Yes, looks like they'll be re-releasing it and it'll link to google instead of the rom site.
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'GBA4iOS' Game Boy Emulator Shut Down After Nintendo Files DMCA Notice
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Yes, looks like they'll be re-releasing it and it'll link to google instead of the rom site.
Using GBA roms on a device that's not official Nintendo hardware is dumb. Gotta be legit, sport the real thing folks. If you wanna play gameboy games, get a gameboy or at the very least buy the rom on the Nintendo e-shop.
Using GBA roms on an iphone is like:
*Using a Windows OS on a Mac.
*Using soles from a basketball shoe in a racing shoe.
*Using ice cubes to make your beer cold.
*Using ketchup as a dip for steak fingers.
*Using drop bars on a beach cruiser.
*Using message boards to vent your frustration with an app
Using GBA roms on an iphone is like:
*Using a Windows OS on a Mac.
*Using soles from a basketball shoe in a racing shoe.
*Using ice cubes to make your beer cold.
*Using ketchup as a dip for steak fingers.
*Using drop bars on a beach cruiser.
*Using message boards to vent your frustration with an app
You can play them on the original systems or any new all in one system like retron or similar products.
It's the illegal distribution of ROMs that made Nintendo do this, not the emulator itself. I buy tons of old Nintendo game carts in Japan for a dollar or two and play them the real way, it's more fun on a big tv anyway.
I for one have no issue with Nintendo taking this action.
But personally, these types of news bits from Japan are getting tiresome. It saddens me to see companies that once set the standard for technological innovation reduce themselves to IP trolls. We're talking about a country that still buys music CD's like its the 1990s because big business has such an iron grip on copyright and piracy laws. They need to wake up and realize the rest of the world is changing, they need to change along with it. GET BACK TO INNOVATING!!!
Maybe companies like Nintendo & Sony touch a nerve too with Apple fans because they're watching a potentialfuture without a strong leader unfold?
Yeah, Nintendo does nothing but send DMCA notices. Nothing else...
As far as the rest of the world changing, yes you're right, the rest of the world pretends stealing is ok.
Sure. But despite that - AAA non-F2P games on the App store nearly always loses out to DS/3DS games in sales quantity.
Not to mention that not all GBA & GBC games are available on the Wii U. Nearly all of them are available for emulation. And since virtual console is not a huge moneymaker for Nintendo at the moment, this emulator wasn't stopping any cash flow as far as I can tell...
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Where did you hear this?
The demand for Nintendo software is separate from that for Nintendo hardware. People are perfectly willing to play Nintendo games on non-Nintendo hardware (which is why emulators exist). Sure, there is a core customer base who will buy a WiiU specifically for the next Zelda/Smash Bros/etc game, but there are plenty more people who will only play games available via the App Store/Google Play. Thus, Nintendo is ignoring the market demand for its software in order to artificially increase hardware demand. Nintendo has an opportunity to move into the mobile marketplace before its IPs grow stale, and I hope they use it.
They're not separate because of what you alluded to in your last sentence. Demand for their hardware and software are inversely related because they're complementary goods in different markets. Square operates in one market only, software, so they can maximize market penetration of their one good by being platform agnostic. Nintendo operates in both complementary markets and needs to maximize the brand value of both goods to maximize return. The token way to do this is to create a walled garden. Otherwise they take a loss on that second market they already vested capital in.
Apple does the same exact thing with all their first party and proprietary products/features - you can't use Facetime or iWork on non-Apple platforms regardless of demand. The one time they didn't adhere to this strategy was when they did the official Mac Clone program and while their OS penetration increased, their hardware revenue with larger margins took a dump.
The moment Nintendo ports to iOS, their hardware revenue takes a dump. So unless they're planning on exiting the hardware market like Sega did, going platform agnostic makes no sense.
Since Nintendo leverages its software demand in order to sell its hardware (i.e. people will buy their hardware for access to exclusive titles), it's inaccurate to say that the respective demands are inversely related. In fact, Nintendo tries to make them complementary, by promoting software that integrates unique hardware features. Nintendo doesn't have to make every 3DS game available an iOS in order to have market penetration. If done properly, it can generate a boost to both sales and brand identity.
