Live service, free to play games are the new hotness. With huge fan bases built around games like Genshin Impact, Destiny and Fortnite regularly updated with new characters, content and quests, it’s easy to see how other game development studios can be tempted to the dark side.
Games-as-a-service (GaaS) is a little hard to pin down when it comes to Nintendo, as the Japan-based mega-corp likes to forge its own path in everything.
When microtransactions were the new trend, we saw Nintendo haggling over Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball. When continuous mobile games were the taste by the way, Nintendo made their first to test the waters: the surprisingly expensive-for-a-mobile game Super Mario Run. Now that subscriptions are the current fashion, Nintendo is offering the NSO service and the expansion pack, neither of which are fantastic value for money, but does offer additional content for existing games such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
When it comes to live service games, Nintendo has once again dipped their toes in the water with games like Mario Kart Tour and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp… but it seems they’re reluctant to leave the mobile gaming sphere.
So, will Nintendo get right into live service games – or will they be treated forever as experiments that never reach the level of success of, say, Final Fantasy XIV? Let’s take a look at which Nintendo games could benefit from a move to live service…
splatoon
As many people have argued, the fact that Nintendo is leaving Splatoon 2 to make Splatoon 3 is a frustrating move for many who still play the first regularly.
Nintendo could have made Splatoon 2 an ongoing live service game instead, with regular updates, season pass content and server support to keep it working well into the future, rather than just ditching it for something new and shiny (which some seem to thinking is no different enough to justify a whole sequel).
Given that Splatoon takes its inspiration from other online shooters like Destiny, it’s strange that the games are still treated as standalone releases with a limited shelf life.
pokemon
The Pokémon series has dabbled in games-as-a-service a few times, and despite a few successes (Pokémon GO, Pokémon UNITE), many of the games just haven’t really caught on widely. There was the disappointing Pokémon Shuffle, which relied too much on timers; Pokémon Café Mix, which barely gets any promotion from Nintendo or The Pokémon Company, and Pokémon Picross, made by the Picross studio Jupiter, but with too many stingy free-to-play mechanics.
They just can’t get it right. But Pokémon Sword and Shield have taken some steps in the right direction, with new Pokémon being added regularly, plus two major DLCs that allow you to visit new areas, catch new Legendaries, and find new items. Given how many people get upset about limited Pokédexes in each new release, we can imagine that a Pokémon game that gradually each Pokémon over a span of months can indeed be a very, very popular idea.
Animal Crossing
Nintendo has already proven that they can do Animal Crossing-as-a-service with Pocket Camp – and that people really appreciate it.
While Animal Crossing: New Horizons has a few updates here and there, most notably the Happy Home Paradise DLC and the various items added for holidays and festivities, imagine an Animal Crossing game that would full attention from a dedicated GaaS team. Imagine an Animal Crossing game that regularly gives you new furniture, villagers and mechanics, with a season pass that gives you access to special events and maybe even mechanics for the rest of the world. It would potentially remove all the difficulties people encountered jumping from New Leaf to New Horizons and finding much less customization and personality!
Mario Maker
Perhaps Mario Maker could better serve as a live service game, rather than the one Nintendo always seems to forget. We can get new asset packs, Nintendo-made levels, festive content and maybe some Season Pass options like being able to set multiple endings, bonus objectives, boss fights, ghost data or powerups. Call us, Nintendo. We have big ideas.
Mario party
The Mario Party series has been little more than a slight revamp every time it’s time for a new release for a while now. Cool new mechanics, like the one with HD Rumble, are welcome – few and far between, even in more recent Switch outings.
Mario Party is one of the games that would best fit the free-to-play model – if everyone had access to a basic version of the game, a lot more people would want to buy the freemium content in it, rather than already ask your friends to spend $60 each for a copy.
The content you could get as extra stuff could be new boards, items, characters, themes, minigames… the list goes on!
Smash Bros.
For the periods when Smash Bros. games regularly release stage, costume, and character packs, the series is In principle a live service.
But imagine if the game had a longer shelf life and the season pass gave you access to – say – new characters as broad as those Fortnite regularly adds, plus massive events, tournaments, taunts, voting lines, and more. Smash Bros. could be much more colorful if it had lasting, ongoing support from its fans and players, rather than being supported for a few years and then slowly decaying for the next installment.
Mario Kart
Nintendo’s approach to Mario Kart in recent years has been: quite foreign. First they released Mario Kart 8 in 2014 for the Wii U, later they added DLC courses, characters and free content like the Mercedes Benz pack (which we all agree was an odd choice). They then re-released Mario Kart 8 on the Switch, bundling all the DLC (which was a much better choice).
Then there was Mario Kart Tour – closest to a Mario Kart live service game, but probably not what many people wanted – and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, an AR/AC racing game that sold, and resembled, a fraction of what MK8 sold. largely aimed at families with children. Nintendo is clearly experimenting with the Mario Kart franchise, but for what purpose?
Now Nintendo is releasing 48 tracks – doubling the number already in the game – as even more DLC for MK8 over the course of two years, which many people will get for free as part of their Nintendo Switch Online membership. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is currently a live service game that has only half the benefits. We’re not getting any game updates, new characters, or new modes, and although 48 a lot of numbers, a few people have felt disappointed by the quality of the textures and the fact that it feels a bit like an advertisement for the phone game version of Mario Kart.
Right now it’s easy to wish for an all-or-nothing approach: if you want to turn Mario Kart 8 into a hulking, bloated behemoth of a game, instead of releasing Mario Kart 9… am working on it. Release one new course per month and add new cars, new characters, new battle modes and new challenges. Would that please everyone? noeeeeeeee. But it’s better than the halfway-between-new-game-and-old-game we have now, right?
Now we know that the free-to-play live service model isn’t necessarily a good thing. Many players end up spending more on cosmetics and content than they would have on just the base game, and in some cases (like loot boxes and gacha packs) the F2P model can be predatory and unfair to those who don’t have huge sums of money. dropping money on making their character better. And you always get the rich jerks whose avatars are level fifty billion because they paid for it.
But Nintendo doesn’t have to go down those routes. Many of the suggestions we’ve made above are of a cosmetic nature – and we imagined that other players would still be able to see and appreciate the content even if they don’t have it.
Imagine visiting an Animal Crossing: New Horizons island and seeing it decked out with stuff that people paid real money for, or playing a Mario Maker level with items on it that you can’t access. Sure, it might feel a bit like you can’t use those items yourself, but that’s the point of F2P in the end, and it wouldn’t make any mechanical difference.
But tell us: do you agree that any of these games are better than live service games? Did we miss an obvious one? Do you think F2P and live service games are a blot on the industry? Go to the comments!
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