Nintendo Making Bad Free-To-Play Games?!
 

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/19/80...ndo-3ds-review
What! I saw this on the website, The Verge. Its a review of Pokémon Shuffle, a free-to-play NINTENDO game. They have done free downloads before, but wow! I love Nintendo, but man, this seems like they're selling out! Club Nintendo closing, now this!
http://piq.codeus.net/static/media/u...piq_272139.png

It's a fun little game, & it's free. What the hell are you complaining about?

Don't let some lame website make your decisions for you. Download the title & form your own opinions.

Try it out. Who cares if it's free.

Rusty's Real Deal Baseball.

/another sh*t MewMeow thread

Indeed.

If you see a video game story linked from the Yahoo! homepage, you can pretty much assume it's gonna be written by somebody in a bad mood. At least, that's been my experience!

I got that recently to try to beef up my Club Nintendo points and did not expect to like it. My expectations were betrayed. It is a lot of fun, very whimsical, and with a lot of meta-humor done tastefully. I was going to delete it after I got my points but I definitely am keeping it.

I wanted to download that, but I never got around to it. Is it still free?

You get the core app for free and a demo of one game. You have to buy the rest, but that's actually part of the game. You can haggle for a lower price and such. It's a really neat idea - the shopkeeper of your games that you buy for real money is an actual character in the game and buying from him is just as much of an interaction as anything else you do.

Oh wow. That sounds pretty awesome.

It is secretly one of the best and most innovative little games Nintendo has made in years. It's a shame more people don't know about it.

It's such a neat game and the mini-games are actually weirdly addicting. I ended up buying quite a few of them and I never felt like sh*t when I spent the money.

At least Rusty's was an original idea. An experiment. Pokemon Shuffle just sounds like Match-3 game #406. And it sounds like Pokemon Trozei. But I'm downloading it, anyway...

Pokemon Trozei was great. I was pretty suprised at how addicting it was.

i love nintendo as they normally are more innovative then the other game creators. that said i have felt that lately they have been following the "in-game purchase" model alot more. the games themselves are generally good though and the purchases just enhance the game.

What are you even talking about? This is something like the third FTP game Nintendo has ever made. How have they been following the in-game purchase model at all?

The title of the article is very "click baity" but while a bit unfair I'm glad it was written so Nintendo backs off from this type of games. I mean I'm happy that i have a free game and those type of puzzle games are the ones I only play very little at a time making this game indeed "free" for me since the limits won't affect me. But it is a slippery slope since this type of gameplay has made tons of crappy mobile games and I hate the concept of games being made not with fun in mind so costumers pony up the cash but with limits in mind. I'll give credit to Nintendo that they've tried to experiment with F2P like with Steel Diver:Sub Wars and Rusty's Real Deal Baseball which were definitely better ways of F2P even if I wasn't a big fan of them. More than F2P both of those were more like elaborate game demos. I can't imagine either of those games doing too well though so now Nintendo is trying a more traditional model but hope that one doesn't stick.

We've also seen Nintendo try different things with DLC, we have the "f-ck this company and their DLC" with Fire Emblem:Awakening where it is kind of a rip off, "normal DLC" in Hyrule Warriors were you get enough content but it still doens't feel right and "I can't believe all this content is cheap DLC" with Mario Kart 8.

Are you trying to say that just because there's an article on a schlocky general news site that nobody cares about, Nintendo is going to be just like "Our bad, we'll stop"?

How does Hyrule Warrriors DLC not feel right? What does that even mean?

What's up with all the nonsense sh*t posting in here lately?

I downloaded Rusty last night. Holy sh*t the game is funny. The minigames are great too.

I finally played Pokemon Shuffle, had more fun than I thought I would, but the five hearts gave me enough game play for the day that I wanted with it,, next time I play it I'll have 5 more hearts and so on so I guess I'm good. I still think its a slippery slope and wouldn't want Nintendo to go through.

this "schlocky" site is quite popular on the internet, you bet Nintendo cares about the publicity it gets on it, this isn't some random guys blogspot account.

When you have DLC worth as much or almost as much as the actual game and plenty of it is announced before the game even comes out, along with costumes and whatnot. It isn't a huge rip-off but its far from the ideal DLC scenario. Or I should state my personal DLC scenario.

