Which Apple thing are you referring to?

But yeah, the (monetization) design of Nintendo’s mobile games is quite disappointing.

Perhaps Apple's moves to the cloud and making more services? Or even allowing loot boxes in apps on its store.

I am highly critical of Apple's heavy handed "approval" requirements for apps coupled with not allowing users to sideload, but if they're going to do it anyway ostensibly for protecting the user, the least they could do it is block the clearly exploitative loot-box approach.

>Which Apple thing are you referring to?

The App Store and exploitative the models it's design perpetuates.

Apple is in for 30% of the take from every single gambling and gacha games, and the take is MASSIVE. They have very strong "incentives" to not have a problem with giving kids gambling games.

> Sad that I had hoped some exec at Nintendo would veto this approach as "Not Nintendo"

I'm guessing it happened to a point. King with their Candy Crush saga had higher revenue and profits than Blizzard [1] for a while now. The amount of money mobile gaming pulls is insane. It's hard to leave that on the table.

Luckily this didn't spread beyond their mobile apps, unlike other game developers that push to replicate the model on desktop and consoles.

[1] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/84423/king-has-made-more-mone...

Does the switch even have the capability to support a mictrotransaction focused shell game? The store is incredibly slow and obtuse, where these things rely a lot on smooth, fast transactions to get it over with before people can think too hard.

Store looks like a webpage that gets opened in Switch's browser.

They do have a concept of filling up your store credit and then spending it on purchases, so the future microtransaction flow could just grab a few credits that you already have on your account.

Let's hope that never happens.

Their DLC flows aren't that different from something like Sony's.

Candy Crush isn't even top 5 in revenue [0]. Genshin isn't top 10. How can you look at money like that and ever think of going back to the flat fee price model as an executive?

That said, I've wondered why game companies haven't transitioned back to a socialized model where high profit games are used to subsidize the high-intellect games. I'm talking something like 2014 Blizzard where Hearthstone dwarfed the money every other IP was making but which still attracted a higher-end audience with SC2 and WoW.

[0]https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-genshin-impact-amon...

As a public company, why not just use the money to boost stock value or sell it. Subsidising games is losing money after all.

This is a fascinating conclusion. Are there other business models for App Store-like ecosystems that are less broken?

Is it that fascinating? Apple makes 70% of App Store revenue from games. These aren't $2, $10, or $60 games on iOS - they're casino simulators for children. This is pretty apparent, and is one of their biggest criticism

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/apple-vs-epic-70percent-of-a...

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/05/05/apple-arcade-ne...

That a century old company with decades of tradition in gaming is not able to eke out a workable business model on Apple's App Store that is not exploitative is indeed fascinating to me. It should be a damning conclusion to the current business model.

I am familiar with the Epic debacle. And while I find the Apple Arcade business model a much better one, I am not sure if it works at the scale of an entire app store. We'll have to see if SetApp ever takes off (same business model, but for apps).

> Sad that I had hoped some exec at Nintendo would veto this approach as "Not Nintendo" rather than choosing to tarnish the brand and take the money, like Apple did.

They did, originally. They released a $10, no microtransactions Mario game (Super Mario Run) in 2016. The general consensus is that the game did not live up to Nintendo's commercial expectations[1], and I think that's true. Nintendo entirely switched to the more standard App Store game model for its later mobile titles, and they print money.

As for "tarnishing the brand," Nintendo still hasn't really put a "full title" on mobile, with the maybe possible exception of Mario Kart. It feels like they are still keeping their distance, but who knows what would have happened if the Switch sales were more like the Wii U than the Wii.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Run#Commercial

There's a huge spectrum of pricing possibilities between $10 flat for a generic run game (in 2016!) and lootboxes

They could have released DLCs that added more levels for increasing somewhat recurring revenue. I would have gladly jumped at that.

Super mario run is very good (teaches you the mechanics well, has ramping difficulty, keeps things fresh with challenges, etc) and well themed, it's hardy a "generic run game".

Don't know about anyone else, but the reason I never bought Super Mario Run was because it required a constant internet connection, AND you had to create an account with Nintendo. (At the time, I had an iPod Touch rather than a phone with a cell connection, and usually kept Wi-Fi turned off to save battery, so I only played games that could run offline. So my situation was probably not common, but Nintendo's choices here still feel a bit invasive.)

Yep, and it refused to run if your phone was rooted. A game refusing to run. And of course with no internet connection it wouldn't work so you couldn't play while you were camping even though the entire gameplay was offline. And the moment a new version was released you had to download/install it otherhwise the game would refuse to run, even if you were on wifi 5 minutes earlier and now on mobile data which is super expensive.

They let their extreme love for DRM and proprietariness completely overwhelm the user experience. But instead of asking themselves if that's why it didn't sell well, they of course conclude that they weren't making money because they weren't being scummy enough.

I bought Mario Run and even with the absurd restrictions I enjoyed it and probably would have bought more of their games if they'd continued. Quite the disapointment.

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. Software is their profit center but exclusivity to their hardware gives them much greater control. It also let's them act as a toll collector for anyone else who wants to publish on their platform.

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. Super Mario Run had to be a sub-par experience compared to what was obtainable on their own platform to avoid this risk. Yet they still released a sub-par experience at what, for mobile, was a high premium price of $10. It was doomed to fail from the outset.

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. 2 when a similar game (in visual aesthetics only, but still) only costs $3? Ripoff!"

Or at least that might have been their fear at the time. Mario Run appear a in the year prior to the Switch and after the mediocre reception of the Wii U.

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. It's like their still fighting the previous war. Now the emerging mobile war surrounds gaming services that can provide a full console or PC experience on just about any mobile device. 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. 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.

There's lots of dust still in the air here that has yet to settle, but Nintendo has yet to show their strategy for this next era of gaming while their current hardware is aging and their gaming service is not only restricted to that hardware but also limited mostly to older games from previous gen consoles.

It's not directly Nintendo, but Pokemon Go is adjacent and is still an absolute cash cow loaded with mobile cancer. Pushing back against that kind of moneymaking potential is quixotic in any corporation.

People have no idea how strong Nintendo Marketing(aka brainwashing) is. Pokemon is such a solid brand because we used to watch a 30 minute commercial every Saturday for it.

At what point is Nintendo's ability to manipulate us with their corporate mascots/IP a type of mental illness or cause for public concern?

> Really shows how ill the "App Store" model is when a company like Nintendo who has an entire hardware empire off selling high quality non-exploitative games can't make money on it without resorting to gambling industry tactics like the other low quality apps/games on there.

Or they're just greedy. They make tons of money running their own walled gardens.