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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

I've never been into Nintendo but after having kids I kept hearing this about how great they are for families so I bought a Switch. That's when I learned what a greedy exploitative platform it is: overcharging for games, nickle and dimeing for everything, and abusing their fan's nostalgia. I definitely don't want to get my kids invested in their platform so I got rid of the Switch. Steam has more than we need anyway. (just wish Steam had better family friendly search filters, why is it impossible to search for games by ESRB rating?!).

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What games are you being nickle-and-dimed for?

I bought Super Mario Odyssey on release day in 2017 and it's never asked me for more money. In fact I think it got a few free content updates. It's the tightly-made, quality video game experience that it was when it came out.

I feel like I’ve got my money’s worth for most games on the Switch, too. Mostly a lot more than my money’s worth.

Speaking of Super Mario Odyssey, two of us have played it from beginning to end, so we definitely got a lot of fun game time out of the cost!

That's when I learned what a greedy exploitative platform it is

I bought a game (Spelunky) on the Switch online shop. Nintendo then proceeded to send me constant emails about how my “coins are expiring.” So they award coins for purchases which you can save up to get “free” games, but then make them gradually expire if you don’t use them. What kind of high pressure sales tactic is this?

I was really turned off. I can see how this would be highly manipulative to kids though.

Why is Nintendo doing this crap? They’re a privately owned, family-run company. They don’t have outside shareholders to please. They could just choose to be less profitable and focus on protecting their family-friendly brand. This excessive greed is highly unseemly.

For what it is worth, the Yamauchi family has been slowly selling their portion of the company for nearly a decade. (https://www.campdenfb.com/article/nintendo-heirs-sell-stake-...). The shareholder structure is the only thing keeping in control and they definitely care about how happy shareholders are. Luckily, the particular shareholders they are concerned with tend to hold for an extremely long period of time (Japanese banks and holding cos).

Actually, their largest shareholder after the Yamauchi family is The Public Investment Fund of The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The coins are a "fun" value add thing. You can get small discounts on digital games if you use the gold ones. The silver ones can get you various digital/physical goodies. You're not missing out if you don't use them.

Why make them expire though? Even worse, they expire the coins gradually, stretching it out as long as possible, like radioactive decay. And they send you an email to remind you every time a few coins expire.

This is not fun! This is straightforward psychological manipulation! It’s taking people’s loss aversion [1] and grinding it as hard as possible for as much profit as they can. This is especially bad when you consider that they are a family-oriented company that primarily markets to children.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

I don't believe that's true; unused gold coins expire at the end of the same month during which you acquired them, one year later. (I believe silver/platinum coins are similar, but only last six months)

So for example if you acquired 10 gold coins during July 2020 (it doesn't matter when or how many purchases or how spread they are through the month), all ten of those coins would expire simultaneously at the end of July 2021, while any coins you acquired later would remain. It's not a radioactive decay at all; it's a simple expiration date on each individual coin, like you get on coupons or other incentive programs.

The coins expire for the same reason that coupons expire, airline loyalty program miles expire, etc -- they're a liability on the company's balance sheet which potentially could build up infinitely if there wasn't some limit to how long they needed to be tracked and redeemable.

I never got such an email, so I guess you are subscribed to their newsletter? Just unsubscribe if that's the case.

Regarding e-shop: I'd never let my hypothetical children have access to any kind of e-shop where you can purchase without me having to confirm. Parental controls FTW.

The alternative is to uncheck “save payment method for future purchases”.

The coins, both the giving of and the expiring, are 100% a Japanese culture thing.

Most japanese residents can tell you near every store will have a points card system where you get 1% back in points. Or 0.5% for the stingy super markets.

What is lesser known is that by law such points, and even digital in-game currency, must expire else be considered money and regulated as such.

Do you mind elaborating on the "overcharging for games" part? Console games in the 80s were about $45, so games today are actually cheaper if inflation is taken into account.

