The problem in both cases is that the consoles were actually missing a key piece of hardware: the ability to read the disc or cartridge.

If you're a hacker-type person who has already digitized your gamecube collection (or, let's be honest, downloaded the games illegally) then this doesn't matter. But for regular consumers, there needs to be a way to verify ownership.

Nintendo could have made some titles available digitally (which is what I wish they'd done), but that requires getting content rights sorted out for games that have never been sold digitally before, so the full catalog would not have been available. Also, there would have been a ton of hemming and hawing about "Nintendo is making me buy my Gamecube games again?!?" No comment on whether such complaints would have been reasonable.

Downloading roms is all it takes to be regarded a hacker-type these days? I feel words keep losing their meaning …

Downloading roms? Probably not

Modding your Wii-U to run those roms?

I feel that probably qualifies someone to be regarded as a hacker -type

I guess I shoild have quoted what I was referring to, since it seems to high ask to expect others to read the rest of the discourse.

> If you're a hacker-type person who has already digitized your gamecube collection (or, let's be honest, downloaded the games illegally)

Either way, I disagree with your definition too.

The ”hacker-type” is the one figuring out how to mod the wii-u. The one following some instructions to perform it using provided tools is simply a end user.

I think they are both hacker like behavior, just varying skill levels

Using a tool someone else built is definitely the gateway to hacker mindset and culture

Gatekeeping the term hacker is... paradoxical.

The problem is deliberate hardware choices. They may be reasonable choices, but if Nintendo wanted to prioritize forever backwards compatibility, we could still have a GameCube-compatible disc drive and GBA and DS compatible catridge slots.

This is fair, although I do think the choice was reasonable. Disc drives are an expensive part, and consider how much space a cartridge slot would have used on the 3DS...

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I have long had a total fantasy in this vein... what Nintendo could have done is release add-on hardware to read old media. Imagine a hybrid mini-disc and cartridge reader which connects to the Wii U via USB, and a Gameboy cartridge reader which connects to the 3DS via... uh, possibly NFC, Gameboy games are small and the games could be read once and cached to internal storage.

You could use this to add backwards compatibility all the way back to the NES and Gameboy! Games from consoles two generations back could have been run natively, everything older could have been trivially software emulated.

I don't think such a product would have substantially interfered with Virtual Console sales, it would have been too niche. Probably too niche to make sense in real life... but in my fantasy, the goal would have been PR. It would cement the idea that buying a Nintendo game is an investment which Nintendo will support long-term; whether a large number of people make use of that ability is irrelevant.

That's basically the niche that companies like Analogue are exploiting. I'm sure it'll forever be a niche market, but it's nice that someone caters to it. :)

I think being an official product makes it totally different and much more special. Maybe that's silly--but consider how well the NES Mini sold compared to similar unofficial products. (Unfortunately, the NES Mini couldn't read cartridges.)

You could probably do effectively that by just shipping a usb drive. After game from the NES-N64 are just a few GB.

If it was an official product, it would have to read from the real cartridge or disc. If nothing else, Nintendo does not have the legal right to redistribute games made by third parties.