It amazes me that people will defend anything Apple does, no matter how bad it is. This situation now, and even the iPhone price drop. You had people telling others that had just purchased their iPhone a little more than 2 weeks before the price drop to "suck it up" and that "$200 isn't much".
And now this. If Microsoft had done this, everybody would be mad and talking about how bad of a company they are and how they always screw the customer over.
But now that Apple has made a couple of anti-consumer moves... well, what Apple has done is perfectly okay. Because its Apple.
What's your point? That a platform has to exist for X years before it reaches its end of life?
My point is that the games that Nintendo is trying to charge for are anywhere between 5 and 22 years old now. That is a bit different than games that were released mere weeks ago.
I'm not saying its right over Nintendo to charge people who already purchased their games. I'm just saying its different. Those games range in age from half a decade to more than 2 decades old. Not a few weeks to one year old.
And you certainly weren't able to purchase those old Nintendo games NEW just a couple of weeks ago and then be told a few days later that you couldn't use them any more on new hardware.
How is that different from someone who bought a GBA after a GameBoy, or a Dreamcast after a Saturn, or an Xbox 360 after an Xbox?
Heck, I've spent way more than $50 on Xbox games that aren't playable on my Xbox 360.
Game Boy games worked on the GBA. The Dreamcast was released several years after the Saturn had effectively died in the US. And for both of those, neither Sega nor Nintendo told their customers that they had to buy new copies of the same game to continue playing. The games simply didn't work. They didn't update the game from 1.0 to 1.1 and say "sorry, $50 again please".
And Microsoft has been making an effort to insure backwards compatibility with old Xbox games, despite the completely different hardware and and software. And they're doing that for free.
So using that logic, do you think games in ITMS like Ms. Pac Man and Tetris should be free to everyone in perpetuity?
Every person who bought iPod games should be eligible for a free upgrades of new versions. Not new games. But new versions. In the case of the current iPod games, they were all updated from version 1.0 to 1.1. That is no different than patching a PC game to run on a new OS, or a bug fix patch.
If the new version of Ms. Pac-Man had new added levels and things like that, then Apple has every right to charge for the completely new game.
But they should NOT charge for UPDATES that allow the games to run on new hardware.
In the case of the better controls on Tetris, that should be free for all purchasers of that game. Why? Because the original controls were awful. That should be free as an apology. Nothing other than a couple of new control schemes were added to the game. That does not qualify as new content, it only qualifies as a patch or update.
Not really.
It's important to sell consoles to people, when you don't have a must-have title on a new platform.
If you say so. One of the reasons I'll be buying an Xbox360, aside from the fact that the PS3 is horribly overpriced and a lot of its flagship titles (like Final Fantasy) have taken a turn for the worst, is the fact that I'll have access to a very large number of Xbox games.
As for the link you posted, well I can see why they would focus less on backwards compatibility.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm Considering just how many games do work now.
You're comparing apples to hammers here.
Nope. Just pointing out that I never had to pay any money for those games to continue working on new editions of Windows and new hardware.
Windows XP is vastly different "under the hood" than Windows 3.1 and DOS, even Windows 95/98. Yet my MYST, Mechwarrior 2, and original Half-Life CDs still all work thanks to a company preserving backwards compatibility.
The underlying OS on the iPod Classic is completely different. You're basically saying that it's completely acceptable and almost expected for people to have to rebuy games for the iPhone or iPod Touch, because they're newer and different, but the iPod Classic is beholden to support legacy apps because it has the same shape as the old iPod -- nevermind the fact that it shares the same OS as the iPhone and iPod Classic.
The iPod touch and iPhone have completely different hardware and user interfaces. They have completely different ways of using them. The games would literally have to be rewritten in every aspect to work on those iPods. Of course, Apple could show they do care about the consumer and offer cheap upgrades for iPod touch/iPhone games to those of us who bought iPod games.
The iPod classic and 3G nano are still the same basic iPods they were before, with upgrades to the hardware and software. Some chips may have changed. But so what? Look at the Xbox360. Microsoft went to great lengths to insure backwards compatibility. Look at the Playstation2. It had a PS1 CPU, but most of the backwards compatibility was the result of software emulation.
