Miyamoto Calls On His Industry Peers To Deliver Games At Fixed Prices

Fixed price all the way !
No more Free-2-Play.
It will make developers don't push their best effort to create their games.
And also it will educate peoples if there will be NEVER Completely Freebies 100%.
You want to play a game ?
Then you HAVE to Pay.

I'd much rather go the way of free market. Let developers do as they wish, if it's not financially supported by consumers then a pivot, or regression, will occur. If it is financially supported by consumers, then everyone else may need to consider accounting for that in their business model. Different strokes for different folks, variety is the spice of life, etc, etc.

OMG shiggy is greedy af !!!!11

I can't imagine Mario Kart Tour or any future mobile Nintendo game finding any semblance of success if they utilize the fixed-price model.

It's so great of Nintendo to take a strong stand against free-to-play games!

That's all I had to say, now time for me to get back to playing Miitomo, Pocket Camp and Fire Emblem: Heroes.

Watch them continue with the “offer the game as a trial for free and make them pay for an unlock, that way they can’t use family sharing on it!” method they used for the Mario game.

It’s great to have this stance, most free to okay stuff I’m not keen on, like paladins where you collect x of this to get this, or others where there are several currencies and premium currencies.
I must admit that Fortnite, what I’ve played of it, seems to have a decent model though, probably the best f2p model in a game I’ve played

Nintendo should be working on their security. With all their consoles hacked, their games are all basically free to play.

@Anti-Matter Isn't that kinda bad for people who can't afford to pay for as much games as they use to, and would rather play a free mobile game until they are able to earn enough money to buy an extra game?

@Yosheel Or the Free to play method of Miitomo, Fire Emblem Heroes, and Animal Crossing.

@patbacknitro18 well those games don’t feature fixed prices, like Mr Miyamoto suggests, so our only point of comparison right now is Mario Run.

Mario Run with its terrible purchasing method.

@patbacknitro18
I don't even want Freebies mobile games.
Ew.... !

Why should they do all their work for free?

@Anti-Matter That doesn't mean the Millions of other people who do want them should be deprived of them.

@JHDK can't play miitomo anymore, they killed it

The F2P model is certainly better for mobile games. Just look at the difference between FE Heroes and Mario Run. A lot of these games aren't really worth spending money on either. I've never spent a penny on any mobile game and the ones I occasionally play I still get enjoyment out of them.

@patbacknitro18 said "Isn't that kinda bad for people who can't afford to pay for as much games as they use to, and would rather play a free mobile game until they are able to earn enough money to buy an extra game?"

Man we live in a capitalistic world. No offence but your sentence sounds very lame.

How many people would like to live in a big house and how many people actually live in a big house ?
How many people would like to drive a Porshe and how many people actually drive one ?
etc...etc...

It's the same here with games, when people don't have enough money, they don't buy. As simple as that. ^^

@Cobalt "Man we live in a capitalistic world" No offense but your sentence sounds very lame when you take into consideration that Free to Play games also have in-App purchases that earn them millions upon millions of dollars, thus fitting into the capitalist world we live in.

Yet Nintendo has fully embraced free to play, they have several free to play games (with those awful microtransactions). As has been said before in the other article: Nintendo has become super greedy, arrogant, evil. I don't know how long I will support them, but they definitely don't get microtransaction-money from me, nor do I subscribe to that online "service"!

Yes that’s the way.

Both fixed pricing and free to play is primarily about one thing: earning money. Nothing is free, even if it sounds like it. All companies wants to make money. And it's you as a consumer who decides whether to support it or not.

I understand what he says but he shouldnt be bothered by that. Miyamoto is just reconfirming Nintendos main vision.

A lot of people know what free to play games are and what to expect compared to most games you pay full price for.

People who pay for Mario games already own a Nintendo console something most people are 'brainwashed' to do for decades. PokemonGo kind of played more on its 'popculture' status and thats something Gamefreak knows better then Nintendo with their own IPs.

That's Nintendo caring about families and consumers,.taking its responsibilities seriously. It's one of the reason's I'm a Nintendo gamer, the company might mess up occasionally but a first party Nintendo game is going to be good value for money.

I'm glad a mantra of squeeze cents out of gamers to make money, and create a situation of whale chasing, won't be Nintendo's future.