There's a pretty notable exception to this: iTunes. Windows support was added in 2004; subsequently, iPod sales skyrocketed, and we know all the rest. It's a great example of how cross-platform availability can synergistically increase both hardware and software demand.
In any case, I think Nintendo's balance sheet speaks for itself. Its walled garden is going to wilt unless there is a change in strategy.
Complementary goods by definition are inversely related when it comes to demand vs price. Demand of one good increases when the value of its complement decreases. Usually the value of a complement decreases due to commoditization.
So if you're a company that's monetizing off one market only, you can make a buttload of $$$ by destroying the value of your product's complement. This is why it makes sense for Square to port to multiple platforms. Being platform agnostic drives down the value of hardware. Oh you have a Vita and think you're special? Your hardware's not special. You can play FF on a smartphone too. You don't need to give your $$$ to Nintendo, or Sony, or Apple, just buy some $50 Chinese Android whitebox tablet, you'll still be able to play FF. This is the business strategy "commoditize your complements" in effect
Nintendo can't do that. They're monetizing directly off both games and hardware and need to be resistant to market forces that devalue either. Only way to do that is to isolate themselves via a walled garden and build their own brand in both markets. Which they've been doing for the past 3 decades.
Difference is iTunes was geared toward driving iPod sales and media distribution, which is where Apple's profit stream came from. iTunes itself is free and has no profit stream. And not many people were planning to buy a $1500 Mac just for iTunes so they didn't lose much in terms of Mac cannibalization. For Nintendo, both their games and hardware are their profit streams. If Nintendo sticks games on other platforms, there's no hardware tie in. They're in effect commoditizing themselves. Like Apple did back in the day with their Mac Clone program
Nintendo's balance sheet shows they need the Wii U to become a hit. The way they do that is by releasing quality games that you need to buy a Wii U to play. Same thing happened with the 3DS a couple years ago. It was considered a flop. Then they put out Animal Crossing and Pokemon and those two games alone drove 3DS sales and it's now considered a success.
The inverse relationship is between price and demand, not demand and demand. In the case of complementary goods, the price is simply of one and the demand for the other. The demand and price, respectively, of the complementary goods are positively correlated because they are complementary (e.g. if the demand for iPhones goes up, so does the demand for iPhone accessories).
I think the issue here is seeing dedicated console/handheld gaming devices and phones as being in the same hardware market. They're clearly not. No one is agonizing over whether to buy an iPhone or a 3DS, because they serve different purposes.
Entering the phone gaming market doesn't require Nintendo to use the same strategies as a typical cross-platform game publisher, and it particularly doesn't require cross-platform releases of its newest software. Nintendo has a software catalog that is associated with a variety of obsolete hardware, and it is essentially dead inventory. It could easily monetize this by making it available via hardware that people already own. Would people pay to be able to play an old Mario game on their iPhone? Definitely. Would all of those people pay for a 3DS just to play that same game? Doubtful. Would anyone pay for an iPhone just to play an old Mario game? Really doubtful, which is why this strategy doesn't undercut sales of other Nintendo hardware.
My point is that the gaming market has changed slightly in the past 3 decades, so Nintendo could probably stand to freshen up its playbook.
iTunes is free, but so was other music playback software. If it helps, you can think of it as a case of Apple making its hardware compatible with Windows software, rather than vice versa. Allowing hardware to branch out from its ecosystem would in theory devalue both its complementary software and hardware, except it instead had the effect of increasing Apple's brand value to give it stronger footing across markets.
I wouldn't give sole credit to Animal Crossing and Pokemon (released last year) while forgetting the ~40% price drop in 2011 which preceded the largest sales increase of the 3DS to date. Obviously, the same strategy hasn't worked for the Wii U for a variety of reasons (PS Vita is not as daunting a competitor as XBO and PS4, for one). The reliance on the Wii U's success is emblematic of Nintendo's problems, in that it hasn't sufficiently diversified its revenue streams.
