Nintendo to Smartphone Gamers: Don’t Spend Too Much on Us
wsj.com/articles/nintendo-to-smartphone-gamer...
wsj.comPosted Mar 6, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC
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wsj.comIf Nintendo’s strategy was to introduce users to their console games, then I guess it worked for me. Thanks to FEH, I got introduced to the the FE series and I picked up Awakening after a few months of playing FEH and really enjoyed it. I also bought Echoes last year as well and I’m hella looking forwards to Three Houses.
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Out of curiosity did you already own a 3DS?
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I did, but I had never played a FE game previously. At the time of FEH’s release, I believe I only owned Pokémon Moon, Kirby Planet Robobot, and NSMB2.
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Ah thanks. I asked because part of Nintendo's plan is to try upsell people but I had my doubts about whether a mobile game would really make many people go out and spend hundreds of dollars on Nintendo stuff, if you already have a 3DS its a bit different.
There were a fair posts back in peak Pokémon GO saying that they it got them back into Pokémon and some Amazon listings showing Pokémon that sales were up, but I wasn't sure how successful at upselling mobile games were overall.
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Part of the reason why I got into FEH was because Pokémon GO got stale during the winter and Super Mario Run disappointed me. I still play Pokémon GO on a regular basis because I’ve been huge Pokémon fan since I first played Diamond back in 2008.
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I actually went out and bought a 3ds so that I could play Echoes and Awakening, after being introduced to the franchise by heros.
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That's the road block for me for example. Don't have a console or non-smartphone portable, and tbh don't plan to get one. I would play real FE titles if they were on PC (or smartphone/tablet because why not), but obviously that is never going to happen.
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The old model 2DS is really cheap these days. Alternatively if you have a decent PC I believe the FE games run decently on Citra.
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You just described my experience perfectly. I actually started with Mario Run, and when I got bored of that pretty quickly I thought "Oh yeah, didn't they also release some kind of mobile strategy game? I should give that a shot." A couple of months later, I was hooked on FEH and playing through Awakening and Fates.
I also have a few friends who had never played an FE game but tried out FEH. I don't think any of them are still actively playing, but at least it built some name recognition for the series.
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Same, actually.
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Nintendo sees smartphone games primarily as a way to increase interest in its game characters so that players will consider buying traditional console games, the company’s main business, according to one Nintendo official. The company is concerned it might be criticized for being greedy in smartphone games, the official said.
A key takeaway is that Nintendo's strategy is aimed (or going to be aimed?) at generating long term interest in their stuff, rather than milking customers with predatory practices for short term gains (as many other gaming companies do).
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Someone should let IS know.
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Nintendo to Smartphone Gamers: Donât Spend Too Much on Us
Decluttered version of this WSJ's article archived on March 06, 2019 can be viewed on https://outline.com/Zu4cBe
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Thanks!
Not a word for FEH. Laying low while still bringing in the dough.
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Yeah because FEH completely obliterates the narrative they're trying to create haha
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I think that article was more about DL/Cygames even though it mostly talked about Nintendo.
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This was helpful, thanks. Good bot.
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This highly confuses me with the actions that IS has been doing with FEH recently if true.
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Yup, especially with the "here's 5 less orbs but you can have 20 (useless) AR stones instead" tactic as of late
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I mean there's that, but there's also whale on Mythic Heroes for AR, powercreep extravaganza, less orbs in a ton of modes (monthly quests, tap battle, etc.), the bonus points on bonus units in arena, and just so much more that confuses me. I mean if they were not trying to get us to whale hard for it then I highly doubt they would put on the bonus points for AR nor the powercreep extravaganza like Surtr. It just confuses me is all. Maybe Nintendo's internal philosophy is somehow separated from IS? Hopefully if it is they'll start following Nintendo's philosophy on smartphone games. They have started doing better in the recent months imo though there have still been some controversies here and there like the less orbs per month one or the shitshow that was second anniversary.
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I prefer orbs to Aether Stones too, but I find it odd that back in January people didn't like Aether Stones being buyable (among a ton of other things about the New Year's bundles, obviously).
I find it weird how we went from "We can't let whales buy Aether stones, it'll give them an unfair advantage" to "Aether stones are useless"
Although I would prefer one extra chance to get a new character to slightly more powerful Aether Raiders structures too.