Games for Nintendo consoles aren’t overpriced relative to games from past generations, but are expensive relative to PC games today. Sales promotions on PC platforms like Steam and GOG are more frequent and provide deeper discounts than Nintendo’s. And while AAA Nintendo games are roughly the same price as AAA games on Steam, old Nintendo AAA games retain much higher prices than old AAA games on Steam. (Example: Mario Kart 8 is nine years old and still sells for $60 not including DLC.)

A lot of the major Nintendo games are on sale this week (probably because of March 10 = MAR10), but even the oldest first‐party titles are only down to about $40 at the lowest.

Console games really benefited from economy of scale. The Legend of Zelda had an MSRP in 1986 of $50. That is $136 in 2022 money. You can preorder The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for $70, or roughly half the price.

Imagine how many more hours of labor goes into a modern game compared to a 1986 game. The 1986 game has nine people in the credits. Three people with the role "programmer". Two things kept prices in line. Reduced hardware costs, as the older carts are much more expensive. Increased sales, where more people buy the same software.

Throwing more people mostly making graphics, and creating movie like sequences where characters explain things isn't as hard with the tools available compared to making everything fit memory-wise making choices not faced today. Those three programmers interfaced with the hardware directly, solved os problems to get things working enough to put in a custom game engine they created into the smallest amount of memory before they can even start creating a world where there game could exist. The challenge today is how can I generate enough content to create a story to put into my unreal game engine. The 3d part, driver development, the memory management all is handled by something else.

Random question for the HN crowd piggybacking off your comment:

What age did you introduce video games to your kids?

My oldest is 5 and I let him tinker on the PS5 when I’m around playing things like Sonic or he really likes Astro’s Playworld.

We limit it to maybe 15-20 min a day but I swear it’s like I tell people I let him watch R-rated movies or something when I mention that I let him play video games at his age.

Curious what people here view as age appropriate.

Don't have kids yet, but I started playing at age 5, didn't notice any issues (although that may be in the eye of the beholder, ha)

I actually think video games did me a decent amount of good with reading and math skills. Lot of RPGs, minecraft, etc. I would definitely set time limits and try to push towards more "brainy" games

Yeah. Although it was good that I quit when I did, my time with world of Warcraft when I was 9 leveled up my typing and communication skills so fast. Since I'm particularly prone to min/maxing I also got some good experience with math and unintuitive systems and how to guage what was better. (Percent increase vs flat increase, hit speed vs hit damage, etc.)

My kid is 4 and plays a few specific games that I allow. He loves ”fire boy & water girl” for example, and he used to play Super Mario Run but it was not turning well so I cut that. Sometimes we play SNES Mario games together but he usually finds them too hard. Also some Mario Kart on emulators, and some Minecraft.

We let our oldest start pretty young. He could beat Monument Valley at 3 and beat Shovel Knight at 5.

Our current limits for our 5 and 7 year old kids are one hour, three days a week.

In some ways it feels like letting them read visual novels. The media itself is usually great, I just worry about them getting used to the easiest forms.

5 or 6 is when I let my kids start. Limited time, parental supervision.

My youngest son was 3 or 4 when we played Everquest together. He sat on my lap so he could see the monitor and killed snakes in front of Qeynos for 10-15 minutes a night for a few months.

We constantly played console games and board games as a family. The kids got their own handhelds about 7-8. We supervised what games they could play until high school, and limited their game playing/TV until 16 based on their grades and good behavior. After that, they really didn't need limits as they were responsible enough.

I was far more concerned about them having a cell phone. We resisted as long as possible, and then started with dumb phones without a data plan.

My son has been playing various Mario games since age 5. He can hold his own on Mario Party and has finished Odyssey. When we were kids, I was playing GTA, Mortal Kombat etc, so my childhood wasn't necessarily a good example.

That being said, his reading and math abilities are quite good and we attribute that to videogames, and a healthy dose of Mo Willems books.

The switch is also a UX nightmare. I can't believe the time and stress incurred to get profiles setup and purchase games. Completely drained my excitement. I have like four of them...all sit unused.

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