When I refer to demand, I mean demand of the Nintendo brand. While a product's market demand has positive correlation with its complement's market demand, a given brand in a commoditized market loses brand power by virtue of being devalued. Pricing of complementary goods is not positively correlated. You can see this by contrasting MS's and Apple's strategies with respect to software and hardware. MS's market up until recently was software. It commoditized hardware, its complementary good, by making OEM Windows licensing the industry standard. Software value was high, hardware value was low. Apple came in and did the opposite since its market was hardware. Now hardware value is high, software value is low. Nintendo relies on both markets so they can't commoditize either.
If the software pricepoints in both handheld and mobile markets ever reached parity, the hardware would serve the same purpose. The only reason they're distinct right now is because phone games are a commodity market where a game can be free and people still might not download it, while people are willing to pay $40 for a handheld game.
The IP Nintendo does own gets ported to the newest hardware via the virtual console so they do. You just have to buy Nintendo hardware instead of Apple hardware. The minute they stick it on other platforms, people that would've bought a 3DS to play old games are not gonna do it any more. And their handheld hardware penetration, which needs to rise over a 7 year period, gets curbed. Then there's the brand erosion that comes from sticking your brand on a commoditized market instead of maintaining its value in a walled garden.
Commoditizing their own hardware market is the same mistake Apple made with their clone program. They upped their OS penetration by authorizing clones and got an initial bump in revenue, but ended up damaging their hardware brand for the long term until the clone program was killed. I know I'm repeating myself but it's a very similar example
iTunes is software that acts as an iPod complement and an online music retail complement. Since iTunes is free, it's already devalued. Software is the commodity here, being used to drive hardware sales and online distribution revenue.
By largest sales increase, I'm assuming you're mean in terms of % increase and not actual units. The quarter following the pricedrop, the 3DS was sitting at about 7M units sold. Right now, the 3DS is at 40M.
When it comes to gaming software sells hardware. It's why every platform owner pays money to retain exclusives or develops games in-house. Microsoft could bump software revenue porting Halo to the PS4, but it would be hurting its Xbox brand in the process.
Wow, negative comments. I love how Nintendo enforcing their intellectual property rights, by not letting people illegally download their games, is bad choice.
I think the issue here is, unless these folks distributed the GBA bios or roms theres no ground for a DMCA threat.
I imagine that this will quickly be circumvented and make it's way onto cydia. Emulators are not illegal, redistributing proprietary software is.
The problem is that Nintendo's brand value is plummeting, so the relative value between its hardware and software is negligible, and the company's reluctance to explore options beyond its limited ecosystem is hurting the brand as a whole.
If you're saying that the only difference between a smartphone and a 3DS is the price of the software, we're going to have to agree to disagree.
People don't buy a 3DS to play old games, for the most part. Brand erosion also occurs when customers don't have access to a product. In this case, the barrier is that Nintendo requires customers to purchase a new console in order to pay Nintendo to play old games. As a result, as time goes on, Angry Birds is going to have greater brand equity with new customers than Mario or Link.
Since the aim of the clone program was to increase OS market share, it is different from, say, porting a game to iOS. An OS ties a user to that particular OS - a Windows user is less likely to use Mac OSX. On the other hand, customers aren't locked into only playing games from, say, Electronic Arts.
My point was that cross-platform software doesn't always hurt a company that produces both hardware and software. Glad we agree
No, I meant actual units, and was referring to the Q4 2011 sales, which was the holiday season following the price drop. 43M is the total number of units shipped since the 3DS was released, and 15M of that occurred in 2011. 2012 added slightly less than 15M, and 2013 added around 13M. The point was that the 3DS was selling reasonably well before Pokemon and Animal Crossing, and a lot of it had to do with the price drop.
Microsoft and Sony have sources of revenue that extend beyond Xbox and PS4, while Nintendo basically only has the 3DS. Essentially, the company takes a huge risk with every console iteration, and has no contingency plan. Nintendo can't afford to act like Microsoft or Sony, because it is a different type of company.
