Amazon removes third party sales of Nintendo products

[spartaman64]

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Amazon made a stark announcement to its family of third-party product resellers: effective immediately, those sellers can no longer list "Nintendo products" for sale without receiving express approval.

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The announcement did not explain whether Nintendo, Amazon, or both companies were responsible for the change. And it did not include a list of affected products or Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs).

 

Users in the site's third-party seller forum have pointed to one commonality among affected items: the product's producer is listed as "Nintendo." This affects everything from modern Switch games and consoles to out-of-print cartridges and hardware, but it also leaves third-party makers of Nintendo console games (i.e., Capcom, Ubisoft) unaffected.

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The Amazon notice to resellers reads:

As part of our ongoing efforts to provide the best possible customer experience, we are implementing approval requirements for Nintendo products... Effective on 2019-10-31, you will need approval to list the affected products. If you do not obtain approval to sell these products prior to 2019-10-31, your listings for these products will be removed.

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Thursday's notice instructs sellers to seek "approval" for affected products before they can be listed in "used" or "collectible" condition. Meanwhile, some sellers say they're able to list affected products in "new" condition (which is sometimes impossible or unlikely, in the sake of classic and retro Nintendo products).

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This follows efforts by Amazon to clamp down on other product categories' "used" sales. Included in this move are DVDs and Apple products, which now require similar approval processes to move forward. Users on the used-Nintendo forum thread have postulated that counterfeit retro Nintendo cartridges have been an open secret among Amazon sellers for some time.

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This doesn't necessarily explain Amazon's blanket decision to restrict anything under the "made by Nintendo" sun, however. This decision seems to imply that either Nintendo or Amazon would rather limit all used sales of Nintendo products than build a more focused list of scrutinized software and products. Additionally, Amazon has yet to roll out a similar rule for anything produced by console producers Microsoft or Sony—perhaps, in part, because those companies have wider product catalogs than Nintendo.

Source https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/amazon-no-more-third-party-sales-of-nintendo-products-without-approval/

 

The fact that it's just nintendo products leads me to think that it's nintendo that requested it. And nintendo doesn't have the best record when it comes to this kind of stuff. And I'm not sure why nintendo is concerned about bootleg retro games when they don't even sell them anymore. The only way to get retro games is through a reseller so does nintendo want nobody to be able to play them anymore? I guess roms and emulators is the way to go with nintendo restricting the sale of the original hardware.

[DrMacintosh]

Apple and Amazon did this not too long ago. Afterward Apple sold refurbished products directly rather than letting 3rd parties do it. 

[John_Trollinski]

They probably want to stop Chinese companies from selling off brand controllers/ cases

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, spartaman64 said:

Source https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/amazon-no-more-third-party-sales-of-nintendo-products-without-approval/

 

The fact that it's just nintendo products leads me to think that it's nintendo that requested it. And nintendo doesn't have the best record when it comes to this kind of stuff. And I'm not sure why nintendo is concerned about bootleg retro games when they don't even sell them anymore. The only way to get retro games is through a reseller so does nintendo want nobody to be able to play them anymore? I guess roms and emulators is the way to go with nintendo restricting the sale of the original hardware.

I can practically guarantee you it was Nintendo asking them to stop enabling the counterfeiters. There's a lot of "loaded" consoles and "repro" carts (pirate copies) out there, and unless you can see the physical cartridge in person, you are almost certainly buying pirate garbage if it's not new.

 

Keep in mind that currently the only way to play NES and SNES games accurately on a modern TV is with a FPGA console (eg Super NT), not a raspberryPi (which is utter rubbish), Nintendo's own "mini" consoles (rather poor emulation), and Wii/WiiU/3DS/Switch emulation of the same games (Which are also fairly poor.)

 

All those software emulators routinely get pooh-pooh'd as being "passable" or "barely passable" and it makes actual garbage clone consoles like the Retron and Retrofreak consoles look like that the games were always supposed to be that bad.

 

PC emulators just barely scrape by on "accuracy" on a 4Ghz , yet these rubbish emulator hardware devices are nohwere near accurate. They're like 1999 level "SNES" accurate. 

