I guess the point I'm driving at is, though I was always a cow to be milked, the last couple versions of Call of Duty (as just one example) have made it way too obvious now. In contrast to a first-party Nintendo game that just lets me play the game I bought.

Mario himself seems to have a lot fun jumping around and its pretty infectious. Link (mostly), Splatoon inklings, animal crossing villagers, pokemon, and kirby do too. I don't think I can name any major titles on Xbox or Playstation where the characters' primary emotion is joy.

If you look closely enough, Nintendo design is oddball, but very purposeful.

Sony has been making tons of fun games to play with zero loot boxes in the game.

God of War, Last of Us, Uncharted, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, and Horizon are all top selling videos games in the past few years and all of them contain zero loot boxes.

All of them are highly loved video games as well.

Sony spent the last few decades buying gaming studio to make fun games for them. Almost all of them have nothing to do with loot boxes.

I think it more a problem of me letting the article dictate the terms of the discussion. Did Microsoft publish my whipping boy Call of Duty? Of course not, one can play CoD on a Playstation just as well, and any undesirable traits of the game lie at the feet of Activision.

It might be more accurate to bitch about Xbox Game Pass and the like, as there seems to be a hard push to just rent your access to games with a monthly payment. Or the acquisition of studios (as TFA makes a point of) so that $COMPANY has exlusive access to $HOT_GAME.

Also, your last sentence about exclusivity is a really strange point when comparing to Nintendo - which literally only does that. (And has extremely vicious customer unfriendly pricing. Breath of the Wild is still $60 5 years later).

Yet Nintendo has an extensive gacha lineup like Super Mario Run, Mario Kart Tour, Pokemon GO, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, Fire Emblem Heroes etc.

You might ignore it but don't pretend Nintendo is some holy divine protector of gaming.

This is one of the three major things that drove me away from gaming almost entirely over a decade ago.

(some exec) I know! NFTs and the blockchain!

Microsoft is sitting here with Game Pass giving people unlimited access to most games in their catalog for $15/mo including 0-day access to their biggest releases. Better yet, they do this cross platform so you can play them anywhere and keep your data in sync. And, if you don't want to subscribe to game pass you can STILL buy the games.

Meanwhile, Nintendo literally charges $59.99 for games released in early 2017.

My kids play minecraft on almost anything. Console wars are a foreign concept to them. The most interesting thing I found is that they don't really have love for nintendo. I bought them each a switch lite, that they don't care for at all. They do play mario kart tour on their cell phones occasionally.

Sometimes I feel like Nintendo is becoming a brand for middle age millennials trying to relive their childhood.

> Sometimes I feel like Nintendo is becoming a brand for middle age millennials trying to relive their childhood.

As someone coming into middle-age, I relate to this. With less free time, but more money, I personally suffer from 'choice paralysis' sometimes. I almost exclusively played PC games in college, but now I don't want to use a computer after work to play games. Consoles give me simple, high-quality bursts of fun - and for less hassle than a PC. Nintendo specifically gives me that hit of nostalgia wrapped in new experiences.

Everyone has their preferences. But I've been leaning away from PC and towards consoles.

Not that I'm negating your point. The fact that I can download just about every first-party game from decades-old Nintendo console says there's something to the nostalgia theory.

There are other influences to Splatoon's aesthetic, too, like Japanese graffiti art and urban culture in general.

No kidding - Splatoon 1 launched on the Wii U platform in May 2015, when everyone considered the Wii U to be a flop. It had so much going against it at the time:

- New/unrecognized IP

- Shooter genre, which typically doesn't cater to Nintendo's fan base

- Third-person shooter, which is all but extinct, save for Gears of War

- Online-centric, something Nintendo is not known for

Splatoon has been a surprise success from the very beginning.

> Splatoon debuted at No. 2 in the UK software sales chart in the week it launched, only behind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It is the fifth fastest-selling Wii U game and the fastest-selling new intellectual property on the console in that country, beating the previous record set by Ubisoft's 2012 launch title ZombiU.[81] Splatoon debuted at the top of the Japanese software sales chart, with over 144,000 retail copies sold in its launch week and a total of 1.53 million sold by December 2016.

From the article

> Splatoon 3, which launched last week in Nintendo’s home country to an astounding 3.45 million units sold in its first three days.

Wow! What a major success story on both fronts. From 144k over the first week to 3.45M over a few days. I'd imagine the original would have done even better if not for the Wii U too.