

 

[danielliu88888]

i voted option number 4 for the lulz

 

[Alpha2]

neither sony nor nintendo would support a third party handheld that stands a chance of competing in anyway with their OWN handhelds. If the Pandora was a phone they might license a game out to it as long as we had someone to do the port.

That said, The only reason I ever considered moding my PSP (or one of them) was to play ISOs of PS1 games I already owned because I dont want to have to pay for Downloadable games that I already own. If the Pandor can do it? awesome, if it can play ISOs of japanese games I own, even better then I can finally let my modded PS die.

Sure I'm going to keep using roms but if an original game that I dont already own were offered at a high enough quality for a reasonable enough price by a realistic developer I'd certainly consider buying it.

 

[Trip]

Sure I'm going to keep using roms but if an original game that I dont already own were offered at a high enough quality for a reasonable enough price by a realistic developer I'd certainly consider buying it.

ditto!

 

[cools]

If it's perfectly emulated already, no. Stuffing a few Mario games into an emulator is utterly a waste of time.

Stuff that isn't emulated, that it's unlikely a worthwhile emulator is going to be produced for... Yeah, why not. I'm thinking N64, DC, PS2 level stuff. As long as it's not DRMed I'd certainly consider paying for it. An UNPROTECTED physical release would definitely have more of my interest. As long as I could copy whatever I've bought onto a larger SD card with other titles - yeah, I'd have no qualms paying for that.

 

[kuru]

I would buy an old game if it was

- cheap (<20€)
- not a download, but nicely boxed with an SD card

I dont think this will happen, nor will there be a commercial download portal.
So let's dream on.

 

[Japa]

as mentioned by somebody else, I'd pay for an 800x480 chrono trigger.

 

[WizardStan]

I've already bought Chrono Trigger 3 times! I am never doing it aga... ah, who do I think I'm kidding?

 

[lingenfr]

This continuing crap from some folks that assumes that *everyone* is a thief and downloads games they don't own gets old. How about you speak for yourself? I do download games *after* I buy them. Same with movies. I buy a PS1 game and download it so I can play it on my PSP (for example). If older games were available ready to run at a reasonable price ($12-$15 delivered) I would do it. Otherwise, I will continue to watch for used copies and then rip or download them to whatever platform on which I choose to use them. I am for fair use, not piracy and those who continue to imply that everyone steals need to speak for themselves and let others do the same.

 

[Xanas]

The poll options and question doesn't provide enough information for me to answer.

1) I think the games largely made the profit they needed to years ago
2) Even saying that, I'm not against paying a nominal fee to give them props for doing a service
3) For me, a nominal fee is nothing more than 5$, 10$ perhaps for playstation games
4) I would only pay the nominal fee for the games I like enough (Final Fantasy series, Phantasy Star series, Zeldas, etc)

I'm already spending 20% of my income on anime, and I buy new games, I don't feel the need to buy a bunch of games that the companies should long have received reasonable pay for. I'd do it in some circumstances (have done it on the Wii, for example), but I don't think it's immoral to download old games honestly.

The real answer would be something like "Yes, I'll still download illegally, but I would pay for some of the games I like the most"

 

[arrrgh]

I would not pay extra for ROMs for games I already own, but it would be cool if there was somewhere that you could just pay for a legal rom download.

 

[Username]

Fuck this poll. The only reason I would EVER pay for roms on another console is because I can't use my own emulator on it.

 

[jbr]

Selling games from ten or twenty years ago is just plain greedy. Plenty of games from around that time were made by companies that don't even exist anymore, but most of the good games were first party (and of course Nintendo and Sega still exist) or major third party (Square, Rare), and apparently anyone still making money is full enough of themselves to try to sell the same old thing over and over again.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm saying, but I guess I mean that copyrights should last for a certain amount of time (maybe 15 years?) and then you have to make a new product. I don't actually know how it works, so it may already work this way (and that's why no one ever gets sued for old roms), but I think that although they should be able to protect entire franchises of games, the games themselves should lose their protection after a relatively short run.

For example, Nintendo could make "Mario" a trademark or whatever (for a very long time, like the 100 or 99 or whatever years it already is), so no one else could make an unlicensed Mario game, but any given Mario game would only be "owned" by Nintendo for a much shorter time (like 15 years).

I don't know, maybe I'm rationalizing because I want to make it sound like I have a reason for stealing stuff. You know what, though? The only systems that I'll be able to fit the entire library of onto an SD card are old enough that I don't think anyone cares anymore, and the data files for newer systems (like PSX, DC) are large enough that I'll probably only put a handful of games on it from them anyway, so I can easily just make sure I already own the originals.

So yeah, I just made it sound like maybe I voted for #4, but I actually voted for #3. I wonder if I should have gone the other way...