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I think it's largely because the majority of people have just given AR over to the whales now and don't give a fuck about the mode aside from the grail reward from the bare minimum 1 match a day
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Keep in mind that was pre-AR-blessing/"The more merges on your AR units the more lift you get," when AR wasn't pure whalebait. When people actually cared about AR.
(I might be wrong about the timing of the AR blessing release, but I remember this happening when people still liked AR and thought it was a better arena)
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No, that was after. Eir, and the announcement of Mythic Heroes and blessings, came out in November
And even before then, people started to hate it because of its difficulty.
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Nah FEH has kept increasing the effort put into new characters, making them appealing whether through meta skills or better characterization in tempests and forging bonds. Making the characters appealing makes their games appealing to buy.
This explains why most alts are from the most profitable or accessible (recent) games and why FEH OCs and the story feels like a lower priority.
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Does any of this even refer to IS, do they have ties to DeNA? How Nintendo decides to contact their business with one partner does not necessarily apply to another partner (or owned studio).
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If people didn't, FEH would probably only have a life span of a year and a half.
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A game's visibility on the App/Play store is pretty highly tied to how much money it brings in so this could be true, but if Nintendo wants to view mobile differently what is stopping Nintendo from saying to IS "just keep making the game we are happy with it"?
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[deleted]
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I think that's because people are confusing monetization methods with things like power creep or "whale bait." Because that's likely not part of the restrictions Nintendo is asking for.
One thing that is easy to notice about Heroes is how simple the spending system is, and how few advertisements appear on screen. If you compare this to most other gacha, you'll see a pretty dramatic difference.
What Nintendo is likely doing is limiting the amount of microtransactions available at any given time, along with the advertisements ingame. It's all about the optics, less than actually preventing player spending.
Now, DL does have spending packs and much more of a variety of spending options? But the implication here is that Cygames feels it could offer more options and Nintendo has held that back.
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'Nintendo is not interested in making a large amount of revenue from a single smartphone game'. Power creep and whale bait is directly tied to the AMOUNT people spend.
What that quote says is that Nintendo aren't interested in making a large amount of revenue from any one game - things that are directly tied to trying to get as much money out of people is completely contrary to that statement.
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You aren't wrong, but it's all about how things appear? Nintendo board executives are likely not managing things like power creep. They leave that to IS.
Nintendo sets restrictions, and IS works within them. Those restrictions are likely more to do with surface level behaviors, like how IS sells you its products.
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Powercreep and whale bait are different topics as long as they are optional - and in FEH they obviously are. What are you missing out by not falling for them?
You are rank 19/20 Arena/AR instead of 21 and score top 10k AA instead of top 1k AA. That's a few hundred feathers and a small amount of the other resources like coins/grails/flowers every week, that's it. New content is still doable with few resources, not to mention that we get enough orbs to keep up with the pve side of powercreep.
I would guess Nintendo would be ok with that (if they even knew). The game is expensive/annoying for those reaching for the top 1%, the rest can slip by and headpat their waifus in peace. Gacha can certainly be MUCH more pushy to their users than IS comes across.
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Idk why since you don't actually have to spend to do anything in FEH. There's stuff that tries to incentivise you to, but many of the essential skills are free and on readily available units.
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And even on the incentive aspect, it certainly doesn't feel like they're pushing that too hard anyway. Contrary to how this place likes to act.
There is never a case where the player feels they need to whale for a particular unit because a skillset is gamebreaking.
Most of the time it's because A) You want the fodder because you feel another character could use the skill better (ie DB4 for Reinhardt) or B) You just wanted the character.
But it was never a need to have.
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But it was never a need to have.
Totally agreed. Every linear increase to a skill or unit is the end of the world, while there are games out there that double their multiplicative powercreep boosts in the span of a year. 2x2 (total damage x4) vs 4x4 (total damage x16) is quite a leap from our 38 ATK/SPD vs 42 ATK/SPD.
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Which is completely fair. Power creep, AR, the whole +10 concept, Arena etc is built around whaling and milking. They also recently been taking orbs away and the move from equal-gender seasonals to having almost no male seasonals last year is also clearly focussed on short term gains from a certain demographic.
Maybe this new advice will lead to change but FEH is the ultimate counterpoint to this whole stance Nintendo are apparently taking
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I do like the idea for a strategy of using the mobile games to promote interest in the main series games. In this front, FEH has surpassed and exceeded all expectations. Despite the popularity of Awakening and Fates, this has always been a niche series. And half the games were never localized.
