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Mario Is Moving Away from Mobile Games, Reveals Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto

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41–50 of 64 posts

Re: Mario Is Moving Away from Mobile Games, Reveals Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto

#41

I was pretty disappointed when they cancelled mobile Dr. Mario. That said, I think aggressively maintaining control is probably the best move - mobile is a race to the bottom, where you smother gameplay with pay-to-play and/or ads.

That really irked me too. I really loved the multiplayer game and got really good at it. I didn't get a chance to beat the single player game, it's a bit lame that that was online-only so all those puzzles are lost forever. They could have patched it to at least preserve the single player levels and just not update it anymore.

Re: Mario Is Moving Away from Mobile Games, Reveals Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto

#42
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having software that you have sold as a permanent license running on devices controlled by a third-party is just asking for permanent support issues. How often do we see apps abandoned that can't justify the software development to keep up with OS updates? If you are a company with a "consumer-friendly" image to uphold, releasing a one-time-purchase game on someone else's system in the modern era amounts to assuming…

I don’t think the problem is that it’s a third party. People develop for third-party systems like the PS4 all the time and it’s fine. And old software works on Windows pretty well. Rather, Apple and Google don’t value backwards compatibility that much. So you just have to know what are the priorities of the platforms and software that you use.

>And old software works on Windows pretty well. Rather, Apple and Google don’t value backwards compatibility that much.

You have it backwards: Microsoft values backwards compatibility in Windows so much it's eccentric.

Game consoles are a hit or miss whether they implement any form of backwards compatibility with previous hardware, and the concept of backwards compatibility in the world of personal computing in anything other than Windows flat out does not exist.

We (as in common and power users) are very, very fortunate Microsoft cares about Windows backwards compatibility so much, but by no means is such an attitude the industry norm. The industry norm is: Code fast and break shit, maybe fix later.

Re: Mario Is Moving Away from Mobile Games, Reveals Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto

#43

Isn't "Fire Emblem: Heroes" doing pretty well in the mobile space though? Decidedly not "Mario", but still Nintendo. There's also Pokemon: GO, though "The Pokemon Company" is only partially controlled by Nintendo. (The non-nintendo bits could be pushing mobile gaming). I'd be surprised if Nintendo pulled out entirely --- I can see how Fire Emblem's brand works better with microtransactions than Mario does.

>Isn't "Fire Emblem: Heroes" doing pretty well in the mobile space though?

Hell no.[1]

It's still doing well enough to evade the End of Service grim reaper for now, but it's by no means doing "pretty well".

[1]: https://game-i.daa.jp/?APP%2F1181774280

Re: Mario Is Moving Away from Mobile Games, Reveals Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto

#44
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could have been the perfect opportunity to flip the mobile model. Screw it, charge $30 for the game and let it be a one time purchase, no micro transactions aside from content like new maps years from now, and no free version. People will still buy it because its mariokart, just like they buy the $60 version for their $300 switch, or how they buy skyrim 4x for each platform it gets rereleased on. These major dev…

Having software that you have sold as a permanent license running on devices controlled by a third-party is just asking for permanent support issues. How often do we see apps abandoned that can't justify the software development to keep up with OS updates? If you are a company with a "consumer-friendly" image to uphold, releasing a one-time-purchase game on someone else's system in the modern era amounts to assuming…

You can run 20 years old Windows game on Win 11. Phone is a different story of course.

Re: Mario Is Moving Away from Mobile Games, Reveals Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto

#46
post #42
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the problem is that it’s a third party. People develop for third-party systems like the PS4 all the time and it’s fine. And old software works on Windows pretty well. Rather, Apple and Google don’t value backwards compatibility that much. So you just have to know what are the priorities of the platforms and software that you use.

