“Just think of paying 99 cents just to get Mario to jump a little higher.” No. Let’s not think of that. Ever.
The quote above, in today’s Wall Street Journal, comes from Seth Fischer, manager of Oasis Management, a hedge fund that owns shares in Nintendo. The Journal got a look at a letter from Fischer to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, where he makes the case for Nintendo getting into mobile gaming and, more specifically, the business of in-app purchases:
“We believe Nintendo can create very profitable games based on in-game revenue models with the right development team.”
Nintendo has said that they’re not bringing Mario to smart devices. And they’re not too keen on free-to-play either. But Fischer — dollar signs dancing in his eyeballs — desperately wants Nintendo games on smartphones, tablets and wherever else they can make a buck:
“The same people who spent hours playing Super Mario, Donkey Kong, and Legend of Zelda as children are now a demographic whose engagement on the smartphone is valued by the market at well over $US100 billion.”
This kind of talk isn’t new. Fischer, like lots of other people obsessed with the company’s current problems, dreams of the money that the embattled game company could make by spreading out their franchise into other ecosystems. But there have been very good rebuttals to that line of thinking. For now, Satoru Iwata and the powers-that-be in the House of Mario believe that their iconic plumber’s best possible home is on hardware that Nintendo makes. Let’s be grateful for that.
And, if Mr. Fischer wants to a character that jumps higher, maybe he should play as Mario’s brother, who already jumps higher. It is the Year of Luigi, after all.
[via The Wall Street Journal]
Comments
38 responses to “Crazy Nintendo Investor Wants Us To Pay $0.99 For Higher Mario Jumps”
God creates man.
Man creates Games.
Man destroys God.
Man creates Micro Transactions in Games.
Micro Transactions eat Man.
Woman inherits Games.
In fourth week of month woman destroys games in fit of unreasonable rage…
http://www.whiteribbon.org.au/standup
Friend, read that. May you think about it always and especially in your most private moments. Like a song that you can’t get out of your head.
A not-particularly-funny joke followed by a link to a very important but completely irrelevant cause.
Just let it go guys.
What the fuh…
Uh… what? You might need to explain the reference, I’m really not getting the logic jump, here.
Its almost like @Leigh had some kind of emotional reaction and followed it with an irrational post.
Hmmmmmmmmm.
lol’d *SO* damn hard just then…
tempting to post something about it being that time of the month….
Loves me a Jurassic Park reference
The same people who spent hours playing Super Mario, Donkey Kong, and Legend of Zelda as children are now a demographic whose engagement on the smartphone is valued by the market at well over $US100 billion.
I don’t own a smartphone and if my phone from 2005 didn’t die at the start of last year I’d still be using it.
Didn’t know you had the potential of being worth over $100 billion.
Congratulations on not being part of a $100 billion market which overlaps with the Mario/DK/Zelda players as kids.
Amazing as it sounds, the smartphone market is a different market to the traditional ‘gamer’ market. Unfortunately for traditional gamers like us, investors and publishers don’t see the difference and are trying to push properties traditionally played by gamers into this new (and completely fucking different) market, then confused when gamers ask what the fuck they are doing with their IP and/or talking to gamers like they’re making something for us. (See: Dungeon Keeper.)
NO Seth Fischer….NO…..bad investor!! * hits Seth’s nose with a rolled up newspaper*
its no longer the year of the green turd. sorry.
Seth is the green turd, bro.
This comes to mind…
http://bit.ly/1extEAv
As far as Mario microtransctions, I’d be fine with them selling items to those who want to buy them. I don’t really think this would affect the game in any adverse way, and probably doesn’t make levels insta-win (unless people just keep buying the Tanooki suit). Personally I don’t usually use items anyway.
yep that extra life or power up that you need for an easy boss fight is just too high to collect so pay 99c to get it. If the micro transactions affect game play then they are inherently bad by design.
I agree. Would also be fine with cosmetic changes….like different mario skins (from say all the previous mario games), or different rendering for background (like pixelated like the NES version).