I think free to play games have their place in the world of gaming, but more often than not, we're starting to see microtransactions and other bad business practices that stem from f2p games pour into games with a fixed price, that's the problem

Let me be as clear as I can be:

I hate the so-called free to play model and consider it one of the worst things in gaming today.

Fixed prices on mobile is near dead. Fire Emblem f2p generates more than Mario, that should say something.

This is a free-2-read website that gets paid though advertising just like F2P videogames, correct?
Then why the heck are all these people reading this website if they are against F2P?! Or watching Youtube?! Or reading online newspapers?!

Ironic, how Saint Miyamoto is preaching for the industry to deliver fixed price games, yet is holding a smartphone with Super Mario Run installed; a game that is clogged with always online DRM.

His "wise" words do indeed have an effect on the weak minded.

Does that mean no more free to play games on Switch then, based on what Miyamoto has said? Then what about Fortnite and Paladins? What I am saying is if a game likeSonic Dash came to the Switch(and Sonic Dash is free to play) would they start charging for Sonic Dash, effectively ending free to play forever!?!

The F2P business wrecked the video game industry, and I blame the mobile industry for this. If it wasn't for companies like Nintendo, we would only have F2P games.
Unlike pay2play which purpose is to be fun, free2play are primarily meant to be addictive and get a substantial user base so you want to have more and pay.

Agree or disagree, when Miyamoto speaks the industry listen.

@Heavyarms55 : "Let me be as clear as I can be:

I hate the so-called free to play model and consider it one of the worst things in gaming today."

I consider the gaming industry these days being the worst thing in gaming today.

I applaud Nintendo’s standpoint, and really hope they can make it ‘become entrenched’. However, I think they’re fighting a losing battle. If they want to release games on Mobile platforms, they should embrace the models that are successful there, rather than try to revolutionise it all by themselves. As much as I hate free to play (and Mobile gaming in general), it clearly works for many developers out there, and who are we to dictate what model the Mobile gaming industry should follow? Nintendo should go all in with it, they stand to make a fortune.

Just imagine Warioware using the F2P model. The game is perfect for mobile devices (touch and gyro), it’s such an easy concept for anyone to grasp, and it’s perfect for those who like spending money for ‘just one more go’. They’re going to throw their money away somewhere, may as well be on Nintendo games.

@Anti-Matter nah dude, both types have a market... Personally I am in love with fallout shelter and it was free it's better than Odyssey nearly which cost me like £100 :/ and was so overhyped and ruined... I believe every game should have a demo, then if you like the small experience you go out and buy the game

Fortnite is a great example of the free to play model when it is done properly. No purchase to unlock standard gameplay, and everything purchasable just gives a cosmetic bonus. The vast amounts of money it's making Epic allows them to continue updating the game on a weekly basis, keeping it fresh and fun.

Free to play, but not pay to win, is an excellent model for games. Bad examples are those where buying gets you non-cosmetic upgrades, or season passes where no content is added to the game.

@Cobalt But it's not the same because some game developers choose to give their games away as free to play. They still get benefits such as a larger player base and they can milk people who pay to wom for the costs and profits.

Kind of like how a car brand or really any brand gives some people free stuff to have those people endorse them. It has been part of our market forever.

That said I don't play them but who am I to tell people what to do? They have the freedom to choose.

@ConanLives not sure I agree with this. In fact I find Nintendo to be one of the most unfriendly companies towards consumers. We ha e one Switch in our house and it will remain that way. We have two PS4s and I’m considering buying a third. Why? The pS4s are financially more viable for a family. At present we have one psplus subscription but both my children can access any of the monthly games. Not only that, any digital games bought on one system can be downloaded at the same time to another. Not with the Switch. If, let’s say, both my children wanted to download the same game onto two Switches, I’d have to buy the digital games twice. That isn’t family friendly. Family Sharing is. This is something Nintendo have never offered. As a Nintendo consumer I have literally hundreds of digital games locked to my Wii U. In the far future, if that machine breaks and cannot be repaired anymore then they are gone. I have games that I’ve purchased on our PS4s that can be played across them and a Vita- at the same time. It’s something about Nintendo that really angers me.

