ESA calls Anbernic-style handhelds "superfakes" and wants the US to treat them as piracy hubs

[lostinlodos]

It’s clearly about licensing. Kirby1 Just has no clue how that’s the issue.

Problem is the big game companies are still releasing this old stuff. Be it retro consoles or collections on new systems.

Bigger problem is only a fraction of people who want these old titles use new systems. (“Look how poor they sold”)

Bigger bigger problem is the retro plug and play units are intentionally so limited they never reach the audience. And they are missing most of the games.

Bigger bigger bigger …

Nah.
Reality is as long as they think they can make money they will hold on to the IP.
Look, 100 retro games on the PlayBox, go buy a PlayBox now!

Are they shooting themselves with this? I don’t know. Legal and licensed mini retro unites sell out in days or weeks. And these pirate units are not exactly elusive.

So sure make a Gameboy or Game Gear or hell a portable NES, Dreamcast, whatever. Put every game on it. Pay the licensing fees and sell the damn thing for $400?
If you build it they will come?
If these companies put something out like these pirate systems they will sell in the millions.

I’d be surprised if they didn’t outsell modern units, having the entire library in your hand. Sure, there will always be piracy. Many people can’t afford that price. And some people really are just thieves and will steal it anyway.

It’s about pushing people to new systems with in game purchases.

That’s my researched opinion here.

 

[Kirby1]

It’s clearly about licensing. Kirby1 Just has no clue how that’s the issue.

Problem is the big game companies are still releasing this old stuff. Be it retro consoles or collections on new systems.

Bigger problem is only a fraction of people who want these old titles use new systems. (“Look how poor they sold”)

Bigger bigger problem is the retro plug and play units are intentionally so limited they never reach the audience. And they are missing most of the games.

Bigger bigger bigger …

Nah.
Reality is as long as they think they can make money they will hold on to the IP.
Look, 100 retro games on the PlayBox, go buy a PlayBox now!

Are they shooting themselves with this? I don’t know. Legal and licensed mini retro unites sell out in days or weeks. And these pirate units are not exactly elusive.

So sure make a Gameboy or Game Gear or hell a portable NES, Dreamcast, whatever. Put every game on it. Pay the licensing fees and sell the damn thing for $400?
If you build it they will come?
If these companies put something out like these pirate systems they will sell in the millions.

I’d be surprised if they didn’t outsell modern units, having the entire library in your hand. Sure, there will always be piracy. Many people can’t afford that price. And some people really are just thieves and will steal it anyway.

It’s about pushing people to new systems with in game purchases.

That’s my researched opinion here.

Nope.

I'm not going to be the teacher to an unwilling audience just as a charity service. You guys have Google, AI, the whole internet at your disposal. If you want don't want to understand the issue, that's your choice. Not my responsibility to make sure you do.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Nope.

I'm not going to be the teacher to an unwilling audience just as a charity service. You guys have Google, AI, the whole internet at your disposal. If you want don't want to understand the issue, that's your choice. Not my responsibility to make sure you do.

Yeah… sounds like you’re clueless… the only shock is you haven’t blamed Trump for this…

 

[lostinlodos]

Nope.

I'm not going to be the teacher to an unwilling audience just as a charity service.

Yeah… sounds like you’re clueless…

Ok, then I’ll teach.



Assume we only discuss licensed content or content allowed/forced by court order.



The claim that tracking down IP from early days is difficult is dead before the door opens. Here’s your history lesson for you as someone who was on the inside more than once. I’ll try to make this short enough to not be an article on its own.



Creating content.

5th generation and newer.

Though it started with the 4th gen platforms like NeoGeo and PC Engine, the 5th generation all but eliminated non-licensed content with the absolute control over development kits and tools. System manufacturers had long, detailed, ironclad agreements with those that purchased, leased, or rented a development kit. Exclude Sega which had a development computer it sold on store shelves for the Mega Drive, and since 1988 nearly every game contract is in a file cabinet or computer database.



Prior to that isn’t much worse for major systems. Atari is famous for its records keeping. The level of thanks they often get in backends of movies and books about gaming and computing is self explanatory. But I’ll get back to them and Nintendo momentarily.