I wonder about things that augment the power ups though. Imagine if there was a free in game ability that you could get by (say for example getting 2 fire flowers) that would allow you to shoot 2x fireballs. DLC could augment it to only have to get one fire flower to shoot 2x fireballs at once (rather than one). Slight advantage on gameplay, but nothing that can’t be achieved by relatively normal means. Dunno if that’d fit the bill…its just a thought. Never bought DLC before either 😛
The problem is that if the average user doesn’t feel the need to buy the power-ups, then the monetization scheme has failed in the eyes of the investors/publisher. Their aim is for you to actually consider it useful, and as such, they stand over the devs with a poorly-concealed lead pipe behind their backs, asking, “So, how are you incentivizing in-app purchases, here?”
‘We aren’t’ isn’t an acceptable answer, and Mr Lead Pipe will explain this to them.
To be honest, I don’t really understand microtransactions or why people really do them. I’ve never spent money on one in my life. I doubt I’m qualified to say what incentives would be good enough for the average smart phone gamer. All I see is people wasting huge amounts of money on useless crap every single day and they are usually at the expense of the experience.
But if I was magically placed in the throne as gaming God and asked to reach a compromise between Mario and microtransactions, I’d be making items available to buy with real money and maybe slightly reduce their appearance in most levels.
The biggest problem I see with the Investors idea is Mario doesn’t work on Smart Phones, I’ve tried to play a bootleg of Mario 3 my Brother downloaded, (while I can resist the temptation myself, Curiosity got the better of me) it sucked. And now having a Mechanic that requires payment not buying it. Not even playing the game.
Investing in Nintendo isn’t a smart move, they don’t care about money the same way Sony and Microsoft do. Look at the Wii U, it was never meant to be in the same league as the XBone and PS4, I don’t think it’s playing the same sport. Nintendo is about the games, and look at the trend all the big names in development are moving to indie and Kickstarter funded games so they can make what they want without “Mr Lead Pipe” (credit to @transientmind) standing over them.
Also Mr Investor obviously misses the pitfalls of the necessary transaction market, look at the rubbishing EA took over Dungeon Keeper, a game meant to attract us PC gamers who grew up playing the originals who they hoped to attract with this mobile game where we basically told them to *Expletive* OFF.
You know what could work? A Mario runner. I think most of us have tried to play Mario levels by constantly holding down the right button and just jumping. It rarely works but if it ever does you look like a pro, lol.
DLC in a nutshell (is for the most part), “people wasting huge amounts of money on useless crap”, though there are some exceptions of course (game content – though it could be argued that should be in the game anyway…but thats another story…”
This is basically what would happen if EA bought out Nintendo.
Or, you know.. Use Luigi
Or you know, read the post.
I did indeed skip the last paragraph.
Nintendo have completely disregarded the opinions of much smarter and more influential people than this, so I’m not too worried that he’s going to change the direction of the company. I mean this is Nintendo after all. Their commitment to doing things their way borders on maniacal.
Time for Mario Yoshi Armor DLC pack.
I’m sure this investor only has Nintendo’s integrity at heart.
What a short-sighted piece of shit.
Micro-transactions in Mario! Genius! It’s what I’ve been wanting all along and I had no idea. How about selling screen space for in game ads as well? Why don’t we just splash branding everywhere? Have they considered charging by the pixel yet? Or we could download ads in game after paying a monthly subscription? Actually fuck it Seth Fischer what’s your address I’ll just mail you my credit card and you can do what you want.
How about 99 cents for a flappy bird minigame?
You own the artwork, according to kotaku.
*Starts up Mario, New Game is greyed out*
“You need to buy the New Game DLC to start a new game”
*Buys the DLC*
*Completes the level in 10 seconds because it’s completely flat and empty*
“You need to buy the Campaign Pack to play levels”
*Buys it*
*Wins the level, nothing happens*
“You need to buy the Cutscene Pack to view the story”
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
You should play DLC Quest. It’s basically this as an actual game.
But DLC quest does it on purpose, as a parody of the way big publishers are going… Seeing it happen seriously would make me die a little inside.
The problem with investor input is that they’re really only in it for short-term gain. A lot of them really don’t care about damaged reputation. They’d much prefer to make the big bucks and pulling out just before things go belly-up.