• Chloyster [she/her]@beehaw.orgM
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    1 year ago

    Commercial availability specifically. Thanks to archivers and the such, there are usually options to play most things. While I personally don’t care about commercially buying most of these classics, I do find it odd how little ip owners seem to want to make some of these older titles available

    • Erk@cdda.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      1 year ago

      There’s such a weird attitude around release of old material. Why can’t Disney+ show the star wars theatrical release? Why won’t Nintendo sell their old titles? The only possible outcome is that people get what they want and give the company cash. It’s bizarre.

      • prole@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Disney, at least back in the VHS, and (probably early) DVD days, would purposefully keep their titles in the “vault” and only release a handful of titles at a time for a limited time window.

        What it did was create artificial scarcity, and when they put out an “anniversary edition” of Cinderella or whatever, they cashed in.

        • Erk@cdda.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          1 year ago

          I remember. It became a less reasonable structure with the advent of digital piracy though, and it’s just nonsensical nowm

      • ArbitraryPrecision@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        It wouldn’t surprise me if Lucas didn’t specify Disney agreeing to not releasing the theatrical cuts as a stipulation of the sale. He’s been trying to bury those since the beginning. Last I heard he claimed they were too damaged to release.

    • CleoTheWizard@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      1 year ago

      Well most of the comments here don’t have an insight into this. The reason they don’t re-release video games or old movies is because they don’t want you enjoying old things. It’s capitalism, but it’s not arbitrary like the scarcity. Because it’s not just video games, no company wants to re-release anything. Not a tractor, not a movie, not a dishwasher, nothing.

      Why? Because then you don’t buy the new thing with higher margins. Then you don’t watch the new movie and they can’t sell the new ads with the new character designs promoting it. Or you don’t get locked in to their new cartridge system. Or subscription plan. Whatever. The song is different, the story is the same, new stuff make line go up faster. With tons of waste involved as well.

      • hascat@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        1 year ago

        The reason they don’t re-release video games or old movies is because they don’t want you enjoying old things.

        You’re assuming nefarious intent. I suspect the reality is that it’s not worth the rights holders’ time or money to invest in re-releasing old titles that very few people would buy.

        • alehel@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Yeah, im going with this one. Even if it takes a company a total of 5 hours work to wrap an old game in an emulator and release it on steam, it’s not going to be worth it when only 5 people buy it.

        • hollo@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          Right, I figure re-releasing a game takes some amount of labor, which means someone needs to make a case for spending time on that instead of whatever the current priorities are.

          That makes the efforts of archivists all the more commendable, and it’s all the more frustrating when you see a company dedicating resources to shutting them down.

          • hascat@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            it’s all the more frustrating when you see a company dedicating resources to shutting them down.

            Yes, definitely sucks when they do that. I struggle to understand why unless there’s some legal reason to protect all of your intellectual property instead of just the stuff that’s still making money.

            • ArcticCircleSystem@beehaw.org
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              I mean some of them claim that if they don’t do that they’ll lose the copyright, but I looked it up a bit ago and there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that that is the case, so make of that what you will. ~Strawberry

      • verbalbotanics@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think one of the exceptions to this is music. Of course there’s top 40 and whatnot, but it’s one of the areas where older hits either don’t go away, or get repackaged algorithmically into let’s say “stuff from that decade you like that you’ve never heard before.”

        Of course it’s still being selected from a much larger sample. But I think there’s something different about music.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think music gets treated differently in this way partly because the fidelity 50 years ago was already very acceptable compared to the fidelity of brand new music, meanwhile you compare any other media and there’s significant improvements in the graphical fidelity that even movies from within this century can be poor enough video quality to degrade the experience compared to a new release