A more casual gamer can get a decent experience streaming w/ Game Pass for $15/month on their phone and/or tablet, a more dedicated gamer might still do that for convenience but can also go for the Deck (or potential competitors) at a price near that of traditional consoles, etc. I'll lump the Steam Deck in there as part of that war since Steam has demonstrated that really avid gamers are willing to pay to 1) have access to their existing deep library of games and 2) not have to deal with the downsides of streaming. Now the emerging mobile war surrounds gaming services that can provide a full console or PC experience on just about any mobile device. It's like their still fighting the previous war. The confusing thing to me is that, even after the Switch's success demonstrated the mobile App Store platforms didn't need to be an existential threat, they still went ahead with a freemium lootbox game, or really any freemium game. Mario Run appear a in the year prior to the Switch and after the mediocre reception of the Wii U. Or at least that might have been their fear at the time. 2 when a similar game (in visual aesthetics only, but still) only costs $3? Ripoff!" They might have maximized the popularity of Mario Run by coming out with a $2-$3 price tag and marketing campaign that essentially gave the message of "Hey this is just a fun little thing we made, hope you enjoy" but that price tag would risk anchoring consumer expectations of the cost of actual premium Nintendo content to a lower benchmark: "Why is Nintendo charging me $40 for New Super Mario Bros. Yet they still released a sub-par experience at what, for mobile, was a high premium price of $10. Super Mario Run had to be a sub-par experience compared to what was obtainable on their own platform to avoid this risk. None of this is new information, but a precursor to this point: Nintendo, strategically, couldn't afford (or at least wasn't willing to risk) to develop mobile content on par with the quality of their proprietary hw platforms. It also let's them act as a toll collector for anyone else who wants to publish on their platform. Software is their profit center but exclusivity to their hardware gives them much greater control. Yes, I think Nintendo believed they really needed to compete in the mobile space but also didn't want to cannibalize game purchases on their console platforms. Mario Kart 64 or Super Mario Kart (SNES) to bring it up to modern standards. Obviously they do it because they already have moderately high-quality models of the maps that they can just drag into the game from Tour, as opposed to recreating something from e.g. They infamously make you do races with fake online players that look like they've been spending money to make you see what you're "missing out on".Įven worse, Tour has infected Nintendo's actually good Mario Kart offering on Switch, with recent DLC packs including courses from Tour which are the most bland, uninspired, and boring courses in the game cause it's always just generic city streets with some Toads standing around in the audience. They released Super Mario Run which wasn't really my thing but it was at least a one-time purchase that got you all the content.īut apparently not even Nintendo can overcome the enshittification of mobile app stores, and we have Mario Kart Tour which is just pay-to-win garbage that uses every dirty trick in the book to get your money. At the beginning they were doing some interesting stuff, like Miitomo which was a simple social-media-like app where you and your friends basically just answered questions if I recall, I had fun with that for a few months. Nintendo's dip into smartphone apps has been disappointing.
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