“These videos talk about it a little”
Explains Nintendo's brand-protection strategy and aggressive litigation.
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These videos talk about it a little: link this video link TL;DR: forming a hydra-summary of the three: Nintendo’s strategy has been to position themselves as a premium video game brand since the 1980’s. They use high pricing, exclusivity, and close integration with hardware to distance themselves from other companies. Because they want to position themselves as the one and only Nintendo, knockoffs and copycats represent an existential threat to their brand. They also want parents to have absolute trust in the family friendliness of their games and knockoffs could diminish that as well. Because of this they do literally every scummy thing in their power to aggressively pursue and litigate anything from piracy to fan projects. Control of their image is their biggest asset. As someone who didn’t really grow up playing Nintendo games I have a slight fascination with how people worship this company and continually make excuses for them, so I really like these videos, even if they’re probably not 100% accurate.