100% agree. My favorite mobile games all have a set price. Hearthstone is the only one that's f2p.

Glad they're continuing with this model, a type of normalcy has to come to mobile gaming or devs on there will keep chasing gambling mechanics and getting lost in the noise of everyone else doing the exact same thing.

I wonder if this belief is held by Furkawa as well? It seems from several interviews that they have contrasting opinions about the way forward for Nintendo- which apparently wasn't about Miyamoto's commitment to quality.

So then perhaps they disagree on the way these games are sold?

Lol of course the same Nintendo port costs more due to brand name recognition. What a joke.

I call on companies to not take advantage of their fans and not charge full price for ports of games that are years old.

@darthstuey PS4s family share is great but not really any more consumer friendly. For one, shared games have to be digital, they can't be played by sub-accounts if there's no Internet connection, and you need a PS+ subscription of $10/monthly or $70/yearly.

So digital-only gaming, always-online DRM, and an expensive subscription that has to be active. That is one specific type of consumer.

These are my words! ) Thank you Miyamoto-san

Miyamoto for World President!

The problem with Free to Play is you can end up paying more money than an actual full game. Hence why I don't care for Fornite.

@RadioShadow Isn't that a choice. None of the Fortnite purchases make you a better player or provide an advantage. Although I don't really play Fortnite at the moment, I think they have a great thing going with their model of "free-to-play". Their purchases are purely cosmetic or missions but none are needed to enjoy the game fully. My two sons, like all kids, are addicted to the game. I purchased them each a battlepass mid-summer. They probably easily have a combined time of play over 100 hours and the most we've spent is around $20. My oldest son just told me that he earned enough in-game to purchase the next battlepass; I think. That's good value. Compare it to some other full price games that I own and beat where I have a fraction of the time spent on the game at a $40-$60 price point.

If Nintendo... keyword here "Nintendo"... adopted wholeheartedly the F2P concept throughout their company, it would race their quality factor straight to the bottom, hence I get Miyamoto's warning. However, F2P gaming does have a place and serves its purpose well. The only thing lost is the time and resources it takes devs to make said F2P game if it's unsuccessful — But if it IS successful, then the dev has created a gold rush for only pennies on the dollar invested. Isn't the great hope of any business to make tons of money for as little money invested as possible? While I personally don't partake in F2P much, it's appeal can't be denied. If people want to eat an impossible burger, then it doesn't matter that it's not meat, people have a choice to eat it.

@BraveBiT my children both have different accounts and share the games which have been bought once on one PS4. All you need to do is set one as the primary console and sharing games is easy. We only have one psplus account which is used by three of us. Never been a problem.

@darthstuey I do that with PS4 and Xbox, anytime my son wants a game I buy it on my accounts and he is able to play and use online functionality. This is the primary reason I adopted digital on both platforms. Only have to pay for one game and one subscription.

Good going, if only he could actually make this a reality.

@dkxcalibur Isn’t everything in any video game “just cosmetic”? Under that reasoning, why stop at new player skins? Why not sell maps, equipment, characters or game modes and put them behind a lootbox system? I would far rather pay $80 for a complete, quality product plus occasional DLC expansions that have good value and keep me interested in the game.

@Euler NO, not everything is "just cosmetic". Skins that have no effect on a game are cosmetic. However, the second you start talking about buying equipment/weapons/perks you're talking about stuff that is not "just cosmetic". All of those will potentially give another player an advantage in the game. If I make a game where its free but every player is only given a black powder musket, but for $5 you can buy an assault rifle, that would be different. Fortnite does not do this. They make it very transparent. They also don't charge for new maps or modes. Epic does this correct in my opinion. But I will acknowledge that some free to play games do not. Just to be clear, none of the skins/dances/tags/backpacks/gliders change the game in Fortnite. None of them offer an advantage to buying. All are purely for the enjoyment of the player. Buy them, don't buy them! They have no effect on the game.

So on that note, I would rather pay $0 for a complete Fortnite with the option to buy a bunny costume then a $60 game.

What difference does it make if you win or lose though? The only difference between a W or an L coming up on your screen is just a few pixels.