 

If Nintendo was serious about not having their games pirated and repro-ed, they would design their own recompiler to take games made for their pre-gamecube consoles and recompile them as native switch games. But that's not what happens. Games developed for the N64 and later were programmed in C or C++ and such Nintendo could in theory just develop a "drop in replacement" for the SDK they were originally developed against and compile it against their current hardware. Good luck trying to get the same experience though. I'd love to play Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario (64), and 1000 year door on the same device, but thus far you get a far more accurate emulation of N64 and GC/Wii games on a 4Ghz Skylake-or-better Intel CPU than you do on the Switch. HMM. Just looking at the Switch trailer for 1000-year-door makes me think they forgot to correct the aspect ratio of the game.

 

Nintendo wants you to buy the games on the Switch, the problem is those games on the switch are inferior to the FPGA based hardware simulation. If Nintendo was smart, they would actually sell their own FPGA console with a SoC core to connect to the internet and download the games from their own store. I can't believe they haven't done this yet. 

[Master Disaster]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

I can practically guarantee you it was Nintendo asking them to stop enabling the counterfeiters. There's a lot of "loaded" consoles and "repro" carts (pirate copies) out there, and unless you can see the physical cartridge in person, you are almost certainly buying pirate garbage if it's not new.

 

Keep in mind that currently the only way to play NES and SNES games accurately on a modern TV is with a FPGA console (eg Super NT), not a raspberryPi (which is utter rubbish), Nintendo's own "mini" consoles (rather poor emulation), and Wii/WiiU/3DS/Switch emulation of the same games (Which are also fairly poor.)

 

All those software emulators routinely get pooh-pooh'd as being "passable" or "barely passable" and it makes actual garbage clone consoles like the Retron and Retrofreak consoles look like that the games were always supposed to be that bad.

 

PC emulators just barely scrape by on "accuracy" on a 4Ghz , yet these rubbish emulator hardware devices are nohwere near accurate. They're like 1999 level "SNES" accurate. 

 

If Nintendo was serious about not having their games pirated and repro-ed, they would design their own recompiler to take games made for their pre-gamecube consoles and recompile them as native switch games. But that's not what happens. Games developed for the N64 and later were programmed in C or C++ and such Nintendo could in theory just develop a "drop in replacement" for the SDK they were originally developed against and compile it against their current hardware. Good luck trying to get the same experience though. I'd love to play Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario (64), and 1000 year door on the same device, but thus far you get a far more accurate emulation of N64 and GC/Wii games on a 4Ghz Skylake-or-better Intel CPU than you do on the Switch. HMM. Just looking at the Switch trailer for 1000-year-door makes me think they forgot to correct the aspect ratio of the game.

 

Nintendo wants you to buy the games on the Switch, the problem is those games on the switch are inferior to the FPGA based hardware simulation. If Nintendo was smart, they would actually sell their own FPGA console with a SoC core to connect to the internet and download the games from their own store. I can't believe they haven't done this yet. 

Sorry but this is a complete load of nonsense.

 

Fun fact: A cycle accurate SNES emulator exists for Raspberry Pi. You're confusing input latency and screen response time with inaccurate emulation. Also its very easy to hijack a direct RGB line from pretty much any console, from there a HDMI mod is relatively easy. HDMI mods exist for almost every retro console in existence.

 

The problems start when you try to convert from RGB to HDMI as the 2 standards use very different formats and this is why its so challenging to port older games to new devices. Its impossible to fit a 4:3 720x576 images onto a modern resolution screen without distorting the image. It simply cannot be done in software alone. The choice is either leave it alone and have borders or stretch and skew and cause distortion. You can recompile against any language you want, you still cannot fix this fundamental issue without additional hardware (upscalers).

 

Ever wonder why a Framemiester costs almost £400? Because converting from RGB Scart or Composite (Component? I always get the 2 confused) to HDMI is a LOT of work.

[Levent]

And now they are claiming that it was an "error"

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20943772/amazon-marketplace-nintendo-deal-used-retro-games-consoles-counterfeit

[Donut417]

5 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

?

Most of the shit I have seen sold thrid party were knock offs of the NES and SNES classic. Then there is the scalpers who buy up all the retro stuff and sell it at a large markup. I dont care than any of these people are now not allowed to sell stuff. 

 

Yes it sucks that you can buy retro stuff on Amazon any longer, but the fact is a few fucked it up for the rest of them. Nintendo is trying to protect is IP. 

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Sorry but this is a complete load of nonsense.

