Can someone explain to me why Nintendo needs to "defend their trademarks" when other companies don't?

Because
IT'S OKAY WHEN NINTENDO DOES IT

Because they know fans can do better shit than they currently do.

genesis does

It's not so much that they're Japanese, it's that they're Nintendo. As was rightly pointed out above, Nintendo of Japan doesn't do this, but they'd probably like to if they could.

Nintendo COULD go after their Japanese fans, but it would be very dishonourable. (Despite this, they've threatened legal action a couple of times over porn, which is unusual enough in Japan that it seems to have scared everyone. Hence you'll occasionally find Japanese oekaki boards with "DO NOT DRAW ANY POKEMON" warnings, and even those who DO dare do Nintendo fan works always censor the names.)

Anyway, Nintendo would LOVE to sue the crap out of anybody who dares draw their characters, but that would be impolite. America, however, lets you sue anyone anytime for any reason and nobody questions it, so Nintendo has gone nuts.

BTW, don't let anyone fool you with the often-repeated falsehood that "you have to defend your copyright or you'll lose it". That's a misconception based on trademark law, and it only applies if the brand name has managed to make it into mainstream usage. (For instance, "Kleenex" in America is widely used to refer to ANY kind of tissue, and "Hoover" is any vacuum cleaner in the UK.)

Amusingly, Nintendo HAS actually been scared of this, too. There was a series of ads in the 90's informing people that "there is no such thing as 'a Nintendo', there is only the Nintendo Entertainment System (TM)" - apparently Big N was scared of "Nintendo" becoming the generic name for a console. And let's not forget "it's on like Donkey Kong".

Thanks for clearing that up.

well shit, it always seemed like such a "DISHONORABU" bullshit I just chalked it up to nip crap, guess there's more fault on NoA's side even in the past
plus it takes SO damn long for nintendo to "get with the times" when it comes to gaming shit I just figured this was a similar case
I think dunkey put it best saying that nintendo is like that old man that finally kind of understands how a computer works, but still uses internet explorer

Because without their IP's Nintendo has fucking nothing.
Sony has people buying its tvs, cameras and so on.
Microsoft has people buying all its PC related goods for businesses
Nintendo makes a toy for children and tiny plastic dolls that unlock dlc. The 3DS has finally hit its Wii style saturation point. Intellectual Property is all they have.

When you put it that way, all this shit about them wanting to make movies and the Universal park makes a lot of sense.

private servers so people can play your vidya, with probably pirated copies, while your'e still actively making money from it, without paying you, are a far cry from some LP jewtubery.

Other companies do.

Think about it, if they really are planning to cut costs and mke the NX replace both the 3DS and Wii U what happens if the 3DS users dont want to make the switch?
or

Also Nintedo is literally constantly fucked with people trying to claim their IPs in certain countries. Meaning they have to forfeit the rights to them.

And before anyone brings it up.
Christian Whitehead pitched his remakes to sega and they accepted them. Neither the AM2R or Pokemon Uranium projects were pitched, which means legally they had to send a cease and desist and forfeit the rights to the IPs.

already confused as hell

How many times has this actually worked? I should get in touch with some companies.

The actual normal normals already went "what? a 'wii U'? no Jhonny mommy already got you a wii last christmas" and we know how much of a commercial disaster the Wii U was.

I can see your post actually happening

If your team is putting out Sonic '06 and a guy walks up to your door showing he actually improved on Sonic 2 you snap that fucker up.

People get their pitched remakes picked up per capita more than fan projects get shut down.
Let me leave it that way.

I hope that Nintendo has learned from the mistakes of the Wii U launch advertising. But considering they said they learned from the "mistakes of the 3DS launch" when they were going to launch the Wii U and well we all know what happened there.

I just have low expectations they won't screw up the next launch marketing. The only positive so far was the delaying to 2017 and having Zelda possibly be a launch title to hopefully create launch sales like Twilight Princess did for the Wii in the west.

Has anyone heard any causal say that in years? It's been a decade, surely that "name" would have moved on right?

Because they're basically the only company who people make fan games of. And Sega supporting Sonic fans is the exception not the rule.

This is new though, I hadn't figured it was an American thing. One really odd thing is I recall Nintendo did support one of those re-orchastrations of Twilight Princess a few years back, and this was while the Symphony of the Goddess was happening if I recall correctly, then even more odd it became the groups last project though.

But speaking of Donkey Kong and vacuums Nintendo has been on the other end of this trademark dispute when Universal sued them over DK and a small vacuum company tried to sue them over Kirby.

i see soccar moms and grandmas call everything a 'gamecube' still.