As a gamer, all I want are options wether is about genres, platforms, cost structure, whatever. I can choose to make a microtransaction for a small piece or put more money to get the complete package. I don't see the damage here. Why don't Nintendo replicates Fortnite gameplay and sell it for $59.99? I'm thinking I'll be playing both till I get bored and jump to the next set of games.

Wishful thinking on his part, but I hope he realizes the horse is out of the barn on free-to-play. Seems like almost everything out of his mouth was just his personal nostalgic opinion with no basis in reality. Just another old Nintendo guy who can't get with the times.

I have all the respect in the world for the games he's made in the past but at some point all of our grandparents get old and srnile, yearning for the old days, and we stop asking for their advice on how to live our lives in the present.

And the only thing worse than free-to-start is $60-to-start and then selling $100 of DLC like SSB4 did. And ask all the Soul Caliber fans how they feel about about Tira DLC.

Either make it free-to-start or $60 for the whole game. All of these $30 season passes for half the game will kill the industry while free -to-start expands it. That's just how it is, like it or not.

I'm not against free to play games
As soon as they are good and don't push the player to always spend money for no reason
Like Warframe, it's F2P but it's the best economic system I have ever seen in a game
Sadly, most of the F2P games are garbage, so I understand the point of view

@Francema
Why would anyone play a $60 Fortnite clone when they can just play Fortnite for free?

@westman98 Dunno. I'll tell you when there's one. Maybe the answer is not buying it but then again, options for everybody. There are options for the free Frotnite thing, anyway.

@Nincompoop First of all: Nintendo has upped their security on the Switch a lot, if your certificate doesn't match when playing a game (aka you pirated a game via tickets), then you get banned, if the console header is used multiple times, and eg for different titles, then you get banned. Besides that: pirating on the 3DS got virtually impossible, since Nintendo introduced new CDN protection, which require being on 11.8, which locked down freeshop as well, and which introduced antipiracy stuff. Read: https://www.reddit.com/r/SwitchHacks/comments/8rxg26/psa_strong_antipiracy_measures_implemented_by/
https://www.techradar.com/news/nintendo-3ds-puts-the-kibosh-on-piracy-with-latest-software-update
https://twitter.com/SciresM/status/1024327784892530689

Anyway, besides that: the Switch has way more telemetry, which makes it so people people who use CFW/homebrew need to pick between online or homebrew/CFW (and for the filthy pirates between piracy and online). Homebrew isn't piracy, it CAN only possibly lead to it, but isn't always the case. Also, Nintendo's security got better and console hackers acknowledge it. It's not like Sony has the best security. Microsoft has for example the luck nowadays that they got an open developer platform, so few people hack their console, they enable development mode.

@rjejr Well said!!!!

@Yorumi Really really well said! I agree 100%

People wanted Nintendo to modernize. Hope you are happy. -_-

@SonOfVon: Couldn't have said it better myself. F2P has it's place and has been proven to work, but things like loot boxes and paying for "true endings" and so on have always bothered me.

@JHDK Miyamoto is not Nintendo and vice-versa.

@Yorumi I absolutely agree that Wii U deluxe ports are poison and that AAA developers have done lots of other predatory activities (digital locks, loot boxes, online passes, DLC developed pre-release that you have to buy in order to reach the ending) for games that already cost 80 CAD. Other than deluxe ports though (which there actually haven’t been that many of, not yet at least), I think Nintendo has mostly stayed away from the most toxic new norms embraced by the industry. Breath of the Wild and Rabbids Kingdom battle, for example, absolutely give you your money’s worth for the DLC (and the vanilla game is more than complete). There’s a good column here:

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/11/talking_point_nintendo_has_embraced_dlc_but_must_resist_the_worst_industry_norms

Implementing loot boxes would be enough to dissuade me from ever buying a game, and I think it’s very disturbing to see articles like this:

https://www.pcmag.com/feature/357920/10-awesome-aaa-games-with-no-loot-boxes/9

The implication is that games without loot boxes are the exception because loot box games are the new normal.

@Yorumi I agree with some of that. I'm not sold on Nintendo's online, right now it just looks like they're adding a subscription fee to something you already get for free (which generally doesn't go over well). Save back-up is more of a nice-to-have feature than an absolute necessity, and I personally prefer the Wii/Wii U/3DS model for retro games (they need to work on backwards compatibility though) even though they charge $5 per NES game. That being said the optimistic part of me says that a subscription fee will give them more incentive to continue supporting multiplayer games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with new content for a long time (perhaps forever like with WoW, though that's pushing it). Time will tell.

