Super Mario Run

Nintendo Disappointed by Super Mario Run Profits

I'm in the minority, but I think it hurt Super Mario Run more that it wasn't a regular Super Mario game than that the in-app purchase was seen as too expensive. People will pay more than $10 for a good Mario game on any platform.

It also didn’t help that you had to sign-up/log-in before you could play. And that that whole process was awful. And that once you did that, it still took way too many taps to go from launching the app to actually playing the game. This is exactly the lesson that everyone should have taken from the success of Flappy Bird.

Controls are arguably an issue on iOS. I’m not fully convinced since there are controllers available. We haven’t seen enough developers willing to make games that require them, though.

But I know that just falling back on “one touch” isn’t a solution. It works beautifully in some cases, but not for every game.

If Nintendo really dedicated itself to creating a first-class Nintendo game for iOS developed for touch controls rather than just “one touch” and made sure that every part of it was polished... I can’t see how they couldn’t make profits they’d be happy with.

If they launched a good iOS controller, then they could not only make better iOS games more easily, they could make money on hardware too.

Maybe that isn’t the best thing for Nintendo to do. But the main point is that, as in most things, the lessons to be learned from Super Mario Run aren’t as simple as “iOS users won’t pay” or “Nintendo can’t be successful on iOS.”

Nintendo

Gruber, Marco, and Siracusa have all been talking about Nintendo.

I don’t know much, but I do know this: Being a 3DS owner has felt like you were dealing a company that was living in the past and only barely keeping up. I can only store settings for three WiFi networks? Buying an app/game and getting in to download in the background takes a large number of seemingly pointless taps? Games are still sold on cartridges? If I buy the cartridge version of a game, we can play it on any of our 3DS systems—one at a time. If we buy the digital version, we can only play it on one specific device? Etc.

Are these just software problems or are some of them hardware problems being reflected by the software? I don’t know, but it seems clear that Nintendo is not great at making a great overall product despite being in control of the hardware and the software.

I’m not convinced that getting out of the hardware business will help. I’m not convinced that writing software for other platforms will help. I am convinced that making great products will help.

There’s also a point made that the 3DS library—which includes all DS games as well as the 3DS games—makes up for this. Personally, though, I’ve found more games I want to play on iOS than for my 3DS. In any case, having a deep library is good, but it doesn’t invalidate criticisms of the system.

Linear

Here’s a tip for video/console/computer/iOS† game designers:

Free wandering doesn’t make linear gameplay non-linear.

Rather, adding free wandering to a linear game tends to be tedious at best and frustrating at worst.

†Is there a good general term to use here?

3DS and living in the past

The first thing that really struck me as odd about the Nintendo 3DS was the cartridges. In a world of mp3s, e-books, and even buying OS upgrades for my Macs online, games on cartridges seem very out-of-place.

They did eventually launch their eShop. Though—until recently—the eShop didn’t carry any of the cartridge games. Either a game deserved a cartridge or it was undeserving enough to appear in the eShop. There is now one cartridge game that you can get through the eShop as well: New Super Mario Bros. 2

The next surprise was that eShop purchases are tied to a device rather than an account. They did let me transfer (i.e. copy to new device then delete from old device) purchases from my 3DS to my new 3DS XL, but I can only install a purchase on one of my devices.

The 3DS does have a nifty feature called “Download Play”. How this works is that you buy a cartridge game and then friends can use the Download Play feature to temporarily download a client for the game from your 3DS. This way you can play the multiplayer version of the game without having to buy multiple copies of the game. That makes a lot of sense and mirrors the way that we can buy one copy of a game for the Wii and the whole family can play. Or the way that we can buy a game once in the iOS App Store, install it on all our iOS devices, and the whole family can play.

Well, this would be nifty if not for two things. (1) Very few games support this feature. (2) The games that do support it only support it in a very limited way. So, it ends up just making a worse impression than if they just didn’t have it at all.

I do really like the 3DS. It’s fun to have a 3D camera and glasses-free 3D for such a good price. For me, the 3DS XL is an improvement. The bigger screens and greater battery life are worth the increase in size to me.

But it is weird how so much of the experience seems to be relunctantly dragged towards the present. When I’m faced with deciding whether to spend some disposible dollars on software for the 3DS or iOS, I find it harder to choose in the 3DS’ favor. Which is a shame.

FFX vs LoZ:SS

A more interesting question, for me, than Civilization versus Final Fantasy might be this: Why do I enjoy Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword but not Final Fantasy X?

They’re both linear storylines. In both, you walk from cut-scene to cut-scene, possibly with some combat in between.

It’s not as simple as real-time versus turn-based combat. I tend to prefer turn-based, and FFX is the one with turn-based combat.

Console game dialog

I got Sonic Generations for Christmas. It’s nice to have back the classic Sonic gameplay that was sorely lacking in the last couple of Sonic titles I played. Though it is going to take some getting used to it in stereoscopic 3D.

So many console games have really annoying dialog. It uses a dozen lines where three or four would have sufficed. The player has to click through it three or four words at a time. And then there’s the ones that throw in lots of pointless interjections for more pointless clicks.

Does anyone really enjoy clicking through this stuff? I enjoy the stories, but I’d enjoy them a lot more if they weren’t so poorly delivered. I used to come up with excuses for why this was handled so poorly, but these days the excuses are worn out.

So far, the biggest sin in the Sonic Generations dialog—ignoring the sin of having dialog in a Sonic game—is the pointless interjections.

Input

Can you touch type? Do you remember how long it took to learn? All those hours of AAAA SSSS DDDD FFFF. Was it worth it?

It’s funny to me how so many people seem so quick to disregard a new input device after less than a day of use. Efficient input requires not only a good device design but also practice by the user. Heck, even voice recognition systems can take some practice to learn to use well.

I used to always tell people that, if they tried using a trackball instead of a mouse, they really needed to try it for a few weeks before they could be sure that they didn’t like it.

When you first try Grafitti, you’re likely to be frustrated. After a few weeks, however, it’s fine. It’s certainly better than any attempt at full handwriting recognition would have been on the Pilot.

The iPhone’s software keyboard may not seem like a great alternative to a hardware palmtop keyboard. After a few weeks, however, most people will be fine with it. The advantages of the software keyboard are numerous.

I don’t know that our laptop and desktop keyboards will be replaced by dynamic, multi-touch surfaces á la Star Trek The Next Generation anytime soon. I do think, however, that palmtop hardware keyboards will soon be in decline.

I really would like a fold-up Dvorak keyboard that would work with my iPhone, though.

Wii

Santa brought the kids a Wii, and my worst fears were confirmed. It is far too much physical activity for a video game. (My arms are sore! ^_^) It is far more fun than the few times I tried it before.

As a former member of the Sega→Sony anti-Nintendo faction, I have to admit they’ve made some really good moves. With the original GameBoy, they understood that portability was more important than color. While the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 continued down the road of more expensive and a somewhat narrow library of games, the Wii went for a lower price, heavily featuring motion sensitive controllers, and more variety in its titles. Wii Fit looks very interesting. Wii Music brings a different attitude to music titles. (I think something in between Rock Band and Wii Music could be very interesting.) The DS looks very interesting too. The new cooking application, like Wii Fit, shows not only a tolerance for but a vision to expand the variety of software as few other “video game” companies have been willing to do.

The Mario-esque theme music behind everything on the Wii is about my only complaint. I think I’m a convert.