If Valve ever went out of business, somebody would assuredly purchase their assets, yes, but I'd be very wary of counting on a new company to spend money protecting the digital property of the customers of a failed company. I'm not sure about the legality of it, but I'm not entirely sure they would have any obligation to make Steam games playable. I would hedge my bets there's something buried in the Steam agreement that Valve or any other company has the right to deny access to your library for any reason. There's fine print rules like that in almost every agreement.

^^^ That pretty much exactly. It's time Nintendo started caring. I'm perfectly fine with the bigger development studios (Nintendo Japan, Retro) basically doing whatever the hell they want. They're the one constant that always delivers, but I think it's time for Nintendo to start putting more time and effort into finding studios to develop their other IP and turn this freaking console around.

The day Valve goes out of business is the day I lose a lot of money. Don't get me wrong, it's not happening any time soon, if ever. But stranger things have happened. Tell somebody in 1990 that Circuit City wouldn't be forever, and you'd get about the same reaction you'd get by telling someone Valve won't be around forever.

The longer I can buy physical copies, the more games I'll be able to play when the downloadable interface we use now becomes obsolete, and it will. Steam won't be relevant forever, and how Newell and friends deal with that eventual change will make a big impact on a lot of people's gaming libraries.

@Nuck81: When they cut the price of the 3ds a few months after release, they were in fact losing about 30% of profits. That obviously didn't last long, and I'm sure they're working to find cheaper ways to construct the console. What you have to do with the posts of my other half is dig through all the fire-starting nonsense and find some truth.

In the most recent investors' meeting, it was confirmed that the 3ds is still selling at a loss. It's highly unlikely, if not completely impossible, that the 3ds is still losing 30% on every system sold. But the fact remains that it still loses money, and that's a problem.

@Chozofication:Well, Nintendo's got the resources to make anything they want. They're in such a position of financial strength, they could continue these losses for decades and not go bankrupt. A new Pokemon Stadium would be cool, at the same time, though, I don't think a simple HD 3D battle simulator would be something gamers would want to pay $60 for. Something like that would need to have a single player component like Pokemon XD on the Gamecube. The thing is, I'm not sure how much money those games actually brought in. Sticking the Pokemon name on anything will boost sales, but they would need to figure out the kind of game that would bring enough gamers in to make a boatload of profits.

Everyone agrees an RPG on consoles would be a dream come true, but I understand the logic of Game Freak here. They would either need to create a new type of RPG, or completely split the series, seeing that one of the big draws to the series is catching them all, and without direct interaction to all the handheld games, it would be a challenge to make it work properly alongside the handheld series.

^^ The Pokemon Bank could possibly eliminate that problem, and I'm sure that discussion has come up in more than one meeting, but we still don't know how well that's going to work, how reliable it's going to be over the long run, and most of all -- how many people are going to spend money on it.

Pikmin 3 is probably the best game on the console, if not that Mario 3D World. From your list, Wind Waker.

The nice thing about the younger market is that they won't ever remember the first year of the 3DS, nor will they remember the price. The handheld market is dominated by ten year olds who aren't paying attention to the namesake of anything. If we were talking about a market dominated by 30 year old business men, then the value of the DS name, and it's subsequent price drop less than half a year after release, would have greatly impacted the quality of its brand, but with 3DS market is going to remember the first year as much as people remember the original fat DS that was replaced a year later with the DS lite, which is when the console exploded in popularity.

You're absolutely right that the 3DS name is ruined forever from a business standpoint, it's just that the people who want them won't ever care.

I think the big difference between now and all the times we've heard Nintendo is doomed before is that Nintendo hasn't made any money for three years running, which is a scary thing to hear for the future of a company people love. I don't think they're going anywhere, at least not any time soon.

The technology that would potentially power any new console hasn't been released yet.

Two things:

First, and I know this sounds weird, disable foreign languages on Miiverse. That fixed my freezing problem at launch. Also, make sure your Wii U has all the latest updates.

Second, return your game for a new disc, if it's still within the return policy.

If neither of those work, start your game over.