Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed are the kind of games with season passes. Offers where you pay a lot up front then get access to all that game’s DLC down the line. It doesn’t sound like a very Nintendo thing to do, does it?
Oh, but it is. Nintendo is now offering a season pass of its very own, for the upcoming Mario Golf: World Tour on 3DS. Three packs of DLC (courses, characters, etc) will be on sale for $US6, but you can pay $US15 and get all three. There’s not even a cuddlier name for it; it’s even being called a “Season Pass”.
I know it’s 2014, and the business has changed, but it still felt very strange writing that last paragraph. Not as strange as it will feel reading “Best Buy Offering Exclusive Retro Skin Preorder Bonuses For Zelda Wii U” in 2016, but strange nonetheless.
Comments
11 responses to “Nintendo Blinks, Offers First DLC “Season Pass””
Personally I am not against the idea of a season pass providing the original product you pay for without the season pass is a complete package in and of itself. Also, the game looks pretty great.
On a side note, I think my Kotaku is messing up a bit, I have logged in but the log in/register button isn’t changing. I can also click it again to log in again and even though it doesn’t think I am logged in up top, it still lets me post under my account down bottom.
Yeah, I’m seeing exactly the same behaviour as you. Tried in IE and Chrome and it’s the same in both.
I am also not seeing any comments/shares in the article list pages and was yesterday seeing a lot of “you are posting too quickly, slow down” even though it had been a few days since my last post.
Yeah, I think they get a lot of bad press due to the way it’s been used to combat used game sales but they’re actually pretty good in theory. In the past buying the DLC as it came out screwed you over long term. A season pass has the potential to pass on the GOTY edition savings to the people who support the game from Day One. If you get the pricing right Season Passes can be one of the better aspects of digital distribution.
As long as the DLC itself is legit there’s no downside. If a game is cutting out portions to resell them later that’s not a Season Pass issue that’s a general DLC issue.
It also forces them to commit to post launch support which is never a bad thing.
Well… not necessarily 😛
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/02/even-wii-u-dlc-is-getting-cancelled/
I’m getting weird formatting issues…
As long as they don’t pervert that system like others have, I see no problem with doing it.
Did Nintendo fix the whole “you can’t redownload anything you’ve bought even if your 3DS was stolen” garbage? If not, nope nope nope.
My 3DS was stolen :'(
@Mrwaffle: Nope. You lose your old 3ds, you lose your purchases. Well that’s how it seems when I read the info on the 3DS shop last night.
Edit: Man Kotaku is messing up today for me, bleugh.
I love this. Everyone seems to think Nintendo is doomed and has an opinion on how they can fix things, better hardware, more games, DLC, etc. Nintendo actually does something modern for once, to try get some action, and they get heat. It’s just not fair.