Topic: Nintendo and free to play

You need to read what @sony_70 actually said, many "free to play" games are very grind-heavy or unbalanced unless you invest some cash.

What? No. The point was that Magic the Gathering is a brilliant example of a Free-to-Play microtransactions model in practice. It's a brilliant game, and you get real value out of buying the cards.

it depends on what kind of game it is... if it's a F2P MMO of some sort, i'm not a fan mainly because usually the good items are available immediately to whoever has the funds, e.g. you're not working for what you have. When I play a game and i'm up against someone who's better than me, I want the reason for that to be because the other guy worked harder and put in more time, not because he had more money in his bank account and was able to purchase a +50 Mallet of Hammering and +75 Shield of Awesome immediately upon signup. F2P MMOs tend to balance in favor of people who are able to spend more money on them — otherwise you're left grinding forever to pick up super rare drops, and at that point you're also fighting against god-knows-how-many other people to get those same drops. there's a point where it stops being fun, y'know?

F2P solo experiences I don't really mind as much, and some of them can be pretty neat. however, the game you're describing in the OP probably wouldn't interest me. idk off top of my head what would interest me, but i'm just not feeling a F2P Mario platforming title atm, lol.

Pokemon TCG is perfect come to think of it. They're kinda doing it now with Pokemon TCG Online. You buy a deck of cards at the store, register it online and you're able to battle friends on the website using the cards you have registered. That's actually perfect for WiiU.

You can play the game for free but you only get one deck with average cards. It's a neat concept that I'm surprised Nintendo didn't even address but I'm guessing this is more on the side from The Pokemon Company than Nintendo themselves. I would kill for another Pokemon TCG game like on Gameboy. One of the best birthday presents as it came out the same week back in '99

Still have that Meowth card that came with it.

i don't think nintendo will try too much innovating in this sense. they've made their current model work for them pretty good over the years. i'd of thought things would have to be a shambles to get them to think otherwise. but full digital distribution is a big step, so who knows. i just can't see it anytime soon.

a shame cause i think their VC service could be a huge success if it were like subscription based for access to whole libraries. something like a big online pokemon could also benefit from the pure free to play model - have items/customisations for sale as the revenue source for the game. proven to be popular enough with TF2 on the PC.