 

Fun fact: A cycle accurate SNES emulator exists for Raspberry Pi. You're confusing input latency and screen response time with inaccurate emulation. Also its very easy to hijack a direct RGB line from pretty much any console, from there a HDMI mod is relatively easy. HDMI mods exist for almost every retro console in existence.

 

The problems start when you try to convert from RGB to HDMI as the 2 standards use very different formats and this is why its so challenging to port older games to new devices. Its impossible to fit a 4:3 720x576 images onto a modern resolution screen without distorting the image. It simply cannot be done in software alone. The choice is either leave it alone and have borders or stretch and skew and cause distortion. You can recompile against any language you want, you still cannot fix this fundamental issue without additional hardware (upscalers).

 

Ever wonder why a Framemiester costs almost £400? Because converting from RGB Scart or Composite (Component? I always get the 2 confused) to HDMI is a LOT of work.

Every single one of those SoC ARM emulators are utter rubbish, and I'm not even talking about the latency, I'm talking about the serious glitches and slowdowns in the emulation. The Pi's are trash and not cycle-accurate without serious hacks. The counterfeiters don't care about this and sell them anyway.

 

Not that it matters since the Pi's are only used to play pirate games anyway. At least if you bought the crappy "mini" official consoles you could say you had a legit source for those games.

[Roswell]

9 hours ago, Kisai said:

I can practically guarantee you it was Nintendo asking them to stop enabling the counterfeiters. There's a lot of "loaded" consoles and "repro" carts (pirate copies) out there, and unless you can see the physical cartridge in person, you are almost certainly buying pirate garbage if it's not new.

 

Keep in mind that currently the only way to play NES and SNES games accurately on a modern TV is with a FPGA console (eg Super NT), not a raspberryPi (which is utter rubbish), Nintendo's own "mini" consoles (rather poor emulation), and Wii/WiiU/3DS/Switch emulation of the same games (Which are also fairly poor.)

 

All those software emulators routinely get pooh-pooh'd as being "passable" or "barely passable" and it makes actual garbage clone consoles like the Retron and Retrofreak consoles look like that the games were always supposed to be that bad.

 

PC emulators just barely scrape by on "accuracy" on a 4Ghz , yet these rubbish emulator hardware devices are nohwere near accurate. They're like 1999 level "SNES" accurate. 

 

If Nintendo was serious about not having their games pirated and repro-ed, they would design their own recompiler to take games made for their pre-gamecube consoles and recompile them as native switch games. But that's not what happens. Games developed for the N64 and later were programmed in C or C++ and such Nintendo could in theory just develop a "drop in replacement" for the SDK they were originally developed against and compile it against their current hardware. Good luck trying to get the same experience though. I'd love to play Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario (64), and 1000 year door on the same device, but thus far you get a far more accurate emulation of N64 and GC/Wii games on a 4Ghz Skylake-or-better Intel CPU than you do on the Switch. HMM. Just looking at the Switch trailer for 1000-year-door makes me think they forgot to correct the aspect ratio of the game.

 

Nintendo wants you to buy the games on the Switch, the problem is those games on the switch are inferior to the FPGA based hardware simulation. If Nintendo was smart, they would actually sell their own FPGA console with a SoC core to connect to the internet and download the games from their own store. I can't believe they haven't done this yet. 

Uh... Have you not used emulation in like the last 15 years? There have been cycle accurate emulators for NES and SNES for ages. N64 is the only mainstream cart system that really has any semblance of inaccuracy these days. 

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, Vitamanic said:

Uh... Have you not used emulation in like the last 15 years? There have been cycle accurate emulators for NES and SNES for ages. N64 is the only mainstream cart system that really has any semblance of inaccuracy these days. 

Cycle-accurate, does not mean it's perfect, it's not possible to get a perfect emulation on a PC, let alone an underpowered ARM SoC.

 

[Eaglerino]

Maybe this will stop some scalpers, but I hope it halts those Chinese knockoffs a little bit more. So annoying searching for a controller and having to wade through 500 probably garbage versions to find the Nintendo official one

[williamcll]

Goodbye Amazon, hello Aliexpress and Ebay.

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Cycle-accurate, does not mean it's perfect, it's not possible to get a perfect emulation on a PC, let alone an underpowered ARM SoC.

 

Higan/BSNES are cycle accurate and offer 100% accurate bug free emulation. Cycle accurate does very much mean perfect (In fact it literally means perfect to the original hardware). Heck it even emulates bugs, glitches and slowdown present on original hardware.

