[resonanttoe]

Re: Development cost. I think we probably just have different perceptions on what that cost will be. I'm happy to disagree with you here, but I think we'll talk around the lack of any facts here. (Read: I have nothing I can present to concretely prove my point or disprove yours so I'm abandoning that line and will take your point as given as much as I feel mine (should be?) is :D)

I would however still argue that its the perception of piracy and those costs rather than any reality of it.

In regards to the idea of time-limited DRM. The argument here is what does that ultimately give Nintendo? The device is EOL and from their point of view the goodwill of the small community of us who like poking around the devices isn't worth even the relatively small amounts of effort to implement that model of DRM. Especially when Homebrew development happens within a console lifetime to begin with.

Essentially, the work hours for homebrew is bought and paid for by these folk here. Nintendo has to do nothing and they get that Homebrew warm-fuzzies from a small group of folks.

However the perceptual loss of faith from someone like EA would cause a huge and immediate impact to the life-cycle of in the In-life console. (Think of the Polygon,IGN and other articles that would come out if EA so much as sniffed at the idea of the Switch being to much of a piracy-risk)

So no, I don't think there is more to it than a perception. Which sadly I think is overweighted in the argument. But already in this post, there are some weird equivalencies between user features and OS security being made which has a lot of value for people (not saying they're wrong in their valuations, just maybe the placement) so perception counts an awful lot for a lot of folks.

[saguro]

Agreed. I guess the core of the question is 'what does that ultimately give nintendo?'.

And that's where I think the government needs to step in as it did with copyright and patents, and ask an additional question: 'what does that ultimately give to society?'. The answer is decreased environmental impact and decreased cost of living. The console manufacturers are passing on costs to consumers that consumers shouldn't have to bear - and don't have to bear when it comes to patents and copyrights. Imagine if patents were perpetual like DRM is and rocket engine technology would forever belong to a single manufacturer with the license..?

[resonanttoe]

Totally agree, but the chance of that happening is pretty low. There isn't perceived to be a problem in that area at the moment that Governments worldwide really need to fix.

To the copyright point. Standard copyright will still apply to all the works produced (which is what, 75 years after last publication) but considering that Video games as a somewhat mainstream endeavor is only at absolute best 40-50 years old, were unlikely to get a test of that any time soon, and thats before republication through virtual console and GOG may actually constitute a refresh on the copyright period.

I think its more likely that consumer pressure to do an ID style of things whereby they opensource their older stuff is the likely fix to our problems.