The games for the iPod classic, nano, and 5/5.5G iPods are all played exactly the same, do not use any kind of new UI or new way of interacting with the games like they would on the touch or iPhone.
Its a simple software update/patch to get the games to run on the new hardware. And, as such, it should be free to users as it always has been with console and PC games in the past.
So?
Where did ITMS ever promise that iPod games would work on every hard drive based iPod forever?
Apple NEVER said these games would not work on future iPods, nor did Steve Jobs come out and say that games would have to be repurchased.
And it has been a tradition in the gaming industry for how long now? To maintain backwards compatibility.
What type of person would go stock up on games in the ITMS knowing full well that a new iPod was going to be released? Especially when it was almost certain that the new iPod would run a completely different OS?
And where is the proof that the iPod classic and 3G nano run a "completely different OS"? Yeah, the UI has improved. But where is the proof that it is completely different, written entirely new from the ground up or based on OS X? Even so, its still using the same basic hardware, user interface, and user input to play the games.
Apple actually has a pretty consistent history of dropping backwards compatibility going back to the Lisa. It's also one of the inherent differences between Apple and Microsoft.
One of the reasons Windows is so... you know... Windows... is because Microsoft designs it to work with everything under the sun. If you ever do a fresh install of pre-Vista Windows, you'll see it trying to load up drivers for ISA SCSI cards that haven't been made in nearly 15 years.
Force your products to take on legacy baggage, and you wind up with Windows
As much as I like my Mac, I have to be honest and say that is one of the reasons Microsoft still dominates.
People can be assured that whatever they buy will continue to work in one way or another. And if the software doesn't, then the developer will generally update it for free to make sure it continues to work.
Look at Nero as an example. They could have simply told all users they needed to buy a new version of Nero. $90 down the drain. But they offered a free upgrade for everyone so they could use Nero in Vista.
That is just GOOD customer service.
And as I said before, Apple needs to realize where a lot of their current customers are coming from. If they don't treat these customers the way they are used to being treated, or even better, then they are going to lose them as customers.
If I have no guarantee that my software that I purchase for my Mac will continue to work as time goes on, then I might just have to not purchase a Mac again in the future.
With the relatively few people who bought games and immediately bought a new iPod for the sake of buying one?
With their general policy of dropping compatibility. You can bet this will affect more than just a few people. The news of this has already spread across the internet and when the average person hears of it, they will wonder what they might forced to repurchase in the future.
You can run UT under Intel OSX because OSX (an operating system) allows you to. The tiny patch is necessary but it is the large OSX that allows the backward compatibility. The console games are running their own large operating system for backward compatibility.
The only options they had on the current gen of the iPod was to re-write the game code and re-compile it for the new hardware making it incompatable with the last generation of iPods. A patch will not give you game compatability between the last and current iPod generations. You will never get game code that will run on both generations of iPods.
But companies like Epic assuring customers that old games work is just flat out good customer service. Epic could have said "sorry, we're not updating the old game to work". Or they could have been like Apple and charged for the new game.
Or Apple could have stepped up like Microsoft and Sony and made sure that the games worked, despite the new hardware and software.
At the very worst, Apple could have charged a very small fee, say 49 cents, to upgrade. Not forcing people to rebuy what they have already purchased.
Ask yourself this: Can I still play it on my old iPod? If the answer is yes, you have nothing to complain about, other than not being given a free handout. Plain and simple. You got exactly what you paid for.
This coming from someone who could afford a 17" MBP with 4GB of RAM and the more expensive display.
$50 might not mean as much to you. But to other people, being told that they just threw away $50 is a big deal.
) and my PS1 and PS2 games are perfectly compatible in a PS3 (If I bought one). There is no reason that apple should not offer free updates to make previous games I purchased work in my new iPod (Its not like I am going to carry my old iPod around just to keep the games). As a consumer it makes no sense that I would have to rebuy all the games I already bought, its not like I have to rebuy all the movies and music I purchased off iTunes every time I get a new iPod.