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bsnes currently enjoys 100% known, bug-free compatibility with the entire SNES library when configured to its most accurate settings, giving it the same accuracy level as higan. Accuracy can also optionally be traded for performance, allowing bsnes to operate more than 300% faster than higan while still remaining almost as accurate.

https://bsnes.byuu.org/

 

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

Every single one of those SoC ARM emulators are utter rubbish, and I'm not even talking about the latency, I'm talking about the serious glitches and slowdowns in the emulation. The Pi's are trash and not cycle-accurate without serious hacks. The counterfeiters don't care about this and sell them anyway.

 

Not that it matters since the Pi's are only used to play pirate games anyway. At least if you bought the crappy "mini" official consoles you could say you had a legit source for those games.

!) Install RetroArch

2) Install the SNES (HIGAN Accuracy) Core - https://docs.libretro.com/library/higan_accuracy/

3) Play at 100% accuracy

 

Sure sounds like "serious hacks" /S

 

Also HIGAN supports

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higan currently emulates the following systems:

• Famicom + Famicom Disk System
• Super Famicom + Super Game Boy
• Game Boy + Game Boy Color
• Game Boy Advance + Game Boy Player
• SG-1000 + SC-3000
• Master System + Game Gear
• Mega Drive + Mega CD
• PC Engine + SuperGrafx
• MSX + MSX2
• ColecoVision
• Neo Geo Pocket + Neo Geo Pocket Color
• WonderSwan + WonderSwan Color + SwanCrystal + Pocket Challenge V2

at 100% cycle accurate.

[cafe]

so theyre cucks, great

[Kisai]

29 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Also HIGAN supports

at 100% cycle accurate.

Did you read my post? At all? I'm fully aware of such emulators and have had conversations with Byuu myself. His emulator is one of the ones stolen for one of the SoC clones.

 

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

 

 

 

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Another major area where accuracy is a benefit is in fan-created works from translators, ROM hackers, and homebrew developers. Few of them have access to run code on real hardware, so they will often develop their software using emulators. Unfortunately, speed-oriented emulators will often ignore hardware limitations. This is never a problem for a commercially developed game: upon required testing on real hardware, the bug would quickly be discovered and fixed. But if you can only test on a specific emulator, such bugs tend to persist.

 

A Raspberry Pie does not have the CPU power to do cycle-accurate emulation. It does not exist. Retroarch does not even pretend to be accurate, so I don't know why you even pointed to that.

 

https://docs.libretro.com/library/higan_accuracy/

Quote

MSU-1 support in this core is complex. Use the Snes9x core for simplified and easily accessible MSU-1 support.

RetroPIE uses the Snes9x emulator for it's speedhacks.

 

SoC's are not powerful enough to emulate a SNES, and your average PC laptop isn't either.

 

 

[Master Disaster]

11 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Did you read my post? At all? I'm fully aware of such emulators and have had conversations with Byuu myself. His emulator is one of the ones stolen for one of the SoC clones.

 

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

 

 

 

 

A Raspberry Pie does not have the CPU power to do cycle-accurate emulation. It does not exist. Retroarch does not even pretend to be accurate, so I don't know why you even pointed to that.

 

https://docs.libretro.co you said it doesn't exist, which is m/library/higan_accuracy/

RetroPIE uses the Snes9x emulator for it's speedhacks.

 

SoC's are not powerful enough to emulate a SNES, and your average PC laptop isn't either.

 

 

I understand all of this however you said it doesn't exist (without serious hacks) which is wrong. The fact a Pi isn't powerful enough doesn't negate the fact that it is possible. My Shield TV can do it, ARM isn't only used in a Ras Pi.

 

RetroArch has the option for the user to change cores and customise their experience, it might default to SNES9x but again, that doesn't mean it cannot use HIGAN Accuracy.

 

At this point you're showing your incredulity.

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

RetroArch has the option for the user to change cores and customise their experience, it might default to SNES9x but again, that doesn't mean it cannot use HIGAN Accuracy.

 

The fact that it's default just negates any claim of "retroarch" being cycle accurate to begin with.

 

The amount of people out there that have working original hardware and CRT's can tell you pretty darn quickly how utterly poor SNES software emulators are compared to the original hardware, and the fact that this is noticeable on the FPGA simulators (which either have to slightly overclock or add one frame of latency) is really telling since many people only ever played inaccurate emulators over the last 15 years and never use Higan because their PC's can't run it in accurate mode.

