 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime, and this is the very first video of mine you've ever seen. I would really appreciate if you would subscribe to the channel or on our road to 80,000 subscribers. So every single one of you hit that like button and subscribe, I do appreciate it. Now, you wanna know how much I appreciate my subscribers? So much so that our subscribers have a chance to win a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X or a Switch OLED this month. All you have to do is head to that gleam.io link down in the pinned comment or the description to enter. The winner will be announced on April 1st and I know that sounds like a joke, it's not really a joke. We're actually gonna announce the winner there, so cool. So yesterday I put out a video covering the situation with the Nintendo Wii eShop and for those who might have missed that video just to give a quick summary of what happened, the Nintendo Wii shop is down. It's been down for five days now. There has been zero updates about this on the maintenance page from Nintendo and there has been no obviously press releases or anything to shop. Just literally stopped working five days ago. Now, I've read a lot of responses to this where some people said, hey Nate, you're being insensitive. There was an earthquake that impacted Japan and yes, there definitely was an earthquake that caused a tsunami that did hit Japan. And that's terrible devastation and I do feel for the people suffering and I hope for their families and everyone else affected by it that they end up recovering and doing well. I hope for that for the same thing with the war happening out in Ukraine and I hope for that for pretty much everyone involved in any sort of conflict, whether it's within their control or not, that you guys find a way through it. But here's the thing, these servers are run locally. So for those who don't know, the Nintendo Wii shop servers weren't being ran out of Japan. They're being ran right here in the United States. The ones for Europe were being ran out of a certain country in Europe. I can't remember which one it is that Nintendo uses servers from, but it's a country localized in Europe. So the Japanese servers going down would only affect Japan. So the fact that this is a worldwide outage with no word from Nintendo tells you that, well, Nintendo was obviously sneakily, I'm air-coding that and I'll tell you why, closing down the Wii shop channel. Now, why is it that I'm air-coding that because Nintendo technically told us back in 2019 that they would be shutting down the ability to re-download games off the Wii shop channel at an undisclosed future date? And it stuck to it. It was an undisclosed future date. In fact, it took a few days for people to even realize that it had vanished because people, we haven't been able to buy games on the Wii shop channel since 2019, so it would take someone going to re-download their games to realize, crap, I can't re-download my games anymore. That's really weird. How long has this been going on? Let me reach out to the internet and find out. And that's when we realized it's been about five days, which also predates that horrible, real world, real nature event that hit Japan. So yeah, it seems to be unrelated to that. And if it was related to that, Nintendo is usually really quick to put out statements. So what do I think about this in general? Not so much what I said yesterday, but why do I personally feel that I don't care that much about this? I care enough to talk about it, but the idea that digital games are going to vanish from our ability to re-download someday doesn't seem to bother me. This hasn't stopped me from considering buying digital games on Switch. You would think, hey, I overreacted yesterday. This isn't that big a deal, yada, yada, yada. Well, here's the thing. It's not really stopping me from buying digital games. Now, I don't feel any less inclined today to buy digital games on Switch than I did before this got shut down. Now, some of this is because, you know, I'm a logic-based person. We sort of knew this was going to happen. Logic tells you they're not gonna keep servers for old platforms around forever. And once they decide to close those servers, you were going to lose access to your digital games. Now, not entirely lose access. You know, that's more akin to games today that require online connections. There are tons of those games today, by the way, that require online connection. I think GT7 that recently came out, Renterizm Assessment, I think actually requires an online connection for single player. That's been a controversial move. Whether or not they patch that out in the future if they shut down servers, that's a whole another conversation to have on a completely different platform. But it doesn't bother me that these older shops are getting shut down because we use your shop and 3DS shop or eventually gonna get shut down. And yes, the Nintendo Switch, that ever popular system today, fast forward 15 years from now, 20 years from now, yeah, they're probably gonna shut down the eShop on here as well. And we won't be able to purchase