General Nintendo thread

There's effectively zero chance Nintendo is ever going to try suing to make emulation illegal. It would be a hard case for even them to win considering it mostly falls under the concept of reverse engineering, which in most countries is perfectly legal so long as it's "clean room", meaning no leaked documentations that aren't supposed to be public were used to assist in the project. And even if they "won", blanket restrictions against the concept of emulation would only hurt game companies as well. Game companies make and use emulators all the time, even for systems they didn't make, to run their old games.

And it would be pointless because as far as the companies are concerned it's basically already a solved issue. They don't need to sue people over making emulators because they can just encrypt their games and sue people over circumventing encryption as was made illegal by the DMCA. That's what companies already do and there's no real reason they need take it further to stop people from pirating new games.

I don't why you wrote all that anyway, though. What Gary Bowser and Team Xecuter were doing had nothing to do with emulation, they were selling hardware that you attached to your Switch to circumvent its protections so you could run pirated games on it.

And in the case of a specific emulator, they flew too close to the sun and were accepting donations which is illegal to do in this case.

Weren't they also sharing ISO and BIOS?

There was nothing inherently illegal about them accepting donations. In fact, most emulator devs accept donations. It's pretty common and normal. The big issues with Yuzu were

• It could use Switch encryption keys to bypass Switch game encryption to play them, and Yuzu's website gave instructions on where to get and how to use software that lets you rip the keys from your Switch. It's a bit shaky on how far the DMCA goes with whether this is actually illegal or not, but Nintendo did have a serious case and could have set precedent one way or the other had it went to trial.
• There were records of Yuzu devs discussing getting leaked games to work in Yuzu, which implies them having access to leaked games and ties into the thrust of Nintendo's legal argument that Yuzu was making unfair competition by intentionally undercutting Nintendo on something like this (making it easy for people to play games before Nintendo even officially releases them).
• And allegedly Yuzu had a semi-secret channel in their Discord where they were sharing roms and other files they shouldn't be.

Basically, Nintendo had a good enough case against them on the encryption circumvention and unfair competition allegations, and if the rom sharing was true (or something else problematic like if they had leaked documentation they were taking notes from) then Nintendo would have exposed it all by subpoenaing the contents of their Discord server had it went to trial, and if that was at risk then it was best they just settled out of court.

Yeah there's a reason ryujinx is still alive.

And yeah the only target was yuzu, citra unfortunately was caught in the crossfire.

x2 iirc Yuzu could run Tears of the Kingdom before it was out. Which was very much an indefensible position from a legal standpoint.

They were super cooked.

Edited by Karxrida on May 13th 2024 at 2:47:40 AM

That what I've heard that's not actually true, funny enough. Ryujinx could run TotK as soon as it leaked because it's a better, more accurate emulator, but Yuzu couldn't run the game well until around the time it actually came out for sale. And there's technically nothing wrong with being able to run a pre-release game since that's to be expected if the emulator is doing its job of being able to do anything the original hardware would do.

The big thing Nintendo was going after was that Yuzu was encouraging people to donate to them with the indirect promise that the money would speed up development towards the goal of getting TotK working on the system, and donators would be given early access to builds that presumebly would be able to run the game, which means Yuzu's team could be argued to be directly profiting off pirates leaking the game as a part of their business model. I also heard stuff floating around that the Yuzu devs had direct contact with someone who leaked the game to get early roms of it themselves, which if true would make them really screwed and is further reason why they settled to not have Nintendo look into them further for a court case.

Either way, they flew too close to the sun.

Am I rare in really not caring for playing the Switch in handheld? I dunno, I often take it with me, but then when I go to play it, it's like - "Nah, I'm not really feeling it" every time.

I only play on handheld mode myself.

That's the beauty of the Switch. It can be a pure console for people who don't play handheld, or a pure handheld for people who don't play console, as well as being able to switch between both.

I'm not sure if that is enough to call it a "pure" console, though, considering they had to make some concessions on the hardware in order for it all to work in handheld. It is very much a handheld device that you can plug into the TV, Super Gameboy-style.

Well, I mean it can be used the same way as one would use a pure console.

I wouldn't say it feels compromised as a home console, beyond the usual Nintendo being a generation (or two) behind.

TBH while I did think I'd never bring my Switch with me I... Really ended up doing that a lot.

Even while still at home. My gaming room and bedroom aren't the same place so I'll take the switch to bed when I'm feelin' sleepy.

I might play it in handheld mode more, if it didn't mean using the joycons, which suffer drift and quickly become useless.

I only play handheld if I'm out of state visiting family. If I'm at home, I'm playing docked.

EDIT: Also wanna throw this out: I've actually gotten really lucky regarding drift. The only joycons I've had issues with for more than a second or 2 at a time weeks apart are my original launch model joycons, which I pawned off on gamestop years ago.

Edited by Sid-Starkiller on May 14th 2024 at 3:49:04 PM

Used exclusively tabletop/handheld in the first few years. These days, it's an even mix between docked and handheld, but I generally only travel with it when I know I'll be spending a lot of time in a waiting room or something.

I've used it in both modes in equal measure, though with playing World of Warcraft I've been playing it less in console mode lately.

I prefer playing in docked mode with a pro controller, usually playing longer experiences there.

If I'm playing handheld, I'm usually playing for shorter spurts and usually handheld. At first this was because my launch Switch's rails weren't accepting the Joy Cons after a while, but once I got the OLED after my launch Switch died, I found I was having issue with my hands while playing handheld as I had gotten older.

Edited by tclittle on May 14th 2024 at 3:35:28 AM

I rarely play the Switch anymore, but when I do I switch (pun intended) between handheld and docked.

Mostly docked, maybe handheld if someone needs the TV for something. I played handheld with my AirPods for a while after the software updated to add Bluetooth, then I realized I could still connect them just as well with it docked.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on May 14th 2024 at 7:54:55 AM

Mostly docked, most of the time I'm using it handheld it because I'm moving it to the living room where the router is so it'll update faster.

I prefer the TV, but someone else totally controls it most of the time.

So it's either playing docked, or often not playing at all, because I end up with other things to do.

Why... how is Sakurai placing the Switch horizontally?