With the announcement of their new paid online service, Nintendo has revealed “Nintendo Entertainment System Online”, which is a collection of 20 NES games that are included with your service, with the suggestion that more will come in the future. They have also announced that the Virtual Console will NOT be coming to the Nintendo Switch. With how successful it was on the Wii, why would Nintendo drop this popular retro game store?

Focus on the future

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Nintendo has an amazing library of games that reaches back to the mid 1980’s. Additionally, other companies jumped on board to get their games featured in the Virtual Console store, including games on niche consoles like the TurboGrafx-16, Sega Master System, Neo Geo and even the Commodore 64.

Though I’ve gotten the feeling that Nintendo wants to move beyond the nostalgia of their past and focus on the future.

Competition with indies

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Something Nintendo has done very well with the Switch is gaining strong support from Indie developers. Games like Celeste and Overcooked would have never appeared on the Wii, but the eShop has been very good for Indies. One studio was even saved from bankruptcy when the eShop version of their game sold far better than it did on Steam!

This constant flow of quality indie titles has put Nintendo in the position of the Switch being an Indie machine. This is why the Virtual Console had to go away.

eShop explosion

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The eShop started out modestly, but quickly started to catch fire as the popularity of the Switch was realized. Indies started jumping on board quickly to get in on this hot new platform for their games. The number of new games being added is actually starting to be a hinderance, with the bar being lowered and more budget games coming into the store. The number of new games being added makes finding quality games harder and once they’re no longer new, they become much harder to find.

Adding the Virtual Console to this already overloaded store would not only clutter up the store and make it harder to find quality Indie games, it puts Nintendo’s library of retro games up in competition with brand new Indie titles. Nintendo has had a shaky relationship with third party developers throughout its history as a video game company, so keeping them happy by not shoving hundreds of older games into the eShop reduces competition and makes indie games more visible.

The past is the past

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Look, I’m a huge supporter of keeping retro games alive. Its the drive behind this channel. But lets face it — there are already a ton of ways to play these old games: emulation, re-releases, compilations and the actual cartridges themselves. Sure, you might not be able to easily take Pilotwings 64 with you on your Switch, but maybe that’s OK. Focus on the new quality titles that hard working Indie developers are making for us now and support them, rather than buying Punch Out! for the third time.

Thanks for reading. As always, upvotes, resteems and comments are appreciated!

_{^{Images: Forbes}}