or redownload games for the Switch. And I have a ton of digital games on my Switch, more digital games than physical. So why wouldn't this bother me to lose access? And I'm going to preface this right now. It is going to bother some people, justifiably so. And if it does bother you, you are not wrong, okay? I can only speak for myself and how I play games and a self-realization I made years ago. And this realization might not be true for you. This is only for me. I'm speaking from my perspective. So please don't come at me, tossing a bunch of hate comments, telling me how Nate, you're wrong when I'm just talking to what my personal experience playing games. See, I've been playing Nintendo platforms since the NES days, Game Boy. I was there, okay? I was playing those games mostly because my dad had them, but I still played them, right? Super Nintendo, N64, GameCube, DS, 3DS, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Pocket. We know all the Game Boy Advance SP, DS Lite, DSi. Obviously we get to the 3DS, 2DS, the Wedge, 2DS, the 2DS XL, the new Nintendo 3DS XL, the 3DS XL. Like it just went crazy with 3DS with the number of revisions that system had. And then obviously we get to the Switch, where we've had the Switch, the Switch Lite and the Switch, all that. Technically there was two versions of the original Switch as well, version one and then version two, where they made a slight alteration to make hacking the Switch a bit harder to do. So here's the thing, I've been there this entire time with Nintendo. I've owned at one point in my life over 100 NES games, over 100 Game Boy games, over 100 Super Nintendo games and around 60, 70, you know, N64 games. And actually I ended up owning about 50 something, you know, GameCube games. And these are all obviously physical because that was the only option on those platforms. I owned all of them. They were awesome. I loved it. It was the only way I knew to experience games. It was great. And then as the years went on, the Nintendo Wii came out. Oh yeah, I played some of my GameCube games on there, backwards compatibility. That was cool. And then the Wii U came out. 3DS. Actually the 3DS came out before the Wii U but you get my point. Switch. Not once have I gone back and turned on my Nintendo Entertainment System, my Super Nintendo, my N64 or my GameCube. Not once have I even felt the urge to turn on those platforms and play those games. Now, this is a personal thing. I just don't replay games. I've actually talked about this several times on the channel. It's very rare that I will go back and replay a game. And you might go, but Nate, that's insane. If a game is so amazing, like Nate Breath of the Wild is your favorite game of all time, you must have replayed that thing at least a dozen times. No, I've only ever played from start to beating the final boss once. Did that one time. I in master mode, I maybe got about halfway through. I have a couple other ones where I restarted up and just did the beginning area, but no, haven't replayed start to finish. Don't really plan to. But Nate, Zelda, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask. Oh my gosh, Zelda 2 is your favorite. Yeah, you're right. I played through Zelda 2 twice in my life. I've played through Ocarina of Time twice in my life. Once on 3DS, once on the N64. Like I don't replay games. And I have a good reason. The good reason isn't because the games are any worse today. It's not because the few times I've gone back, like when the NES mini and NES Classic and the SNES Classic came out. Oh yeah, sure. With my kids, I popped in a few games from those and replayed them a little bit. And the games were just as much fun as they were when I was a kid. I remember. It's because I don't think gaming's gotten worse. I think it's only gotten better. Now, I gotta preface this by saying not everything's gotten better. I had mentioned earlier this idea of an always online connection with a single player experience. Yeah, I'm not a fan of that. Especially when you don't have internet. I wanna play a game on my Switch but I need an online connection while I'm on an airplane. Well, I'm not paying the airplane or internet access for a two hour flight. That's just ridiculous. Why would I do that just so I could play a single player experience? I shouldn't have to do that. Thankfully, it's not a prevalent thing with Nintendo's games but it is something that's happening in this industry. So this is the way I look at it and this is probably the way only someone like me could look at this is, since I think games have constantly gotten better and better and better over the years. Look at what happened with Elden Ring. I mean, Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild both came out in the last five years. You know, Mario Odyssey as well and those three games are some of the top highest-rated games to ever release and we just got all of those in the last five years. I mean, let that sing in for a little bit. In the last five years, we've gotten three of the greatest games to ever exist in all of gaming. And someone wants to keep telling me that gaming's worse today? That's