But now, a large percentage of the recent fandom is familiar with FE because of this mobile game. People who never heard of Genealogy or Thracia before will now probably saying things like 'the one with Sigurd, the one with Reinhardt.' FEH has increased awareness of characters throughout the entire series to new players, and encouraged them to play the main series.
However, I suppose we also have to consider if their strategy was effective for new games. It's one thing for players to go out and play the older games. But with SoV, it sold well for a remake of Gaiden of all things, up to expectations, but still not as well as the other 3Ds FE games. Although that was fairly early into FEH 2017 lifetime. Depending on how Three Houses does this summer, if new banners promote the game to familiarize players beforehand, Three Houses could become a huge success. The switch is doing extremely well, compared to the 3Ds which was an older handheld when SoV was released. We'll just have to wait and see for the end result.
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That's the thing though. The Switch is selling great, and it should continue to do so through the summer. At this point, the question is whether people grabbing their Switch and Three Houses will come over to FEH if there's a banner, or if it's the inverse reality.
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Nintendo cares far more about console and handheld than mobile. Their mobile platforms are to encourage players back into their switch base. Not really the other way around.
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I get that (I can read), however this may be a game that ends up doing "the other way around." Get it?
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I guess FEH is explicitly excluded from this...
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Right? You can't tell me they aren't aggressively monetizing this game these days.
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This is the first month in a while they haven't offered a special orb pack.
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I sure wouldn't miss that overpriced nonsense.
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Yeah, but that was a slightly discounted pack compared to the regular 25 orb pack. So now they're telling everyone to buy the $75-$110 pack (depending on where you live).
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Also Nintendo to smartphone gamers: Play our gambling simulators where you gamble with real money.
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In an age where Ea and Activision, willl milk you dry for any cents. This was surprisingly a nice read. Good guy Nintendo ?
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Hmmm, maybe. They're still mobile games that artificially limit you're resources to entice player spending, often through methods of gambling. If they didn't want you to spend money they wouldn't have made them in the first place, or at least wouldn't have monetised them.
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so the focus is on gaining customer loyalty so they can have more repeat purchases for multiple game series. that is actually incredibly smart
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It would be smart if the in house nintendo games followed this instead of souring ppl with their business practices
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Also if they managed to release their Switch versions of games like whilst the mobile game is still big and not after people have lost interest like with Animal Crossing.
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Is there another article? I don't want to sign up to Wall Street Journal.
Edit: It's interesting that Dragalia Lost is below expectations, I've only heard it's doing well. Maybe if they give it a European release that could help it a bit. They also don't mention FEH which is interesting since it's making Nintendo a lot of money. I believe that it's their highest grossing mobile game, I could be wrong though, I'm not sure how much the initial explosion of Pokemon Go made.
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Its not so much that its doing bad, its that cygames parent company cyagent used it something as a scapegoat to excuse profits in other places being down along with "waahhh we could make even more money but nintendos a bully"
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Any sources on the scapegoat theory?
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Looks like u/outline_link_bot has your back
https://outline.com/Zu4cBe
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Cygames parent company expected DL to cover the substantial losses from another branch. I did not follow the details but apparently they try to establish an internet broadcast stream program in an age where everyone watches what they want on demand, and it's failing. Go figure.
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IS isn't making it hard considering how their profits are apparently dropping.
In all seriousness, one of the problems about how this affects FE is that most of the games aren't available anymore. Only the 3DS games are regularly accessible anymore without pirating. Hoping for remakes are a long shot and those are generally risky business wise and doing more at this point could clash with the characters already in FEH so the best most people can hope for is a digital rerelease.
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Whilst not directly related to FEH, I think the fact that Nintendo is weighing in on the monetisation models of their mobile games does make it relevant and would at least make for good discussion here.
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Nintendo is a wholesome company and unlike many big game companies isn't fueled by greed. They make games out of love, creating quality products and have pride in the image of their company and franchises. It is the best of all video game companies IMO, they pay their workers not just the top guys exceptionally well too.
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How does this relate to FEH and what does it mean, exactly? Is there hope the prices for orbs will be lowered in the future? More free orbs from content? A constant orb login bonus regardless of whether there's a new banner login reward?
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It indicates that Nintendo appears to be holding mobile devs back from heavier monetisation. How much this applies to IS is anyone's guess.
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Ah, I see. Well, hopefully we'll see some changes or something in the near future in regards to this, though I won't hold my breath.
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Yeah, I figured that was the strategy.