Anecdotally, I think they're doing a pretty good job with stocking their Classic Edition consoles this time. The SNES Classic was a bit challenging to get the first week or two and I ordered the NES from Amazon UK (protip: they're lying when they say they don't ship to Canada lol). But the Gamestop/EB Games store was willing to sell me both the last time I checked in for curiosity sake.

@Yorumi We don't know for sure that it will cost money (they have had free DLC in the past), and the $20 per year isn't very high of a fee anyway.

@BitLounger that advice sounds good in a textbook that was designed when the local locksmith was a "large company." But that's not now how the modern world of multinational business really works. The market place in the consumer sphere doesn't support or not support models in a truly free market basis, rather collusion of the few dominant players in an industry shapes the market place and perceptions and/or colludes to limit options in such a way that a generally unsupported model in the market is adopted due to a lack of alternatives and it being "bearable" enough. In that climate "relying on the market" to sort things out doesn't always work alone, it's important to have important industry figures such as Miyamoto, and industry players such as Nintendo, setting alternatives and countering that messaging. if the market really hates the model proposed, then Nintendo's offerings will simply fail.

@Yorumi While he does represent Nintendo here, keep in mind Miyamoto is speaking for Miyamoto here, not necessarily the company policy (beyond the parts of company policy he supports.)

@Yorumi Yeah, I mean Miyamoto's always been a rebel and "lose canon" (by polite Japanese business standards, anyway.) I get the feel he does the shilling he has to for business for subscriptions and such, and then just says whatever is in his head about being against monetization His clashing with Yamauchi used to be epic....nobody but Miyamoto had the clout (or nerve) to dare try it

This is kind of a hypocritical statement from the man at Nintendo given some of the mobile games they’ve released. Animal crossing damn near DEMANDS that you pay to play if you want to have a complete catalog. If you don’t then it doesn’t require any money at all

@Yorumi You’re not paying for a feature that’s already on the carteridge, you’re paying for a connection to Nintendo’s servers (which cost money and personnel to maintain, but provide a lot of entertainment to players). When you buy the game, you do so with the full understanding that online access costs money or will cost money in the near future. This has been common knowledge since mid 2017, if not earlier.

At any rate, criticizing Nintendo’s practices (some of which is fair game) is not a valid argument for microtransactions, which is borderline price discrimination (one of the most anti-consumer practices out there).

I'll take fixed prices with no subscriptions for 500!

If only that was actually a category

But yeah, I'd like things to go back to how they were ages ago where I just bought the game and I could play it. No extra payments or subscriptions or other things.

@Yorumi Unfortunately, development costs of games like Super Mario Odyssey are increasing exponentially even as the retail price of games remains relatively constant.

https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/23/the-cost-of-games/

Nintendo doesn't "want" monopoly power, they have monopoly power. Perfect substitutes to Nintendo products do not exist, nor can they legally exist. They have use their market power to deal with those costs somehow, and unfortunately none of their options are favourable to the consumer. These include raising the price of the base game, releasing incomplete games that require paid DLC to properly finish (possibly involving digital locks), microtransactions (borderline price discrimination), lootboxes, double-dipping on Wii U ports (which means fewer games end up being made), forced bundling, season passes, and attacking the secondary market (digital-only games, single-use online passes). Which ones qualify as more anti-consumer is ultimately subjective, but a really cheap online fee seems a lot less offensive to me than any of their other monetization strategies Nintendo and other gaming companies employ.

I mean, if it leads to quality gaming experiences, free-to-play gaming is fine...it almost never does, and really is only sustainable if its a smash hit, and even a lot of those smash hits have questionable practices that beat the players over the head to try to convince them to spend as much as possible for their "free" game....I mean, a lot of retail games will do the same thing, but...

Maybe I should get off this train before it goes careening into a pitch black abyss?

@Yorumi Um... What? U need to have some evidence to back it up or you're just trying to convince people to do what you want them to.

We get it, you hate Nintendo Switch's Online Service. No need to parrot the whole thing over and over again, it's getting so annoying already.