not as good. Legends Arceus to me. Greatest Pokemon game I've ever played. Maybe Scarlet and Vile will be even better. At least it's gonna be better than Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. I can probably guarantee that. The point is, I think gaming's always gotten better. So because gaming's constantly getting better, one of my favorite things in video games are new experiences. Kirby and the Forgotten Land about to come out. That's a brand new Kirby experience. I'm way more looking forward to that than going back and playing Breath of the Wild again, my favorite game of all time. You know, I'm right now in the middle of playing Triangle Strategy. Brand new experience. Love it. Right? That's what I'm playing. Nintendo Switch Sports coming up. Rather play that than go back and play Wii Sports. I am someone that's constantly looking forward to what's next and it's not just because of the news I do here. Irregardless of this YouTube channel, that's what I do. I look forward to what's coming because I actually enjoy these new experiences more than replaying things I've already experienced. As much fun as those original experiences are. As amazing as a story might be in this game or that game. As amazing as the gameplay is. The bottom line is I enjoy new experience that I've never done before than just re-experiencing the same thing over again that isn't quite going to have the same impact as it did the first time that I played it. Absolutely. If you could wipe my brain of Breath of the Wild and I come back and suddenly, what the heck is this Zelda game? I've never played it. Hell yeah, it's a brand new experience to me. Let's go. But once I've had that experience, everything else after that is a bit less because it's no longer a first time. It's already, I know what to expect. That doesn't mean I can't discover new things. That doesn't mean there's not new things waiting for me over that horizon. That doesn't mean that there's things I haven't done and that I've 100% of the games. But for the general gist of the game, a lot of the excitement will be gone already because I've already beaten it. I've already experienced it. So why does this matter when we're talking about losing access to games we've already purchased? Well, because that very same thing happened to me with physical games and I thought I cared. I don't think I actually care. Let me explain. All those physical games I talked to what I have before, my mother, my lovely mother at one point in my life decided that since I hadn't touched those games in quite some time, that she would give them away to Goodwill. Now look, I'm all for giving a game collection to some people that could appreciate it, but given it's a Goodwill, just lets them profiteer off of a free donation of some highly valuable things. I mean, I had turtles in time in that collection for the Super Nintendo, a highly sought after and highly valued SNES game. It was very difficult just imagining all those memories going away because my mother decided, hey, you're off in college, you're off doing this, you're off doing that. You don't need this stuff anymore. You haven't touched it in five years, goodbye. And that sucked. And I'm 35 and that story still kind of bugs me that that happened. But you know what's funny? I didn't try to rebuild my collection. I didn't try to get my Game Boy games back, get my NES games, my SNES, my N64, my GameCube. I didn't try to rebuild that collection. Now, there was a point here in 2019 when I was going through a rough spot with Switch and I owned 30, 40, 50 plus, something like that. I know it's kind of a wide range. I don't actually remember the exact amount. I owned a ton of physical Switch games. At one point, actually at launch, I owned every single one, every single physical Switch game that existed at launch I owned. Here's the thing. I had to sell them in 2019 because I was in a bit of a bind with money. So I sold them. I needed cash, I needed it now. Thankfully, I'm no longer in such a financial strife that I need to worry about selling games. And I always told myself, well, I'll rebuy these games later when I'm better off financially. Later is here. And sure, I have bought in some physical games. I haven't rebuy a single one that I've previously owned. Because all those ones I previously owned, I've already played to either my satisfaction or played to completion. And I don't really have a desire to replay them. So why would I go spend $60 more to get them again or discount bin $20? Why would I spend that again to replay those games when I'm not going to? So I've had this happen physically where my games were just ripped from me, but thanks to my mother. Bless her soul, love her to death. But she made her decision that I definitely still disagree with to this day. I made a decision in 2019 to sell off most of my physical Switch games because I needed money. And I still don't really regret that to this day because I already played those games. Those memories are in here. They're not going anywhere. Now someday, if I have all, not come with it, I don't have Alzheimer's or something else that messes