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Comment by EA-3167 | Hacker News Reader

They can, but if they do the consequences for their business wouldn't be small. If Nintendo thinks piracy of their products is a problem now, try teaching people that investing in their hardware is a gamble and a potential waste of money and see how it goes.

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Nintendo is not really a company whose target audience is people who care about homebrew and device ownership.

I think although it would make a very vocal segment of the consumers angry, it's not something that ultimately would hurt Nintendo.

It's kind of sad imo but it's the reality of it, Nintendo is one of the most litigious and protective companies in the world when it comes to their intellectual property and this isn't a new thing.

Yes, and no.

That vocal part of the consumers are those that grew up with the old 'you buy it, you get to play it' approach.

And those consumers are now the ones who will decide what their children get to play. Needless to say, I do not see Nintendo in my household anymore after the switch2 announcement.

Nintendo's focus is on the generation that came after you. Same as Reddit after the whole API and 3rd party app extinction event. The vocal types are the ones that reminisce about the pre-DMCA days and whine about corporate greed and "you'll own nothing, just what the WEF wants".

There is an entire generation of consumers that grew up with Wii U, Switch 1, Netflix and Spotify and don't know or care about ownership and future preservation. That's where the money is. You may refuse to buy one for your kids but there're many more parents who don't play video games or care enough to keep them from getting one for their kids.

The problem with that idea is that you need evangelists. It's not something that Nintendo will feel now, but I have successfully converted 6 families into PC gaming with my kid. I caught them at kindergarten and now they are in Valve's garden. My sister's family and her circle is all Playstation. Her kids have never touched Nintendo.

Sure there are people who don't care, but those people don't bring people into the fold. It's a slow erosion. It's how Microsoft is losing ground to Chromebooks and Macs. People who don't know aren't hearing that they need a windows machine as much. They hear they need a Mac for security/ease of use or all they need is a Chromebook because they just surf the web anyway.

Microsoft of course will be fine because they have business on lock, but they used to have consumers as well.

They already do this with used consoles and games. If you buy a used Switch that someone tampered with on the software side, the only way you would find out something is wrong is when you get blocked from Nintendo servers months later. Or perhaps you bought a used game that someone cloned the card ID from, and you end up getting blocked when others use the ID.

Getting blocked from the Nintendo servers doesn't just mean losing online play, you can't update the console or games, play game-key card games, or run downloaded games that it needs to validate your ownership of.

This.

I never bought a Sony console again after they took away OtherOS on the PS3. And now that Nintendo starts acting like they own the device I paid for, a customer relationship that started in the mid-1980s ends.

Hopefully one of these days someone legally pushes back against N and wins, the way it's going it's doubtful though. To me, this isn't a far cry from them permabanning Switches via serial from online play for cheating and piracy, just the difference of them encroaching on hardware territory now. Piracy, uh... finds a way.

edit: and come on, what other purpose do eFuses really provide besides lockin

Every mobile phone manufacturer does the same thing and it isn't doing any of them any harm.

Phones are a necessity, videogame consoles are not. In any case, most people are not looking to flash alternative firmwares on to devices they rely on daily for work and their personal life.

The option is still available for Pixel phones and those using niche brands like Purism and Librem.

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