They were observed finding one ROM on the Internet, ever. They do have their own emulator(s).
Nintendo is a bunch of humans. If my boss asks me to see if I can find the installer for an old version of our software, you can bet I’ll check anywhere before volunteering to go scrape old hard drives.
…
“Ripping” ROMs, or dumping them, takes almost no effort. If you have the cartridge reader its about as much work as taking photos off an SD card. Certainly nothing at all like cracking a game, which is pretty much software development.
Please consider informing yourself before forming strong opinions.
Just so we’re clear, are you under the impression that “ROMs acquired from the Internet” represent something other than Nintendo’s work?
As in DVDs or Blu Rays?
Computers running for hours just downloading, servers running hot to share the files, extra bandwidth in use - certainly not free.
But in contrast to producing optical media, burning data onto it, printing a cover, sticking it in a plastic box, sticking that plastic box in a larger box with polystyrene peanuts, putting that box with other boxes on a pallet, wrapping them in shrink wrap, flying them across the world, discarding the wrap, breaking down the pallet, driving individual boxes around a region, having an employee come to the store early by car to unload boxes, and have them put individual game cases on display on metal shelves and then lighting and air-conditioning said game cases for a few weeks until they’re all sold to customers who drive to and from the store, and then run it on their local computer… Download has got to be more efficient. Certainly when most games then have an update to the disc version already required to download by the time the customer gets home.
I love my Steam Deck. It’s literally beside my hotel bed right now, while the Switch is at home with two kids under 10. But:
If “I just want to pick up a controller after work and forget what Philip in Marketing said he thought the project was going to look like”, or “I want to buy games once and share them with my kids” or even “I’ll throw this in my bag to kill 20 minutes at the waiting room” are factors, the Steam Deck is very much not superior in every way.
Again. Love my Deck. Almost exclusively buy “Verified” games now. Halfway through a Nintendo game that somehow is easier for me, a software dev to find ajd emulate on Deck than on a Nintendo console. But the Switch has been a remarkable console to have in my living room. The first console I bought (actually now that I think of it, that my wife bought for me) since Wii and before that since PlayStation 2. I’m not really a console player. I have 1000+ games on Steam. Still Switch excels at many things and the sales figures should make that obvious.