with my memory and I lose some of those memories, which kind of cool because you can then replay things for the first time again, but I just don't care. It doesn't bother me because I have so much to look forward to. And that's me. So when I imagine a future where, oh man, I can no longer access my digital library on Switch and my memory got corrupt and my Switch broke and all of a sudden I can't download my games anymore. Download that digital library I have, which at this point, my digital library on Switch is probably well over a hundred games at this point. I don't really care because I probably was never going to replay those games again. We went down. I have a Nintendo Wii upstairs because my children actually enjoy things like Wii sports. And once we have Nintendo Switch sports, I don't really know the Wii probably goes back to collecting dust. But here's the thing. We have that Wii upstairs and I don't really care that I can't re-download my virtual console games. That I can't re-download World of Goo. Guess what? If that Wii bricks and I could never download those games again, I was never going to play them anyways. Now again, I understand that this is a very weird perspective. Lots of you. In fact, most of you even in fact, might be people that love going back and replaying games from their childhood. They like replaying games, replaying games. The replay value is something they highly value. When they look at a game and if it's worth buying, if it's worth spending $60, how much replay value does it have? That is something that people actually consider when buying games. And that's great. But that doesn't matter to me. Replay value is irrelevant. Sure, multiplayer games are infinite replayable, but single-player games don't need to keep giving me reasons to replay and replay and play again and play again. They don't. Elden Ring, beautiful example. I think there's five different endings in that game and I'm just about ready to start my journey in that game for the first time. I'm probably not going to see all five endings by playing it myself. I'll probably see one and then I'll probably look up the other four endings. Now maybe I'll wonder what decisions, what choices, what things I could have did differently along my journey to maybe attain those, but I'm not going to replay it and go through it to get each of those four endings. And some people might go, blast for me. That's what the game is for. Replay it, different difficulty modes. Do everything, even put it on an easier difficulty if you need to and just plow through it, plow through it, modify the game to get through it quicker, modify save files, do whatever, get to those things, experience them firsthand. And my thought process is, look, once I've had my fill, I don't really need to keep replaying. So this is how I function. This is how I work as a gamer. I realize it's not how a lot of you work. That's why I started this off by saying, look, a lot of you aren't going to agree with me, but these shutdown of digital stores that are inevitable. It's about to happen on PlayStation 3 eventually. Sony already tried, got backlash, they'll try again someday. They probably won't even announce it this time. Same with PlayStation 4, one day, Xbox One, Xbox 360, even the Xbox Series X and S today, PlayStation 5, even Steam as an example. Who knows, the Steam's going to be around forever. We could lose access to that library someday. I know it seems crazy to think about, but it is possible. Publishers can pull games for any reason because our purchasing agreements don't actually give us the game. They give us a license to play the game, which it's really how software is always worked. Like when you install Windows 10 on your system or Windows 11 or whatever, you're buying a license. You don't actually own the desktop software you're using. You own a license to use that. That's the way video games work as well. Some people always think copyright needs to be updated, but I don't really think copyright law needs to be updated in that regards because you're never going to have ownership over the code base, over the art assets, which would be the implication by you fully owning this thing is that you own everything about it and you don't. You own a license to play it. I'm cool with that, but what I'm not cool with is people buying digital games, but then turning around and complaining that this is happening, know what you're getting into. Look, I don't know if an all digital future is ever going to be a thing. That's obviously a scary prospect for some where there's no such thing as digital games. I mean, you think I don't believe in physical games? Look, look, there's a physical copy of Sending Punishment on Wii. Here's a weird game on DS. I have a, I saw the handful, a handful stack of Switch games in the back. Like I still buy physical games here and there, but I just, I'm just saying, know what you're getting into. Because, well, an all digital future could happen. Digital sales are constantly going like this, right? We haven't seen any downturn in digital sales tracking. Brand new, newly released AAA games like Elden Ring