Fairchild’s records are complete, and they are part of OnTec today. Mattel has patented a semi-portable or tabletop type unit to play 132 games telling us they probably have everything on file. We know Philips has their contract data from multiple books with interviews. Not much is public about Bally or Colico. Bally still releases new and classic properties.

So, about the only place in main property systems that can’t be easily tracked is Colico.



Atari, well, we’re talking about licensed games. So those few hundred non-licensed games don’t count.

Nintendo? Aside from the FDS Nintendo mostly used an in-kind release in perpetuity licence. To make it easy to understand without explaining it in detail, they basically could release that game with that code forever. Battles with Capcom, Square, Sun, Epic, etc are well documented.



As for studios, most still exist. They merged, were taken over, bought out. But most of those rights were transferred along the way. Aside from a few nobodies that produced a game or two and went away, tracking rights is easy.



Any claim that finding who owns what rights to a game is difficult… is just false.



So let us all just assume our poster isn’t talking about finding the rights. We’ll give the benefit of the doubt here. Let’s assume they are referring to *securing* the rights.



This is a difficult situation for SOME platforms. We see this today with digital moves in other industries. Helix and Fangoria, and PC PowerX’s new rights holder, are having issues with authors or artists not agreeing to digital releases.

Swarm, Eros, Capital, even Marvel, are all having problems with digitising the back catalog of comics for one person or another on a title.



So there is some issue here. Let’s put the stopgap at 1997. Nobody is talking about releasing anything newer than that in this context. Nintendo doesn’t count as stated above. They have the legal right. NEC and Mattel have similar agreements on most of their releases. SNK may be gone but the NeoGeo games also had similar provisions for most titles and the rights are held by a nonprofit: Misk Fiundation. (Easy charity idea there).

Sega has some rerelease contracts from the era. As shown by the direct ports of much of the Master System library to Game Gear carts. And the on-disc emulator releases of both in-house and third-party games on newer systems. Sega’s contracts from the ones I’ve read simply sent royalties to do so, no permission needed.



Atari is a mess, and the other platforms probably would be impossible to relicense. So half a point there.



So that brings us back to why not? Why does Nintendo not release a flash based full library NES or Game Boy or n64 portable? Why does Sega not create a modern portable Genesis.

Why did they and others release portable or set-top plug-and-play systems that are missing top-wanted first-party games?



*Easy. Money. *

They want to push you to the new system they currently support. So they can charge you $25 for a game disc that literally cost them $1 to create. Soon, with discs gone, it will cost them 0 to rerelease a game and still charge you $10-$25 to download it.

Yet a large population of people buying these portables don’t have a modern system. They either can’t afford one, or simply don’t want one.

I don’t know if these companies are making more money on $25 discs and downloads than they would with a $100 portable. Maybe. A bit of a risk to sell hundreds of games for $100 and gut your $25 downloads.

Jack that price up higher, with better equipment, and target the mid- and high-end retro gamers world wide and I’m sure they would make more, for now.



Doubt that will happen either.

I don’t see Sony or Microsoft being very forgiving to these companies if they went and gutted commissions on modern platforms by releasing a solo product.

As for Nintendo, their library is just too big. And modern systems too inexpensive. Aside from multiple yearly volume systems, don’t see the math.



And ultimately, value. Release too few systems and the backlash hurts a company. Eg the various mini systems released over the last few years.

Release too many you kill future value in the IP



Bottom line? Say what you want about licensing and rights and royalties: sure there’s some minor bit of truth buried in the lack of knowledge.

The real reason is money.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Ok, then I’ll teach.



Assume we only discuss licensed content or content allowed/forced by court order.



The claim that tracking down IP from early days is difficult is dead before the door opens. Here’s your history lesson for you as someone who was on the inside more than once. I’ll try to make this short enough to not be an article on its own.



Creating content.

5th generation and newer.

Though it started with the 4th gen platforms like NeoGeo and PC Engine, the 5th generation all but eliminated non-licensed content with the absolute control over development kits and tools. System manufacturers had long, detailed, ironclad agreements with those that purchased, leased, or rented a development kit. Exclude Sega which had a development computer it sold on store shelves for the Mega Drive, and since 1988 nearly every game contract is in a file cabinet or computer database.