>And old software works on Windows pretty well. Rather, Apple and Google don’t value backwards compatibility that much. You have it backwards: Microsoft values backwards compatibility in Windows so much it's eccentric. Game consoles are a hit or miss whether they implement any form of backwards compatibility with previous hardware, and the concept of backwards compatibility in the world of personal computing in anyth…

Microsoft has often also been held back on improving APIs because they are so committed to backward compat.

Re: Mario Is Moving Away from Mobile Games, Reveals Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto

#47
post #8

I was pretty disappointed when they cancelled mobile Dr. Mario. That said, I think aggressively maintaining control is probably the best move - mobile is a race to the bottom, where you smother gameplay with pay-to-play and/or ads.

This could have been the perfect opportunity to flip the mobile model. Screw it, charge $30 for the game and let it be a one time purchase, no micro transactions aside from content like new maps years from now, and no free version. People will still buy it because its mariokart, just like they buy the $60 version for their $300 switch, or how they buy skyrim 4x for each platform it gets rereleased on. These major dev…

Dr. Mario on the ancient gameboy still runs without issue. Sure, it's a bit dated... but the hardware and the software for it are static.

A mobile Dr. Mario might only work until the next OS release. Spending $30 on something that may break in a few months is either going to be more costly to the company that created it (now having to do updates to it without any new revenue to support those updates) or brand damaging.

Nintendo is reasonably conscious about avoiding brand damaging things.

Re: Mario Is Moving Away from Mobile Games, Reveals Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto

#48

I was pretty disappointed when they cancelled mobile Dr. Mario. That said, I think aggressively maintaining control is probably the best move - mobile is a race to the bottom, where you smother gameplay with pay-to-play and/or ads.

> disappointed when they cancelled mobile Dr. Mario

I miss Miitomo, and I kind of wanted to try Dragalia Lost but I guess I'll have to wait for a Switch version someday.

Re: Mario Is Moving Away from Mobile Games, Reveals Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto

#49
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having software that you have sold as a permanent license running on devices controlled by a third-party is just asking for permanent support issues. How often do we see apps abandoned that can't justify the software development to keep up with OS updates? If you are a company with a "consumer-friendly" image to uphold, releasing a one-time-purchase game on someone else's system in the modern era amounts to assuming…

I don’t think the problem is that it’s a third party. People develop for third-party systems like the PS4 all the time and it’s fine. And old software works on Windows pretty well. Rather, Apple and Google don’t value backwards compatibility that much. So you just have to know what are the priorities of the platforms and software that you use.

> Apple and Google don’t value backwards compatibility that much

I'm incredibly disappointed that something like 40% of the many apps and games I've purchased for iOS no longer work.

The 32-bit apocalypse was terrible, but Apple's contempt for ABI stability and backward compatibility in general (resulting in an ongoing compatibility maintenance burden for developers, just to keep their app running on newer iOS versions) damages the app and game experience on iOS.

Apple's approach makes it impossible to build a game library the way one can on other systems without keeping a collection of devices that run the appropriate OS versions and have the game installed (since it may be removed from the app store.)

This is very different from, say, Nintendo DS games(2004-2020) or PS1 games (1994-2017.) Or PC games on Windows and Steam.

It's a disappointing tradeoff, because better backward compatibility would have massive, multiplicative benefit to iOS users and developers.

Re: Mario Is Moving Away from Mobile Games, Reveals Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto

#50
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You hear a lot about "gatekeeping" and "elitism" whenever mobile gaming and traditional gaming are discussed What? Whoever is discussing that is still living in ~2010. I think itch.io is the anti-elitist platform these days... its certainly not Google Play/App Store.

I think the elitism question is related to mobile gaming being considered casual while there's a gender disparity. So if you say mobile gaming is bad, which it is, you're insulting female gamers. (From the perspective of certain bloggers)

I... have never thought of it that way. In fact I am kinda skeptical of the idea that most mobile gamers are female.

There are stereotypically "female" PC and console games too, like The Sims, Disney Dreamlight Valley, popular Wii games and such.

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