In case you missed it, Satoru Iwata (president of Nintendo Company, Ltd.) took some shots at free-to-play games during this past March’s GDC. His main points were that the strategy results in a market that is over-saturated with sub-par titles that, in turn, devalue mainstream releases. It’s a bit ironic that a company that has harbored so much shovelware on its home console this generation would make such claims; but nevertheless, Nintendo is standing by its opposition to the freemium model.
Eliminating any scrap of ambiguity that may have remained over the matter, Iwata-san told web site All Things D: “I’m not interested in offering software for free of charge.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Qualifying his statement, the company president said that this is “because I myself am one of the game developers, who in the future wants to make efforts so the value of the software will be appreciated by the consumers.” Furthermore, he stated that it would be a challenge to restore the worth of their IP were they to “destroy the value of the game software” by employing a free-to-play strategy.
That’s a pretty hard line against a business model that has returned huge profits for some developers. But you get the sense that he truly believes the company is protecting the market from another crash by steering clear of “free” software. Whether that proves true or not, remains to be seen.
[Source: All Things D]
[Image via 8 Bit Playground.]
