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.
These major developers with prolific IPs come to the mobile market and act like they free+micro model is the only way to sell on mobile, but its also not like they've tried to experiment at all beyond just blindly following what everyone else is doing. Maybe the blind are leading the blind currently in this space, but there's no way to tell until someone steps up and finds the courage to try something different.
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 an indefinite liability for limited revenue.
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.
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.
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.
Phone OS's and MacOS, however, consistently show complete disregard for software of any reasonable age.
Don’t ever change HN /s
The "paid" category on iOS seems pretty OK. For example, I was just looking at card games and it includes games I actually enjoy playing such as Slay the Spire and Monster Train, which don't seem to be burdened by intrusive monetization schemes. (MT is $8 + $4 DLC - not free but cheaper than Steam's $25+.)
Square Enix has a bunch of gacha games but they also have regular pay-once RPGs like Final Fantasy. (Though some of them lack controller support, and several older games have become unplayable.)
(iOS should really add more game categories - there currently isn't one for platformers or endless runners, for example.)
Unfortunately f2p and slot machine style monetization schemes usually makes much more money than pay once.
In contrast, Mario Kart Tour made $200 million in its first year and a half with microtransactions.
So Nintendo tried. But it's not the way consumers wanted to pay for it.
I disagree.
Mobile gamers are used to free or almost free mobile games. Additionally, the mobile experience isn’t (currently) designed for the harder-core audience that pays $30-$60 per game.
If they had charged $30, they would have been laughed at, and the app would have either flopped, or they would have had to eventually convert it to a free/microtransaction model.
I’m glad Nintendo is pulling out of mobile, and was disappointed when they initially entered.
If/when controllers become a mainstay for phones, things could change (for the mobile market). But I’m still not optimistic.
It's curious to see square enix spitting $15 games one after the other after so much time, maybe they have found their niche?
Forspoken Sales Have Been “Lackluster”, Square Enix Confirmed; Mid-Sized Games Haven’t Performed Well https://wccftech.com/forspoken-sales-have-been-lackluster-sq...
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.
There's plenty of games where that happens on os and you see devs abandon them. Even still in gaming in general, gamers don't really expect long term support. Sometimes mulitplayer servers are shut down even when there is still a community using them. Some developers flat out say "we aren't patching this game anymore, its too old." Its the nature of the gaming market to keep buying the new game in the IP.
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.