Recently, I had the chance to sit down with Nintendo’s own Shigeru Miyamoto, to discuss many topics, including the company’s long battle against emulation. As a reminder, here’s their official stance on the matter:

The introduction of emulators created to play illegally copied Nintendo software represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. —www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp

Strong words. Here’s our interview* with Shigeru Miyamoto, in full:

So, just what makes illegal emulation so dangerous?

Well, first of all, when you play a game through illegal emulation, you may think you are having fun, but what you’re really feeling is sadness and shame.

But from a business perspective, if players can go play, let’s say, Super Metroid in an illegal emulator, then we are not profiting from that property. Clearly, we want to profit from our own IP. In order to maintain the value of this IP that we own, we’d have to develop a new Metroid game. Nobody is asking for that. That’s not something that anybody wants.

Is it fair to say that Nintendo hasn’t always met the needs of gamers, when it comes to playing the classics on their platform of choice?

To players who’ve expressed their frustration over how we’ve handled the transition of the Virtual Console platform between console generations, we have heard you.

Players are frustrated that they must wait for a new console release in order to purchase all their old favorites. We hope to solve this frustration.

How exactly?

With the Nintendo Switch Online Service, we give players a Virtual Console title each month, and at the end of that period, we take it away. There is a monthly fee associated with this service, and what we’re doing is gently introducing players to our new model.

Could you tell us a little about this new business model?

We’d like to get to a place where, when you buy a Virtual Console game, it will leave your library after a set amount of time. This way, you can buy it again, without having to create a new ID or buying a new console.

Is this the drive behind unifying the user account?

Unifying our marketplace under the Nintendo Network ID will allow players to experience the thrill of buying Super Mario Bros 3 over and over again, regardless of platform.

We’d like to extend this model beyond the Virtual Console. Have you seen Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? If you look closely, you’ll notice it’s more or less the same game we released in 2014. So it’s a step towards where we’d like to be.

It is our goal to never have to release a new game again. That’s the long-term plan.

*Author’s note: This is fabricated, fictional, satirical, fake, for entertainment purposes only, and I hope that is obvious.