Disagree about them not being competition - at least potentially they could be. As soon as people put out games that get word of mouth as being 'better' than Nintendo's, that obviously creates a problem. Or if people start to feel satisfied by fan games and stop buying Nintendo's, or buy less. Or if people even start to feel resentful toward Nintendo's games because they don't keep up along the dimensions that fan games might push out on but that Nintendo can't pursue.
Maybe this seems far fetched, but it's not that crazy an idea imo - especially as tech and tools evolve.
Equally, if a kid finds a bad game, and doesn't understand it's not a 'real' one, the damage is done.
They can't also have an ambiguous policy because some games aren't deemed good enough or bad enough to be a threat - if they fail to defend their copyright in one case it could weaken claims in another.
Putting the shoe on the other foot - if an indie created something new and another copied it, people would be up in arms, no? Even if it was released for free? It would be viewed as undermining the originator of the idea. Copyright exists for a reason and it's fair for Nintendo to defend its rights, and probably preferable for it to be unambiguous rather than to lead people up the garden path with a case-by-case approach.