I may be misunderstanding you. You're saying that you're more likely to get your fangame picked up by a company than you are to release it for free and not get shut down?

To the contrary. Freedom Planet was a Sonic game before they got scared of legal consequences, and I'm making a Mega Man game right now.

I only suggested that it was baiting for a console war because of his assertion that only Nintendo plays the bullshit "protect the IP" game, which if you've been paying attention to any kind of gaming news, you would almost certainly know isn't the case.

Because it's ok when Nintendo does it, you autistic faggot.

Yes, but that means a lot less since the amount of people who actually do pitch their products is so small.
In addition companies pay people to start a giant shitfit to fuck up their competitor's PR. I know because I was offered [Legally Bound and cannot reveal how much] Dollars to throw a giant shitfit about sony when my parappa the rappa remake got shut down.

it basically is though

And I would be GLAD to tell you how much money they offered, but they have people here, and unfortunately I was retarded and was too specific and if said I could get sued.
Shithole world, I know.

Fuck off. Saged.

u fucking wot, m8?
Is this post part of the deal?

Meanwhile SEGA officially endorses ROM hacks on fucking Steam.

You don't have to announce your downvote. We can all see the blue.

wot

But they do except other companies don't have fanbases as autistic

That's actually completely false.
For example in japan you can make doujins off pre existing IPs and sell them, you can make MONEY off them.

Japan is a little more strict when it comes to certain uses of IPs but way, way more lax when it comes to other uses.
They actually encourage user content a shit ton more than the west, it's just that you must know the rules they have in place before jumping into it.

I really don't get the comparisons people are doing Between Nintendo and Sega here. It's like people forgot about the whole streets of rage thing, as well as the fact Sega actually used to flat out remove your videos. (Nintendo would only go as far as to claim monetization. Which Let's players only freaked out about due to not getting their easy shekels.) It took Sega a long while before they came around, and it was only very recently.

And then there is this fact too. And that's on the side of the person making the games. Whitehead went to Sega, The people who made that streets of rage fangame did not. Sonic Mania isn't a free fangame. Neither was Sonic CD/1/2 remakes. As much as I don't like the idea of Nintendo removing fan games. These situations aren't really comparable.

It's more that the monetization system they proposed was kind of batfuck retarded, and basically would mean you had to devote an entire seperate account to Nintendo stuff, IIRC. And get pennies on the dollar for all of that. I think they backed off on it, unsurprisingly.

It really all comes down to Nintendo being Bad At The Internet, so they don't notice shit forever and then massively overreact when they do.

except they're not earning money form Vanillia/TBC/WotLK but the sodomized and disfigured game they call WoW now

give her the pecker

AMR2 and Pokemon Uranium were both taking donations or Pateron bux. That's profiting off someone else's IP.

However, Nintendo has shut down fan-titles that took no money. And the IP/Copyright system is retarded- especially when others can do better than you.

The fan titles don't make their own game and re-skin it because most of the time
A) They have no genuine original ideas. Even if AMR2 was a new IP and new map, everyone would say it was a Metroid rip off. Likewise, that passes over to the graphics, and new characters would look like Chinese Metroid bootleg.
B) Hoping to use an existing title's reputation for exposure.

There are some good fan titles, but those are few and far between (that Sonic Mania guy getting hired for his work).

We need to find genuinely good new indie games and let others know about it.

And yet- the Touhou creator made his work open-source, and it's practically part of Japan internet culture. But as and says, some Jap company like Nintendo and Sega are just insane when it comes to "protecting" their brand.

The west is as bad in some cases. Some studio was making a B-movie serial killer game (the monster can move through walls and move extremely fast when not observed so you can do Jason shit), and because one of the serial killer's had a hockey mask, the Friday the 13th owners shut them down… Then released their own half-cooked cheap knock off later.

Probably not, I already figured there were paid shills to throw a shitfit whenever a company does ____ it's so much easier to destroy a company's PR than build one.
Look at Konami Yes I know they deserve it but seriously look at how fast their popularity hit bottom even to normalfags

Nintendo give Nintendo's franchises a bad name.

Sega actually declined Taxman when he initially pitched them about remaking Sonic CD for the iPhone as they were looking at porting it themselves, it was only when they realised that it was literally never ever going to happen that they took Taxman up on his offer.

Your point about pitching still stands, but this is Nintendo we're talking about here. If anyone here actually thinks they would ever officially endorse any fan game or fan anything they need to reacquaint themselves with what this company is like.