[bastard_op]

It's rather sad even Nintendo has devolved to this sort of mobile gaming trap too, you would think the old guard would have some respect for themselves to purposely NOT contribute to this modern epidemic.

I play no mobile games, they're all some cash trap like a vacuum cleaner, and simply not fun when you realize you'll never truly win anything unless you pay and pay hard. What do YOU really get for the money?

I guess knowing you're paying for Nintendo's old guard's retirements and health care.

[minimaxir]

> It's rather sad even Nintendo has devolved to this sort of mobile gaming trap too, you would think the old guard would have some respect for themselves to purposely NOT contribute to this modern epidemic.

They tried with Super Mario Run (https://supermariorun.com/en/), which was a premium pay-once game introduced by Miyamoto himself at an Apple keynote.

That didn't work, then Fire Emblem Heroes made a billion dollars.

[chrisco255]

Yeah I remember they explicitly wanted to avoid the "free-to-play" schemes back when SMR came out.

[groovybits]

An interesting game that Nintendo made early on in their mobile saga was Dragalia Lost [1], which was probably the most generous 'gatcha' [2] mobile game ever released.

It was so player-friendly, that it underperformed for much of it's 4 years, and ultimately shut down in November 2022.

It was unfortunate that mobile gaming is in the state that its in, but Nintendo had some good ideas in the mobile space.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragalia_Lost

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game

[bakugo]

> It's rather sad even Nintendo has devolved to this sort of mobile gaming trap too, you would think the old guard would have some respect for themselves to purposely NOT contribute to this modern epidemic.

Nintendo is no better than any other game publisher, they're just behind on predatory industry trends by 5-10 years, that's it. They're just now entering the "cut out content from games to sell it as DLC that you announce before the game is even released" phase that the western gaming industry went through ages ago, and even adopted the more recent "live service multiplayer game with endless daily grinds and battle passes that demands your constant attention" model with Splatoon 3.

[falsenapkin]

I have like 4k hours on Splatoon and I have to say that while you're not wrong, I wouldn't quite characterize it as doom and gloom. 2 was worth $60, the DLC content was worth... what was it even? The 3 DLC is $25. Anyway, the 2 DLC was worth the much larger more difficult higher replay value solo content. All of 3s content is achievable if you play it often and none of it is in any way "needed". If anything they've loosened things up a bit by making gear easier to customize, making it easier to acquire the stuff with which you do the customization. Even people with half the time as me at the end of 2 had maxed out their money and owned everything. What's the point in having money if it's trivial to buy everything? While now they have pass mechanics in place, previous seasons content is available in new seasons albeit from a gacha machine.

I guess what I'm trying to say is yeah they have the essence of some problematic mechanics at work but if anything I find navigating them to be rewarding and not limiting. In this case they're not even really behind the industry, they're kind of lateral just lacking real money. I think this is an interesting position to be in, my big concern is they may be training players to feel good about these systems and then in S4 they allow you to put real money in...