Declining VC sales

[iNma]

Apparently Satoru Iwata gave a speech outlining the business case so far for the Wii, including comment on the performance of the Virtual Console. He says that a total of 3.2 million games have been downloaded so far, and out of those, 1.5 were in the first two months and 1.8 in the second three months, despite the huge increase in the installed user base.

Anyone have an opinion about this? I reckon there are two interlinked factors: firstly, most people downloaded the obvious titles like SMB and SMW early on. Linked to this, I think Nintendo, in particular - though not solely - front-loaded the VC with quality titles, and then only trickled out newer titles, the majority of which aren't necessarily must-haves to casual gamers and those unimpeded by nostalgia (like most of us, I presume ).

Though I appreciate a case can be made for the softly-softly approach to releasing titles, I don't see why they can't flood the system. As Joystiq points out, this is all old (sometimes ancient) code from which the required profit has often already been extracted, the VC acting as little more than a provider of additional funds for the office Christmas party. At this rate it'll be a decade, if ever, before the complete libraries of these systems are up on the VC,

Licensing issues, notwithstanding, I think there is an element of Big Brotherism in the way both the VC and XBLA have been handled, and even though it's tantamount to heresy to say so, at least the XBLA games have been tweaked, online play added and such. I don't have a 360 myself, and I love the archival style of the VC thus far, but I can't help feeling that I'm being short-changed in certain regards.

Rant over, please opine.

[KeatsSeven]

to be honest, i had a 360 and had loads of the arcade games on it.

the problem with 'enhancing' them is that the new visuals actually look horrible and whilst most had online play, there was hardly anyone on there (and horribly laggy when there was), so i for one ended up playing them offline, with original graphics.
so, just like the vc!
another problem with the 'enhancements' is you would be VERY lucky if you got more than two games A MONTH.
on vc you get three-four games every week.

look at it like this- games like 'joust' in HD every three weeks or games like ocarina in thier original form every seven days?

your other point about thier not being enough games released- well the wii might have a lifespan of six or seven years and nintendo only really have control over the games they originally published not the entire back catalogue of games released for the systems, that why they HAVE to stagger the top releases- im surprised we have had as many triple-A games as we have had already!

[PlayerOne]

There wasn't much else for people to do in the first 2 months?

[UKMF Diablo]

I think I was playing doom the arcade 360 release- online with a mate (no lag if your host and have a good solid connection) when He was talking about wii coming out and the fact it would have vc..

I was drooling at this thought!

yes, the 360 has titles that have been enhanced or even completley revamped for the 360 ..your talking 2 titles a week.. and you sometimes get weird stuff completley new for 360 arcade .. like crazy golf just this week now....

since arcade has been out i think ive downloaded every1 50+ titles ouch!

im a complete 360 arcade freak.. but i can easily say that VC on wii is easily better!!

with 360 arcade your obiously limited at what comes out cos even though microsoft usually manages to get its teeth into a lot of developers im sure ninty and sega aint gonna let this happen... to all the best titles anyway..

the problem nintendo may have with 360 is that microsoft are releasing arcade games for every one, in every genre.. games for .. the nostalgic father.. the mother with a bit of spare time on uno and even the kids who see old games they have never heard of before like geometry wars in a new light.. hey they even have games like crazy golf and worms for the entire family!

but I'm standing by VC because i know that microsoft cant touch any of this goldust with a seven foot barge-pole! that's why I was drooling then and thats why im still drooling at the thought today!!

so I hope for VC's sake ppl will see the light and support the games how they were intended to be played..

respect to 360 but for pure retro VC all the way!