Nintendo Games with "Free Updates"

you did this Nintendo has followed a very unfortunate Trend with a lot of their multiplayer focused games ever since the release of Splatoon on the Wii U in May of 2015 and that is just don't fing finish the games well it's actually obvious that they finish the games but instead of releasing the game with all the content they have prepared for it they hold content back and then over a couple of months they give you the content in the form of free updates but they advertise it as if this is like a bonus like oh man we're going to keep the party going and I just want to talk about this for a little bit I think a lot of people have talked about this and I've talked about it myself but I just kind of want to go over it you know very casually just talk about the games that have done this kind of content release schedule and talk about what I think they did right what I think they did wrong if it works for that kind of game and the first game that did such a thing was Splatoon now in my opinion it was a bit risky to do this with Splatoon it was a brand new IP at the time so you're going to release it in a state where it doesn't have a ton of content you know it doesn't make the greatest first impression and yeah Splatoon only had a few stages at launch you know a single player campaign that lasted you about like 5 hours or so a local multiplayer mode that absolutely nobody used and fun online multiplayer but online multiplayer with not a lot of content to mix things up he didn't have as many weapons as you may have wanted uh only like five stages or so and of course you have the quirky little almond Splatoon loves to throw in there being there's only like two stages you can play like every 4 hours and with only five stages available wow this game got fing boring but Splatoon one stood out because the game play was just that much fun and uh strangely enough only like a week or two after the game game launched remember in like the Nintendo Direct micro before E3 they announced like hey here's some new weapons they might have even announced a new stage around that time like it was like why are these coming out so soon they also held back a mode from being available to everybody until a certain number of players reached like a level in the game so it was definitely strange especially for Nintendo fans at the time but looking back at it all it's obvious this is kind of like a very light and I mean light live service game of course normal live service games have like oh the battle pass and and more monetization options and Splatoon doesn't have that but what Splatoon did have was this feeling of like oh this is this is a living game you know this is a living world it's going to consistently change an update they obviously wanted Splatoon to feel like it was like in its own world you know like the inklings speak their own language the fact that every time you boot up the game you have to watch the squid sisters tell you what stages are available and I'm sorry the invisaline I have in makes everything I say sound that much more pathetic right now but yeah Splatoon was meant to feel like this living breathing world so to some extent having the free updates does kind of play into that you know it makes it feel like you alongside all the other players are experiencing this all together you know instead of you unlocking a weapon by yourself it's almost like you and your friends hear about you know a new toy a new Gadget just got released at the store have something like the nzap weapon which is what they announced in that Nintendo Direct micro uh if that was available in the game and you just had to unlock it you know that's a very singular experience that's something really like only you experienced but the fact that it was a free update it's kind of like you and your friends hear about that and you're like oh man we got to run to Splatoon and buy it you know it kind of makes it feel more like you know real life oh world so that definitely could be why they went with this release schedule for Splatoon also it it's kind of like an easy way to keep a lot of people engaged like every couple of weeks every month every couple of months there's a new thing in the game so you have more of an excuse and turn on your Wii U and pop the game in and give it a try you know everybody gets to experience something all at the same time as a Counterpoint though I do feel like you know like if the content in the game was interesting in of itself you wouldn't have to release it in this method to get people to consistently play your game you know Mario Kart doesn't need this release method Smash Brothers didn't need this release method and you know like people were still playing these games constantly online just hopping back in playing the same things over and over and over again so why do you think Splatoon needs to get free stages updated like over the period of a couple of months it's just like you ran the risk of burning players out early on on which is something that happens cuz man I played Splatoon at launch I had a great time but over the next couple of weeks I kind of I I fell off of it because it's just like there's only like five Maps I got bored and you know what when you get bored and you're like you know what I had my fill it's kind of hard to get right back in the game even if like later down the line they announced all this content just got released for it I wouldn't say