Honestly, we get that you don't like the way Nintendo and other gaming companies are heading, but who cares? As long as there are fans of Nintendo like myself and other fans, it will be fine.

@Yorumi Yes, it’s absolutely their own doing. The major developers are in a perpetual arms race over the best graphics and most powerful specs. Diminishing returns come into play, and the improvement in graphics is marginal even as costs increase exponentially. Compare the jump from NES to SNES with SNES to N64 with N64 to GameCube with Wii U to Switch. Each time, the gap between generations gets smaller. I bet if you showed people a screenshot from a random game anytime after the N64 era and asked them which console it was from, most people unfamiliar with the particular game in question wouldn’t be able to tell you which console it was from. Iwata made a similar point in his speech at E3 2004, when describing the philosophy behind Nintendo’s next console (now known as the Wii). But the other side of the coin is that gamers feel entitled to the newest, best graphics and the most sophisticated specs. Even on this site, you see people whining about the Switch being less powerful than the PS4 even though to normal people, being able to play games anywhere is a much better feature than having the cracks on Olimar’s helmet be a bit more detailed. There would be a pretty big revolt if Nintendo or another big developer announced that their next big game would have GameCube-era graphics.

@Yorumi There are many different types of gamers, including retro-gamers and people that enjoy retro-style indie games. But the people that play AAA games are especially sensitive to graphics, which is why a game's graphics are always heavily featured at E3. The AAA model is likely to gradually become unsustainable as costs continue to increase. State of the art graphics are not Nintendo's priority, but the major games they release aren't exactly what I'd call "low graphic" at least compared to their other consoles.

@Yorumi I'm aware that it can make a lot of money, because it's unmitigated, potentially endless revenue. The problem comes with how it's implemented into the design, and how obtrusive it is. Honestly, even the best free-to-play games are still designed to where you down in some way, because they want your money. They're the junk food of gaming, and I find they can be most enjoyable when treated as such. I honestly could be here for quite a while talking about examples, since I spent the past few days researching different F2P games, watching reviews, and reading how the various communities were had to say about this. Games like Mechwarriors Online and Planetside 2, which had a ton of great ideas and mechanics that were rolled back, or buried under systems that deeply incentivize spending as much money as possible. And I don't just mean grinding, I mean they broke core ideas or any potential those mechanics had to be good, simply to get people to spend more money.

Then there are games like Warframe and Paladins, where the grind is either not that bad, or are mostly for cosmetic items that you don't need in order to play. Even still, I find myself feeling the pressure to spend a lot of money in an obtrusive way. Paladins especially deserves mention because of how ludicrous its Battle Pass is, at least when I looked into it, as well as how the game always seems to make the newest characters the most broken, at least within the first few weeks of release. I know balancing is always difficult, and a few of these characters still feel kind of unfair (no really, there's a melee tank whose ult revives him and kills everyone around him, especially if he just backs his enemies into the cramped spots that a couple maps have way too many of? Uuuugh!!!).

I mean, if you can name examples that are good games that don't compromise good design, sure. And I'm very aware that other fixed price games can be just as bad. Why do you think I ended my previous post the way I did? There's enough crap out there, while I'm fine with certain games trying to fix what was wrong with it, I dislike that F2P is by design a creature that can't be trusted. You can try it for free, but if you're hooked, you could find yourself out a lot of money if you're not careful, and that's not fine. I've always been cynical of media designed to be exploitative, from trading cards, to cartoons designed to sell toys, to social media that seems geared towards making consumers do the advertiser's jobs without compensation or accountability. That isn't to say I can't enjoy them, but they're never preferable to something more straight-forward - something where I know what I'm getting, and once I have it, I'm expected to enjoy it as a self-contained entity. A tie-in toy was cool, but a toy I have to buy just so I can use a character in a video game is a lot less cool. A game I can play for free is a nice idea, but we all know there's no such thing as a free lunch.

IMO, a great game isn't just fairly priced and balanced, with unique and memorable concepts, characters, worlds, mechanics and ideas – a great game also feels like a worthy investment of your time. And in the free-to-play market, time is the real currency. I'd gladly spend $60, or even $100 just to have the best F2P games I've played be re-purposed into a traditional purchase model, with gameplay that's balanced towards a reasonable growth rate, and maybe experienced in a way that makes them more compelling than just, "sure, I'll play for a few hours to let off some steam, before I move onto more substantial games."