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

The fact that it's default just negates any claim of "retroarch" being cycle accurate to begin with.

 

The amount of people out there that have working original hardware and CRT's can tell you pretty darn quickly how utterly poor SNES software emulators are compared to the original hardware, and the fact that this is noticeable on the FPGA simulators (which either have to slightly overclock or add one frame of latency) is really telling since many people only ever played inaccurate emulators over the last 15 years and never use Higan because their PC's can't run it in accurate mode.

No one ever said Retroarch was cycle accurate. What I said was its possible to use the HIGAN Accuracy core on Retroarch if you want accuracy.

 

And no, streamers tend to use original hardware because they tend to speedrun and in most cases emulators are banned in speedruns and because playing retro consoles on modern TVs or using Emulators causes huge input latency which if you're used to original hardware on CRT is incredibly noticeable and makes playing almost impossible. I watched a World Record holding speedrunner try to switch from original hardware with CRT to emulator, he literally couldn't make it out of the first level because of the lag between hitting a button and the action happening on screen.

 

Once again, you're confusing latency with inaccuracy. Players don't normally notice inaccuracy, in most cases it simply means something running very slightly to fast or slow. Emulator players notice input latency caused by HDMI and pixel response times which doesn't exist on CRT at all. SNES 9X now has a low input latency mode which makes it almost as good as real hardware.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

 

 

Once again, you're confusing latency with inaccuracy. 

Please just stop posting like you're reading my posts, because you clearly aren't. I've addressed latency and accuracy separately. I own a FPGA console, I've talked to Byuu and Kevtris, I don't really care one way or the other why someone justifies one software emulator over the other because you've missed the point entirely.

 

The counterfeit garbage hawked on Amazon, eBay, is exactly as bad as what is found in RetroArch, because RetroFreak, Retron5, and so forth stole code from it. Those counterfeit consoles are no longer pirated chinese clone chips, the software emulators dump the cart from the cartridge slot, or you can dump roms onto them.

 

If you're buying this garbage, you're being ripped off. Period. End of Story. Nothing to Discuss. The only thing worth spending money on are the FPGA consoles because they are accurate, more accurate than the original hardware is on a LCD screen. And that's the entire point of the FPGA console, is that it works EXACTLY like the original hardware, bugs and all. The software emulators can not do that, and the people hawking $200 "fully loaded" NES/SNES-mini's are not doing that. They just stole a bunch of roms and dumped them onto the mini's flash memory. Those devices are not capable of accurate emulation. No cheap ARM device is.

 

Amazon and eBay are where these counterfeit devices thrive. People are being ripped off, being sold devices with "Nintendo" Trademarks when they are not Nintendo produced products.

[Master Disaster]

50 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Please just stop posting like you're reading my posts, because you clearly aren't. I've addressed latency and accuracy separately. I own a FPGA console, I've talked to Byuu and Kevtris, I don't really care one way or the other why someone justifies one software emulator over the other because you've missed the point entirely.

 

The counterfeit garbage hawked on Amazon, eBay, is exactly as bad as what is found in RetroArch, because RetroFreak, Retron5, and so forth stole code from it. Those counterfeit consoles are no longer pirated chinese clone chips, the software emulators dump the cart from the cartridge slot, or you can dump roms onto them.

 

If you're buying this garbage, you're being ripped off. Period. End of Story. Nothing to Discuss. The only thing worth spending money on are the FPGA consoles because they are accurate, more accurate than the original hardware is on a LCD screen. And that's the entire point of the FPGA console, is that it works EXACTLY like the original hardware, bugs and all. The software emulators can not do that, and the people hawking $200 "fully loaded" NES/SNES-mini's are not doing that. They just stole a bunch of roms and dumped them onto the mini's flash memory. Those devices are not capable of accurate emulation. No cheap ARM device is.

 

Amazon and eBay are where these counterfeit devices thrive. People are being ripped off, being sold devices with "Nintendo" Trademarks when they are not Nintendo produced products.

Well that's your opinion and you're entitled to be wrong if you wish.

 

For clarity's sake, I actually agree on the whole "loaded console" thing, they are in general hot garbage. Everything else you've said though has been nonsense.