I'd like to know why there is no organized online effort to get the DMCA repealed once and for all? It benefits NO ONE except the greedy corporations who want nothing better than you to keep buying the same movies and programs over and over and over and over again. You don't own your movies. You have a license to watch them, but ONLY how and when and the way they want you to watch them (on a disc in a drive that's connected to a network so they can monitor everything you think and do and FORCE you to watch previews and ads and other BS with undefeatable control mechanisms. WTF do I care what someone like Nintendo wants? Their desires are not to benefit me, but to benefit themselves. Corporate lobbying doesn't benefit me. It benefits them. Well WE outnumber THEM by a LOT if only WE would stand together and do something about them. The DMCA is evil and needs to be revoked.
I don't think they care. I own the carts and the system. They cant even prosecute illegal downloaders here much less people who have original game carts.
I'm saying markets can be disrupted and converge and the only reason smartphones haven't cannibalized handheld is because the sw pricepoints aren't the same. One is a budget sw market, the other is a premium sw market.
My opinion on mobile brands like Angry Birds is that while a new brand comes out every once in awhile, the mobile game market is so commoditized brand power is extremely low and these brands are effectively fads. I've been watching the King IPO, which looks like it's gonna be a duplicate of the Zynga IPO. If Supercell ever goes public, probably the same thing. None of these companies have been able to duplicate the success of that initial game that became a brand. Rovio has been talking about going public for years but hasn't pulled the trigger. They now make more off t-shirts and toys than they do games, despite increasing the volume of games they put out, which shows how impossible it is to monetize in a crowded commodity market. Meanwhile everyone has moved on from Angry Birds to Flappy Bird.
Almost every quirk that's come up regarding mobile gaming, from tanking IPO's to overpaid acquisitions like Draw Something, can be explained through the observation that mobile game brands are really fads. Something to think about when comparing mobile/console brands
If EA was vested in monetizing off their own hardware, they would probably try to lock customers in using their own games for product differentiation. I get what you're saying about Apple having different goals, but replace OS market share with software revenue, and it's a similar pattern of complements and commoditization for Nintendo.
My point was that cross-platform software doesn't always hurt a company that produces both hardware and software. Glad we agree
I agree. My point is going further, to determine whether or not a commoditization strategy will hurt a company, you have to break down the complement markets that are affected.
Fair enough. I thought you were talking about the Q2-Q3 bump b/c the price drop took place in Q2. Q4 also had the release of 3D Land and Mario Kart (which from experience were the first 3DS games actually worth playing) so there were probably multiple sales drivers for Xmas 2011.
That's true but they were able to turn the 3DS around and are gambling they'll be able to do the same with the Wii U. It's harder to do this with the Wii U because its specs are now overshadowed by the XB1 and PS4 but their plan is to use games as a driver for console sales over the next 5 years, which Nintendo has enough money in the bank to ride out, good or bad. Unless Iwata caves
Like in iOS.
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I know, but still on the store.
You can do the almost the same on iOS, with an App signed by Corporate license, without touching Apple, which was the scheme for GBA4iOS, the only downside is that a license like that costs $199.
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So does RetroArch. There are jailbreakless versions.
Because they don't make any money of it since it's unlicensed and illegal. Do you think Nintendo is a charity? The GBA classics wont disappear just because they're not available on iOS, GBA consoles are still available and many GBA games have been released on Virtual Console.
Riley Testut @rileytestut 7s
Good news! GBA4iOS will be available for download again tomorrow, exclusively on http://gba4iosapp.com
Good news! GBA4iOS will be available for download again tomorrow, exclusively on http://gba4iosapp.com
Apple shills everywhere in this thread. The pattern of praising Apple whenever they do something and then shunning other companies when they do the same exact thing is extremely sad.
Nintendo sent a copyright claim because GBA4iOS linked directly to ROMs. That is ILLEGAL. If Apple did this, I guarantee most of you would be on your knees praising the Apple god.
Nintendo sent a copyright claim because GBA4iOS linked directly to ROMs. That is ILLEGAL. If Apple did this, I guarantee most of you would be on your knees praising the Apple god.