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Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

Pricing is a different complaint from hoarding copyrighted classics though.

Sure, Nintendo isn't pricing their franchises at the price point you want, but in context to the discussion they're at least re-releasing what they can and making them accessible.

(And if it was really about letting your son play Super Mario World, you can pay $8 and he can play it for three months)

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They are not releasing everything they can. They still cling to the idea of releasing games drip-feed. The apps for Switch do not have every single wholly owned Nintendo title. FAR from it.

Which is pretty typical of a release process that requires updating and testing software on platforms that are ~30 years apart.

It's not just the price, though. Selling, say, Super Mario Bros. for $5 would be bad enough, but Nintendo has been forcing people to buy the same games over and over again because there's no way to move them to newer consoles when they come out.

(I could be wrong about this. If so, please correct me.)

No you're right, but a lifetime license to software on all platforms is a losing proposition for any company, since there are non-trivial costs to re-releasing on new technology.

Also it may be easy to link digital purchases right now, but proving past cartridge purchases would be very difficult.

They actually got rid of exactly that. You cannot buy Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo Switch. You can only subscribe to a service that contains Super Mario Bros.

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