Splatoon one burned me but because I felt like I had done everything I could have in the game at the time I I just kind of felt like okay I'm done there just wasn't that incentive to pop it back in for a new stage just like one new stage you know like it's kind of like no I played Splatoon I'm good but you know what this release method meant it meant that you could release the game in an unfinished State and people would buy it so that means potentially you could just finish the rest of the content later either Hold It Back or finish it later and that way you may be able to save time and money on your game listen I don't know that that might be what they're doing because during the Nintendo switch ERA this is when this content release method really started to overstay its welcome and that's when more theories started going around about like okay why are you doing this are you putting this out because you think that's going to retain attention to this game or you just want to release a game in an incomplete State and potentially like see if you should finish it based on sales and if players are still playing it this worked fine for Splatoon uh you know I wasn't the biggest fan of it uh it definitely got me to stop playing the game a lot sooner than I would have if it had way more content at launch but I think it was more a poetic towards that because it's just like hey it's a new IP it's really fun and it's on the Wii U you know we'll take what we can get but Nintendo did a similar thing with Super Mario maker on the Wii U that same year though that didn't really feel like it was the same uh that game felt fully complete didn't feel like it was really missing anything what they did there was it felt like they were genuinely improving the game you know it felt like the free updates to Mario Maker were more so there to uh address certain complaints or concerns surrounding the game you know they added checkpoints and loads of other extra items and uh they also did the Mario Maker bookmark site uh they did a fair amount of things not a ton but definitely enough to an already in my opinion compl complete experience so I I I wouldn't really consider Mari maker to be like the exact same thing here you know it still followed the free updates model uh but I think it did it right you know it was already a complete experience here's some extra stuff but then we move into the Nintendo switch ERA with arms and Splatoon 2 uh it really felt like Nintendo wanted arms to be the next Splatoon it has so many similar elements in terms of just the vibe they were going for you know all these wacky designed characters in their own unique World they also did a lot of stuff like the arms test punch which was similar to splatoon's test fire and yeah this one with the free updates it it was like Splatoon all over again but like way worse I just felt like arms gameplay didn't go deep enough to really feel like oh man I want to just play this over and over and over again I mean Splatoon had the full single player campaign definitely shorter than many but it was enough to kind of keep you invested and then you had the online multiplayer focus with all these maps and everything arms uh was a fighting game that didn't really know if it wanted to be like a super fun party fighting game or an actual like Esports fighting game and because of that I just always felt like this game didn't really satisfy either Camp you know it didn't only satisfy people that really wanted to get competitive with it and it didn't satisfy people that wanted like oh fun Smash Brothers with items kind of enjoyment you know but when it comes to free Updates this game added a bunch of new characters and like badges which was pretty much an achievement system uh which is cool but it's also like I didn't care by the time they added that I thought arms was sufficient I love how it looks how it sounds the gameplay can be fun but it just wasn't deep enough at launch and still isn't really deep enough for me to really give a damn about this it feels like it was missing that extra meat you know just like a very core mode to just play through you like how Splatoon had its single player mode and like the online multiplayer was its main focus I don't know what arm's main focus was and new characters are cool but it's just like that wasn't going to bring me back in the game it's not like arms was severely lacking in playable characters at launch it had a fine amount enough to make things interesting what was just missing was like that core mode I think I just felt like there was no incentive to like get better at the game you know it felt like Nintendo designed this game with the feeling that you would open it up and desperately want to be the best in the world without giving you a reason to want to be the best in the world what I'm trying to say here is the gameplay Loop it wasn't fun enough for me to play for more than a couple hours really and adding new characters every couple of months like that didn't do what damn thing for me but then just one month later in 2017 we got Splatoon 2 why did this have the same damn issues that Splatoon one at launch this was also severely lacking in content which was just ridiculous I mean like we already went through this whole thing with Splatoon 1 why are we doing this again with Splatoon 2 and yeah over time Splatoon 2 became incredibly rich in content but at launch it was a very similar story to Splatoon 1 sure