RE: Update 3 (gdkchan being "encouraged" to step down)
I'm mostly just surprised it took Nintendo this long to make a move - the Switch is on its last legs, its successor is less than a year away and almost certainly won't be hacked for a good while. Acting in a way that's bound to piss everyone off but doing it so late that the upside to them is minimal (there won't be that many more new Switch games to pirate at this point) is a weird unforced error. Lawyers move in mysterious ways I guess.
I would assume the launch of the Switch successor is why they are clamping down. It's likely very similar architecturally to the Switch. Nobody knows how long it would take to hack it, someone could be silently sitting on an exploit that they've been saving to see if it'll work on the successor. In the event it's hacked quickly and there are still actively developed Switch emulators, it wouldn't be a stretch to believe support would quickly be added to those emulators for the successor.
Do you think the average joe who owns a Switch or is a potential client for their next console, is even aware of any of this happening? This is the tiniest of stories. The only way the public at large can become aware of emulators is if they hit a big app store.
So as far as timing of this move goes, it's as good a time as any to "protect what's theirs".
Doubt they were that focused on it until the Steam Deck came out; would've been too busy dealing with how successful the console was to worry about this kind of thing. Probably more focused on killing access to older games so their NSO service seems more appealing.
I suspect the sheer number of tiktoks and whatnot about how to emulate old nintendo games on iOS earlier in the year massively increased their legal team's focus on this stuff.
> Acting in a way that's bound to piss everyone off but doing it so late that the upside to them is minimal ... is a weird unforced error.
This describes their response to Palworld (the Pokemon-"inspired" game that they're suing now) too. When Palworld came out, everyone was talking about how it blatantly copied things and how surprised they are that Nintendo is doing nothing. Now, after several months of people playing Palworld and many of them enjoying it, Nintendo is suddenly choosing to sue them. And predictably, the general response is a lot more negative now, with people having a lot more positive associations with Palworld and having gotten used to assuming that it's here-to-stay.
> Lawyers move in mysterious ways I guess.
Indeed. The timeline to build a case doesn't necessarily align with the business profit goals (like in the Switch case) nor with the public relations goals (like in the Palworld case).
I'm mostly just surprised it took Nintendo this long to make a move - the Switch is on its last legs, its successor is less than a year away and almost certainly won't be hacked for a good while. Acting in a way that's bound to piss everyone off but doing it so late that the upside to them is minimal (there won't be that many more new Switch games to pirate at this point) is a weird unforced error. Lawyers move in mysterious ways I guess.