have more digital sales than physical sales. It's inevitable, okay? It feels like that all digital futures upon us. And for those of you that hate that these stores can just be ripped from you at any point, even if it's 15 years after a system comes out that it can just be torn from you, it's gonna bother you. And as such, you should continue buying everything physically as you can. Continue to take advantage of limited run games when they bring out the indie games in physical form. Do it, support it, put your money there. But if you are like me and you are buying games digitally by choice when there are physical options, I'm not talking about the digital only games, I'm saying when there is choice, when I could buy a physical copy, but I instead choose for the convenience of digital. Don't turn around and complain that those shops go down. Because you should be able to use your own logic to tell you, of course they are. You really expected support for a dead system forever from a company that makes no money off it? Really? Know what you're getting into. Look, we can want it to be different. We can wish for it to be different. We can wish for full backwards compatibility on every Nintendo platform moving forward. So your games today on Switch will always be available because they'll always be available 10 platforms for now on Nintendo. Except, we know that's not gonna happen because the history of the video game industry tells you that's not gonna happen. So, I'm cool if people are really against this and really hurt by it. I'm also cool if they just don't care. I'm also cool if they already expected this and they're still okay with buying digital games. Like me. Because frankly, losing access to games I once bought because my system breaks or my memory card corrupts or whatever happens that causes me to lose access and be unable to re-download them. Frankly, I probably wasn't gonna re-download them anyways outside of being scared. I wasn't gonna play those games and that's just me. Everybody's different. And I think that's the big thing here when we have this conversation is please respect everyone. You're not going to agree with me. Maybe a couple of you will. Most of you probably won't. Most of you probably hate that that's how I play games, that I don't consider replayability when I review games, that I don't consider replayability in my enjoyment of games. That I don't consider things that could be done differently to make me want to play again. Because even when those things happen, I don't get the desire to play again. I get my fill, which usually means beating the game. And then that's it. I don't really feel a desire, a strong desire. You might go, well, it needs better replayability to give you that desire. No, it doesn't. Why? Why does a game need to do that? Why can't I be satisfied and look forward to what's next? What's wrong with that? There are some never-ending games, if I wanna play them. MMOs are a great example of never-ending games. Call of Duty Warzone, Fortnite, again, never-ending games. There's lots of them in different genres if that's what I want. But it's not. What I want is exactly what I get today. So yeah, it sucks. And in an ideal world, these shops would never go down and be available the next 100 plus years. And unfortunately, business is business. I know it, you know it. These shops ain't gonna be around forever. So if it doesn't bother you to lose access to games you bought 15 years ago, 20 years ago, then cool, you're like me because I wasn't gonna replay those games anyways. So I just don't care. Any game that I potentially had the slight potential that I might wanna touch again in, you know, 50 years before I die, I probably have a physical copy tucked away somewhere or a ROM sitting in a file on a now-dead computer but the hard drive's not dead. Why? Just on that off chance that before I die, I get that itch to play again. So yeah, there's a physical copy of Breath of the Wild rolling around the backs of my office. But the copy I play on my Switch is digital. That physical copy is rolling around back there on the off chance that in 50 years, God willing, I'm still alive. I'd be 85 then in 50 years, then maybe I wanna play something again before I die. And maybe that's one of those games that I wanna replay. Now this obviously presumes I even have a working Switch. Might have to go to emulation anyways at that point but you catch my drift. So I hope you do. And if you don't, that's okay. I really wanna have an honest conversation about this. What kind of gamer are you and how much does it really bother you to lose access to games you bought 15, 20 years ago? Again, I'm still really irked by what my mom did but then again, she's not wrong. I hadn't played those games in five years and I really haven't had the desire to play them since. It's why I don't buy games on virtual console. It's why I don't play games on Nintendo Switch online. I don't have a desire to do it. It's just, I'd rather play what's next. Anyways, I'm with Andrew Ruble Jansson from Nintendo Prime. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you guys in the next video.