you had salmon run mode and you had a couple more stages than Splatoon 1 had at launch but I was just expecting way more but it's obvious with Nintendo releasing these two games back to back they found value in the free update system where you know as a consumer you go like oh my God free Updates this is incredible where's the game there's no game here these are just a bunch of skeletons does Kirby star allies count because the free updates in this game like it it doesn't do anything I know a lot of people will say like oh my God Kirby star allies is so much better after all the free updates I no not for me at least like my main problem with this game is that the the story mode is just painfully Bland and I don't care that it's easy all Kirby games are easy but I look at a game like Kirby planet roboot or even Return to Dreamland and Triple Deluxe Kirby and the Forgotten land afterwards like every stage in those games has like a reason to be they're they're interesting to play through they don't feel like your brain dead while playing them this does and of course after the main game you get guest star mode and you get all these free updates that included all these characters from past Kirby games which is really cool I do not want to underplay that and then they also added another mode heroes in another dimension which is at least doing something that a lot of these games don't do actually add modes cuz that's the main problem with a lot of these games it's not the lack of characters and that was big thing with star allies like Star allies wasn't bad because oh there's not enough Kirby reference characters like no like the the core game is just not very good but here is another dimension is is actually a pretty cool extra mode there it doesn't really change my opinion of the game as a whole but it's obvious with these free updates that they they kind of knew there's something missing from this package much like Mario Tennis Aces which followed a very similar deal to everything else pretty much for the next couple of months we'd get brand new characters via free updates they offered some characters exclusively via like tournaments playing online tournaments which I wasn't a huge fan of just because it felt like oh my God you know the only way you can play this character is by connecting online which uh yeah I don't like it I mean either way like all these characters you can only get uh you know via online updates uh so you know that that felt a little lame because what this game did with his free updates was pretty much lock a lot of content that you'd usually enjoy in other Mario sports games behind you know the internet which also like by the fall of the Year this game came out you then had to pay for Nintendo switch online so I'm just like come on guys Co-op challenges that was only available online why they added it later via free update but it's just like Why th this would have been great to have in the main game but not only is it not in the main game I had to wait months down the line to get them but I I can only play them online come on man Mario Tennis Aces is probably the best Mario sports game on switch I mean the gameplay here is fantastic they did a great job restructuring the tennis gameplay here to make like a genuinely unique and well balanced experience however at launch my God this burned me there just wasn't anything there and uh the free updates you know is is good that they actually like added to the game later down the line you know this is something that I was expecting they would do with like Mario Tennis Ultra smash on Wii U uh that came out the same year as Splatoon so I thought like man this game is really light in terms of content well what if they do what they did with Splatoon no they didn't I added a lot to this game but like I I stopped caring after a week of this game releasing you know it's a good game uh it and it's much better now but man this was just such a disappointment when it released and the free updates they didn't really excite me more so annoyed me and you know what's weird you may not expect Super Smash Brothers ultimate to be on this list but they add a bunch of free updates to this game you know it's easy to forget but remember like they added stage Builder after the fact home run contest a lot of features were missing from this game at launch so uh it does feel like they would purposely hold back a lot of modes to later add down the line uh via free up update and uh you know like you didn't need stage Builder or home run contest at launch but by the time they actually added home run contest like I don't give a damn about that mode if you're just like hey home run contest is back like I I don't care and the fact it came nearly a year after this game launched like why it's home run contest and it's not like it was even that much different wild but but you know it's whatever it's not like this was like significantly held back by lacking those features at launch they they put out what they need to put out when smash ultimate released but uh yeah it's pretty interesting how uh they obviously do push out games before they can add absolutely everything they want to and uh yeah they do push them out as free updates many times they did a lot of that in 2018 it's pretty wild but hey at Le smash ultimate came out pretty clean animal Crossing New Horizons did a very similar thing once again I wouldn't really consider this to be like an incomplete game