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Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

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 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.

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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 an indefinite liability for limited revenue.

It happens plenty of times. There are some old Monster Hunter games for example that don't run past ios 14 or so. Plenty of the "big" games from the first years of the app store no longer functionally exist today. Chances are if you can see that your population is declining you can just abandon the game. It sucks, but abandonment is nothing new for gamers and publishers, and like in an abusive relationship they buy the next game in the IP reliably.

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.

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

> 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.

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

Yes, I should have been clear that Windows (and presumably some Linux flavors, with some effort) are the exceptions here.

Phone OS's and MacOS, however, consistently show complete disregard for software of any reasonable age.

> 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.

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.

totally agree, if i do mobile game, i try to find paid games because i cant stand what the free mobile games are.

I do this with most apps honestly. The best is when you find what is now a rarity: the free app that lets you pay 99 cents to remove banner ads and use it forever. Usually when I find them, they haven't been updated in years so its probably a matter of time before they are no longer compatible with the latest ios, sadly. Seemingly every app, from the first party unique great apps to the junkiest crapware clone apps, now has a monthly and annual subscription option with essential features locked behind them.

While thank god the offerings of premium games are becoming more numerous by the year a minuscule minority go to the play store to spend money and Nintendo knows that.

It's curious to see square enix spitting $15 games one after the other after so much time, maybe they have found their niche?

I learned from the third-quarter financial results for the fiscal year ending March 2023 that Square Enix's small and medium-sized games were disappointing in terms of sales for the publisher.

Forspoken Sales Have Been “Lackluster”, Square Enix Confirmed; Mid-Sized Games Haven’t Performed Well https://wccftech.com/forspoken-sales-have-been-lackluster-sq...

I feel like it being nintendo, its a different economic context than it being a random game dev with no clout or recognizable IP. If people want to play a game on the iphone, they can find a thousand plus competitors of similar games. If they want to play mario, or pokemon, or legend of zelda, they have to get it from nintendo, and will pay whatever nintendo asks. It seems square enix might have realized this if they are in this $15 model now.

That’s what they did with the Super Mario Run.

Don’t ever change HN /s

The game had a lot of downloads, no? Plus what I'm proposing is not exactly what they did with super mario run. That game was just basically like a lite+paid mobile game release that was typical before in app subscriptions iirc. Drop the lite version, and force people to pay in if they want to play at all just like with a physical video game.

I was fine with Super Mario Run.

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.

Exactly. Super Mario Run did not make the expected return because people just didn't buy it. Not enough for it to be the success Nintendo needed. Only 3% of people who downloaded it bought the full version, when they'd been expecting 10% conversion. Only $60 million in a year and a half.

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.

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.

Long term support has never been a priority for nintendo. They don't want you playing Dr. mario on gameboy forever, they want you buying their new device every year and the new pokemon that comes out with it, so you can catch a pidgey like you did 25 years ago but you've payed like $2000 over those 25 years buying each hardware release in the process to do what is basically the same thing.

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.

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