Heh, Nintendo is a long way from abusing the DLC model. Even Hyrule Warriors is basically an outsourced game which Nintendo somewhat distanced itself from when the Tecmo folks wanted to make it more Zelda-like.

I recently picked up Injustice: Gods Among Us on the Wii U and its DLC options on the eShop just seem ridiculously overpriced for very little amount of content when you consider what Nintendo did with the Mario Kart 8 expansion packs. $4.99 for a single character? $2.99 for a slim skin pack (and there's a bunch too)? Com'on, WB. I think the full game maybe retailing for about $20 now.

lol no. Nobody cares about "The Verge". And even then, again one idiot's article is not going to impact any of their future business plans.

Jesus, does anybody ever use basic common sense and research anymore?

Apparently the person not using basic common sense and research is you since "The Verge" which no one cares about is ranked 381 in the world and 156 in the US. Like I stated in this thread I don't care for the site and you might personally not either but to say an article on that website has no impact is clearly wrong; especially when the first link you find when you google "Pokemon Shuffle" is that "one idiot's article" and right below it is another unfavorable review of the game making similar points. You can bet higher ups at Nintendo are taking note.

I never said Nintendo was abusing DLC, I only used it as an example as Nintendo experimenting with different amount of content being offered as DLC.

Yeah, 156. And 381 in the world. Nintendo is primarilly located in Japan. They don't give two sh*ts about a random website that publishes clickbait.

For as much as I appreciate Nintendo, they're very much an enigma to me. Besides their own standards of honor, I'm really not sure who's opinion they take seriously.

So you use Alexa, the Nielsen Ratings of the internet, to back up your claim? The place where their traffic monitoring is sourced only by people who install their adware-filled toolbar? As opposed to, I don't know, listening to a someone whose very job has included monitoring the internet as a whole, traffic included, for almost a decade?

And you're still arguing the wrong point. Why would Nintendo take what is said in an article or two, or even five, to completely rearrange their business model, if that is indeed what would be what would driving forward? Let's say just for the sake of argument, that The Verge were the most popular tech news site in existence, or this were an article in the New Yorker. Why would you expect Nintendo to care? THIS is the question I was trying to get across before you started defending the site like it was your little brother (again, the denizens of this Drome have had a recently weird obsession with crying if someone says something they like is unpopular). If the past decades have been indication, Nintendo does its own thing. It always has. Maybe if there were a lot of important mouths at their ear they might listen, but a handful of wanks on the opposite hemisphere aren't going to change their minds.

What The Verge's article, and a few random comments here and there have pretended, and this is the lame part,
that this is "another nail in the coffin" type of thing for Nintendo, how they've "lost touch" or are "going under". This is probably just an experiment, a one-off thing, which is why I don't get why you were so adamant that the article be what changed Nintendo's minds. It's not a major release at all. It's one of probably about two dozen or more games the publisher is releasing this year. If it is an experiment, then yes, they probably have their ears to the grapevine a little closer than normal. But that still doesn't change that your initial comment was that you hoped one article was what changed their mind. See, if you'd stated that you hoped it were "reviews" or "reactions" or "general outcry" that changed their minds, that would have a tad bit more substance. But you said that you were glad this article was written so that Nintendo would back off. As if this article held all of the clout in the world over a multi-national trillionaire company. THAT was what I took beef with.

And you know what? The game really isn't that bad. I downloaded it tonight. Everyone is letting the micro-transactions blind them from the fact that it's really just a sort of a demo for that next Trozei game. You don't need to buy a bloody thing (unless maybe you really have an addictive personality). I played for about half an hour without running out of hearts. Maybe further into the game, it's harder to get somewhere without running out, but by that point you've probably got a few jewels saved up. Really, it's no worse than any other of those free-to-play match games. A little generic, maybe, but it's cute. It seems like the backlash isn't that it's micro-transactions, but that it's micro-transactions from Nintendo - who as we've discussed earlier in the thread, has been able to do it right before.

Before you try to enter a debate with anybody about anything, make sure you understand the basic tenets of what you're arguing. It'll keep you from looking like such a one-sided broken record.

I just used Alexa since it was the first link and I wasn't going to spend more time looking for one but come on, are you seriously trying to say The Verge is not an influential or popular tech site?