@Yorumi I had another rant that I was writing up, but TL;DR - I don't mean to say that F2P games are incapable of being good, I just don't think Patchwork Game design, timers, deliberately poor pacing, excessive grinding that's only there to stall player's progress, etc. could ever be considered great design, and considering how many compromises F2P games have to make in order to be profitable, I don't think they're ever capable of being great games. At this stage, why should I settle for anything less?

I've put hundreds of hours into Warframe, which is still the best I've experienced by far. Yet I don't feel that it's a game that respects my time. It has a lot of problems that might be fixed eventually. It's hard to say, since it's the very definition of "making it up as we go" in terms of design philosophy. In the hours I spent trying to obtain a single mod that might make my pet kubrow useful in terms of damage output, I could've spent that time on another playthrough of Super Metroid instead. I think I'm done.

@Yorumi Since this news post is getting buried, I'll just clear up one misconception that you seems to be a sticking point:

Grinding is not THE problem. It's all intent and excecution - what does this gameplay element accomplish? I don't have time to explain my full thoughts on it...in fact, the more time I spent trying to flesh it out over the 4 hours or so, the more I felt like I was putting together a thesis on game design, and that'd just be wasted here. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I mean, if I haven't made it clear yet, the only thing my F2P "journey" has led me to was a greater appreciation for my own time.

@Yorumi I only listed Super Metroid because I literally had the choice of continuing my second playthrough of Super Metroid - I only played through it once back in 2008. I took a lot of it for granted back then, but now I can see why it's the greatest 2D platformer of all time. I could literally write a book on how well designed it is. So yeah, I think wasted my night. Warframe doesn't have anything left to offer me, while a great game designed with forethought and consideration for the players as a means to alleviate frustration rather aggrevate them further so they spend more money is an experience I can treasure over the long term. I'd much rather play games like this - Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, Kirby 64, Star Fox, F-Zero, Monster Hunter, Mega Man, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, Dragon Quest - all the good stuff that parasitic time-sponges that these so-called "live services" (I mean both F2P and the increasingly prevelant AAA varients that have been plaguing the industry as of late) could never hold a candle to in terms of memorablity, gameplay experience, and true long-term value - they're what's actually worth my time. I'm happy to see that someone big at Nintendo still understands that, and I hope we'll still see more and more excellent games from them and other studios still remember how to make a good game, provided their publishers even let them just make games anymore.

So to answer your question: Yes. Yes I would rather play through Super Metroid a 1000 times, because every time I play a Metroid game, I find new things to appreciate. Every time I play through Warframe, I find new junk that I might use to sell to another player so I can afford to get that component I really need, until I give up and just spend $30.

@Yorumi There's more to it, I just don't explaining it, because I don't know how to explain my thoughts on game design in less than a paragraph. and without thorough, side-by-side comparisons that would take longer than would possibly be worthwhile.

I know it's not helping my case, but I also stopped caring by the time this article fell off the front page, so...I think I'm done here.

"Miyamoto admits Nintendo’s fixed-cost model on certain devices - including mobile platforms - currently wasn’t working. Despite this, the company intends to persist with the model"

Yet Pokemon Go is not fixed pricing and more importantly Fire Emblem Heroes is the biggest cash dump games I have ever played. You can literally spend $10000 and because of it's legal loophole gambling you might not get everything. He also goes on about reasonable prices, yet they just do deluxe editions of Wii-U games on Switch and charge another full retail $60. Even the Donkey Kong revamp should have been both games for $30 and the same goes for Bayonetta. Every re-release on the Switch costs $20-30 more then is reasonable. How do even the most devout Nintendo fans justify LA Noire costing $50 over a decade later or Doom costing full retail when you could get it on everything else when it launched for $15? Porting a game is not that hard and I can understand a reasonable markup of $10 but Nintendo should discourage robbery like Bethesda game re-releases instead of embracing the model. Not sure Nintendo knows what the word reasonable means. I love you Miyamoto, but you should look at your house before talking to the rest of the market.