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Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat ironic, considering that I just saw their own 3DS Badge Arcade, which costs $1.00 for 5 plays of a highly luck-dependent claw machine game, to win icons that you can decorate the home screen with (and sometimes custom themes.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Badge_Arcade

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As someone who played a lot of that game I can tell you it was not luck dependent at all. Entirely skill based, there was even a daily practice mode which would net you free plays. If the claw grabbed the piece it wouldn't drop it unless it got to the end. Most boards could easily be done with 5 plays.

Nintendo has kept scummy micro transactions to a minimum for as long as I can remember. Even Pokemon Picross had a maximum spend on micro transactions (after $40, any further premium currency was free)

The first and only time I tried it, 3 of my 5 free plays resulted in the claw dropping the better badges after picking them up, before reaching the end.

Which was released in '14, so possibly corporate position has evolved.

I think Nintendo corporate position has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. As is typical in the console industry, the breathtaking success of one generation, the Wii, gave Nintendo a bad case of the swaggers and they made a lot of fairly arrogant decisions for a while. The breathtaking failure of the WiiU restored a lot of humility to them, and you can see that in their Switch performance.

It seems a console maker can sometimes survive one generation of significant success without going too crazy, but I'm not sure there's ever been one that has survived two without getting bitten by their own arrogance. We'll see if Nintendo's humility survives the Switch.

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