Why would Nintendo, this "Japanese" company care about it? Bad press is important to them, and no "any press is good press" is not good if you're a publicly traded company where most of your business has come from the west. Of course these companies care, I once sat on a meeting that included the CEO of an international company where we viewed a negative youtube video that had gone viral about said company and discuss why said product had not clicked in a specific market. Now Nintendo as a company has a very specific culture which for better or worse makes them who they are and they take odd decisions and do cater to their Japanese market. But even though they seem to do whatever the heck they want that still doesn't mean they "completely ignore" the western market like many armchair CEO's say on the internet and at the end of the day they do have investors who they need to explain what they're doing with their money.

Now, I re-read my post and I can see where it's not really clear and could lead someone to think that I meant Nintendo would change only because of this one article. But now that its cleared up that I mean the press in general which includes this article from an influential site would deter Nintendo from similar ventures, especially since even themselves have said they even told investors they were playing around with different type of F2P models so yes they are seeing the reaction.

As far as the game I already mentioned I enjoyed it for what it was and the micro transactions didn't bother a player like me but wouldn't want Nintendo to continue more along this route. And now if you want to boast about jobs, mine is to understand the market. I post because I'm a fan but I really don't care if some enthusiasts in a gaming section of a forum agree or disagree.

This thread reminded me that Shuffle was even a thing that happened, so I went ahead and downloaded it. I don't see what the big deal is -- it's cute, fun, but the constant hints are kind of annoying. I'll play the way I want to, game. Make those hints a button or something, I don't like being told what to do. That's the only complaint I have at all about it, though. Looks like they'll be doing daily things with it if you connect online, which is really nice. Overall I'm glad it exists.

I don't even see why Nintendo doing microtransactions in their games is a big deal. You aren't being forced into buying anything. Why is it a problem? I've just about never been bothered by them and I've played several games that include them. Hell, I've even BEEN that person that made a transaction or two. As far as I can see, Nintendo is just using this game [and that baseball thing mentioned earlier in the thread] to try out microtransactions because it's making other companies money. I see no issue with that.

This reminds me of that amazing south park episode about freemium games.

"The game can't be fun. It has to be just barely fun, otherwise there would be no incentive to pay to make it MORE fun." XD

I tried this game out today and it doesn't feel scummy to me at all. It's a cute little puzzle game and that's about it. I beat around 25 levels of it without ever feeling like I was being forced towards spending money. I also caught a Mew on my first try! Weeee!

The game is fun enough and I like having short 10 minute or so sessions (however long my 5 hearts last) the days I pick up to play my 3DS. I probably wouldn't be playing it this much if it wasn't a F2P game with time mechanic in it, I almost feel like I have to to get my "free" plays. These games do make addictions based on those mechanics. The catching aspect of the game is total BS though. It's really hard to get a "high" percentage rate and the probability of escape is really high; I've had 90% catchability rate Pokemon escape, I have caught Pokemon with only 5% catch rate though. I don't really care about catching Pokemon in this game though, it's hard enough to complete the real Pokedex to bother with a spin-off game.

I don't move on to the next stage until I catch something. It makes it seem less daunting to catch everything, since I have no idea how many stages the game has and have no interest in knowing.

That said, **** this game's catch rates, lmao

Pokemon Shuffle is extremely fun.

It's good for what it is. I'll be playing more of it.

I want Nintendo to do more games of this nature so that new 3DS owners have some free games they can play out of the box. This is especially great for kids who get the system as a gift and need a variety of things to play without expending a lot of money.

They can make a free to play Ice Climbers. One of those infinite level type dealies.

That'd be pretty fun. Good idea.

I'm kind of surprised that the Ice Climbers haven't appeared in a game of their own since the original came out. I mean, they did appear again in Melee & Brawl; but Pit being in Brawl was enough to revive the Kid Icarus franchise, so I dunno. I think it'd be cool to see another Ice Climbers game - but maybe that's just me.

Mr. Game & Watch could also benefit from the format.

Oh no, I would love this.

Kid Icarus was a decent game with some bad pacing/bullsh*t difficulty spikes, but generally it's alright. It was also a highly requested series revival for a super long time.

Ice Climber has no redeeming factors. The only reason anyone cares is Smash. It belongs alongside Urban Champion in the Nintendo pantheon.

That said, I could picture a Doodle Jump style infinite vertical scroller made from IC.

Yeah, that's why I suggested it. A free to play game would be more than what they deserve.

I can see it. Like little mini games that you can buy, like Rusty's.