Prior to that isn’t much worse for major systems. Atari is famous for its records keeping. The level of thanks they often get in backends of movies and books about gaming and computing is self explanatory. But I’ll get back to them and Nintendo momentarily.

Fairchild’s records are complete, and they are part of OnTec today. Mattel has patented a semi-portable or tabletop type unit to play 132 games telling us they probably have everything on file. We know Philips has their contract data from multiple books with interviews. Not much is public about Bally or Colico. Bally still releases new and classic properties.

So, about the only place in main property systems that can’t be easily tracked is Colico.



Atari, well, we’re talking about licensed games. So those few hundred non-licensed games don’t count.

Nintendo? Aside from the FDS Nintendo mostly used an in-kind release in perpetuity licence. To make it easy to understand without explaining it in detail, they basically could release that game with that code forever. Battles with Capcom, Square, Sun, Epic, etc are well documented.



As for studios, most still exist. They merged, were taken over, bought out. But most of those rights were transferred along the way. Aside from a few nobodies that produced a game or two and went away, tracking rights is easy.



Any claim that finding who owns what rights to a game is difficult… is just false.



So let us all just assume our poster isn’t talking about finding the rights. We’ll give the benefit of the doubt here. Let’s assume they are referring to *securing* the rights.



This is a difficult situation for SOME platforms. We see this today with digital moves in other industries. Helix and Fangoria, and PC PowerX’s new rights holder, are having issues with authors or artists not agreeing to digital releases.

Swarm, Eros, Capital, even Marvel, are all having problems with digitising the back catalog of comics for one person or another on a title.



So there is some issue here. Let’s put the stopgap at 1997. Nobody is talking about releasing anything newer than that in this context. Nintendo doesn’t count as stated above. They have the legal right. NEC and Mattel have similar agreements on most of their releases. SNK may be gone but the NeoGeo games also had similar provisions for most titles and the rights are held by a nonprofit: Misk Fiundation. (Easy charity idea there).

Sega has some rerelease contracts from the era. As shown by the direct ports of much of the Master System library to Game Gear carts. And the on-disc emulator releases of both in-house and third-party games on newer systems. Sega’s contracts from the ones I’ve read simply sent royalties to do so, no permission needed.



Atari is a mess, and the other platforms probably would be impossible to relicense. So half a point there.



So that brings us back to why not? Why does Nintendo not release a flash based full library NES or Game Boy or n64 portable? Why does Sega not create a modern portable Genesis.

Why did they and others release portable or set-top plug-and-play systems that are missing top-wanted first-party games?



*Easy. Money. *

They want to push you to the new system they currently support. So they can charge you $25 for a game disc that literally cost them $1 to create. Soon, with discs gone, it will cost them 0 to rerelease a game and still charge you $10-$25 to download it.

Yet a large population of people buying these portables don’t have a modern system. They either can’t afford one, or simply don’t want one.

I don’t know if these companies are making more money on $25 discs and downloads than they would with a $100 portable. Maybe. A bit of a risk to sell hundreds of games for $100 and gut your $25 downloads.

Jack that price up higher, with better equipment, and target the mid- and high-end retro gamers world wide and I’m sure they would make more, for now.



Doubt that will happen either.

I don’t see Sony or Microsoft being very forgiving to these companies if they went and gutted commissions on modern platforms by releasing a solo product.

As for Nintendo, their library is just too big. And modern systems too inexpensive. Aside from multiple yearly volume systems, don’t see the math.



And ultimately, value. Release too few systems and the backlash hurts a company. Eg the various mini systems released over the last few years.

Release too many you kill future value in the IP



Bottom line? Say what you want about licensing and rights and royalties: sure there’s some minor bit of truth buried in the lack of knowledge.

The real reason is money.

Thanks ChatGPT… the last few lines were sufficient

 

[lostinlodos]

Thanks ChatGPT… the last few lines were sufficient

I’ve never willingly used any ai. I’m deeply afraid of what it is and what it could become. Have been afraid since the 90s when we started playing with this crap and will never stop being afraid of it.

Just saying. Why does everyone point to ai when older online users actually reply? We ALL write long style.