Even I can notice the avalanche expected to come with the possibility of the Poke GO player base and adding it to main series.
Though I don't think that transfer has necessarily worked for FE. I don't recall SoV doing anything besides decent. And I don't know how the Animal Crossing mobile game is currently being received.
And yeah Cygames, I've noticed. DL, reeks of forced restraint.
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Wise words from Nintendo.
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I personally feel like if this is the way you want to handle this game in general, I feel like it’s too late to be going into “damage control.” I tried the prequel before feh was even a thing thanks to the wii u VC, but I share everyone’s sentiment that thanks to feh I played other games in the series & that’s been a great decision (other then fates but regardless.) Back to my previous point, 2 years may not seem like a lot but in the games industry that’s a good little bit so I feel like you might’ve wanted to figure that out before this long because that just adds more resources you have to use to achieve this goal of yours. I hope IS, DeNA & Nintendo can get this game into a good state where $ spent can be a little bit less of a thing & maybe make this game a little bit less of a “gambling simulator.”
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I cannot read the whole article
Because I am not subscribed
Edit: Now that I’ve read the whole thing, that’s pretty interesting, even more interested to see how IS will respond to Nintendo’s request considering how Feh wasn’t mentioned at all 👀. I like their strategy though, at least the idea of their strategy with mobile games being used to increase interest in their console games while making money at the same time as opposed to just putting out more ads. God I’d love to job shadow/intern/apprentice under someone at Nintendo to learn more about their business style
Also, I thought Dragalia was doing really well?
It is doing well, mostly. One of Cygame's partner companies used Dragalia Lost as a scapegoat for why they took a hit, despite that hit clearly coming from other sectors.
On the other hand, Cygames suggests that its profits are being hamstringed by Nintendo's rules, so we know that internally they are at least falling short of the mark they originally wanted to make.
For a game with no existing IP, and a very limited release until recently, DL has done really well.
I do think that there are ways that it could improve its monetization? If DL ever fails, it won't be from the quality of the game but how it was managed.
They could improve, if they released the game to the rest of the world. Like Europe for example (UK does not count).
It's not partner company. Cyberagent is Cygames's parent company.
Does this help? https://outline.com/Zu4cBe
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It is, but it isn't making more money than God and seems to rely on more casual spending than whaling so naturally mobile game developers are like "waaaah we could be making MORE MONEY".
There was a post over on r/games which mentioned that this might be harmful to Nintendo overall in the mobile business because the big mobile game companies who have a lot of control over who gets to succeed in that market might not want to partner with Nintendo if they're only interested in modest profits as in their eyes spending that time and not getting max ROI on it would be a waste of time.
As a consumer I have to side with Nintendo on this one (not that FEH seems to really benefit from this strategy much). I do have my doubts as to their overall strategy though. The basic outline of their plan is:
But I think Nintendo is very proud of their games, in this case to a fault. The big flaw in their plan is how they strip down their mobile experiences, namely the mobile games are far shallower. This is good for the mobile market, but Nintendo's upsell is "the Switch version is more fleshed out" and I think they're being very presumptuous that young people will understand this, even if it seems obvious to older gamers. If all you've ever had is an iPad the idea that this smaller iPad with buttons is going to have waaay better games is not intuitive. If Mario Run is your 1st Mario game your reaction is more likely to be "I don't get why this Mario guy is so popular" than it is "wow I need to buy a Switch for Mario" because Mario Run does not really capture the essence of Mario. AC Pocket Camp is a shadow of real Animal Crossing, it's shallow and doesn't capture the feeling at all. FEH does okay on the gameplay front, but I think anyone who loves FEH but how exactly does FEH help sell 3H unless they do some massive cross promotion? (they really didn't do very much for SoV or Warriors)
I really don't think Nintendo has really thought this plan through all that well.
Same concerns. That strategy sounds ok in theory.
However with the exception of the Pokemon series which Nintendo has gone out its way to transfer the GO base to the Switch with the release of the Let's GO games then following up with a release of the main games, Mario Run, FEH, AC Mobile don't facilitate the same transfer of the mobile base.
I mean all SoV got was a banner prior to its release. That's it. And we know that didn't really do much. There would have to be more effort to have those that have never touched a Nintendo console to realise "Oh hey, there's X on the Switch? Maybe I should try it out."
Edit: So apparently I misremembered the SoV banners, either way, point still stands.
They stuffed us with SoV. Half the cast and two TTs in span of like 3 months iirc.