uh it does feel like they left out a bunch of features but uh you know for what was there at launch like you know it's a complete experience it's not like oh my God where are all these features what is there to do in this game Animal Crossing is in that weird area where it's hard to complain when you've spent over 200 hours in the game and say there's nothing to do what's going on when uh you you know you've already spent $200 hours in the game but you know what I found really really lame about this game was the fact that all the free updates they added were pretty much like old content from New Leaf pretty much stuff that was already like previously available in other animal crossing games fully at launch and uh they held it back or they didn't complete it in time uh it just felt really weird and uh you know it doesn't really feel like they were like an integral part of the experience it felt like the you know New Horizons is a complete game and then they just layered a bunch of stuff on top of it so most of it was from New Leaf but then they added like this giant final free update you can Farm you you can you can grow food but it's just like why are you doing that you have the Bruce but why are you going there uh you know why are you doing this why are you doing that nothing's really integral to the core Loop of the gameplay and of course it's Animal Crossing it's weird to be like oh this is an integral to the gameplay [ __ ] nothing is it's Animal Crossing but it just all felt like it was just added into the game uh without other elements being tweaked so they just kind of felt very like worthless just like very Hollow editions and then there's the holidays which are garbage in New Horizons like they initially announce them as like hey like holidays are going to be in the form of free updates now and it's kind of like okay well that's a little strange but whatever but all the holidays are so fuing basic in this game it is ridiculous I assume with the holidays being free updates that would enable them to make them more special you know free updates oh my God maybe every year it's going to be a little different or like hey they're just going to do something special with it no it just feels like they didn't they didn't make them in time they just wanted to push the game out in time and just be like hey well let's just let's just finish the holidays later and then they half asked them all I love New Horizons I think it's a little ridiculous to act like you didn't like New Horizons if you spent uh hundreds and hundreds of of hours in the game but man like the free updates here it's cool how much they did they did support this game quite a lot for like a year and a half and then they stopped for God knows whatever reason but the updates they added just felt so damn Hollow and then we have the Mario sports games that followed Mario Tennis uh Mario Golf super rush same problem as Mario Tennis but they cut support for this way sooner and Mario Golf doesn't really have the excuse that Mario Tennis had for the lack of content Mario Tennis Aces may have had a lack of content at launch but at the very least like the game play was severely upgraded like they really went in and changed what Mario Tennis was this doesn't it's just it it it's simplified ass Mario Golf it's it's even simpler than before and they had some new characters some new courses but like this was so damn phoned in and like 6 months later like like they were done like that was the final update for this game it's like wow that's a bunch of garbage and Mario Striker's battle league is even worse this is like the worst Mario sports game and not because of the gameplay the game play is fine it it's a fun enough game but there's nothing to do with it there's just nothing to this one like it is severely Bare Bones and then they thought adding like two new characters and a stage and a couple pieces of gear every few months was going to make this game better no like that's not what was severely lacking with this game it's severely lacking in [ __ ] to do the game is flawed at its core and just putting a Band-Aid over it in the form of a goddamn bero character that doesn't do anything for me yeah this is this is the worst this is the worst example of the free updates plague and of course you also have Nintendo switch sports but that's that's just kind of boring to talk about here like they added golf later on why so yeah that's just a few of the free updates games Nintendo has put out there's also like Mario Maker 2 that had a bunch of free updates but again you know similar to Mario Maker 1 that doesn't feel like they were uh trying to complete the game rather they were adding onto an already complete Game there's also Splatoon 3 but Splatoon 3 felt pretty fully featured at launch so I'm pretty thankful about that but yeah this has definitely made a handful of Nintendo's releases uh over the Wii U and switch era feel pretty damn soulless and many times like they do kind of fix things up a bit uh you know over the next few months but many times they actually don't you know just adding like a couple new characters and maybe a new stage or something doesn't always fix the game at their core I feel like a lot of these games just need to be complete at launch uh mainly because like you know all these elements play into each other a lot more than it seems you know like when you actually design these games as a complete unit you can tell it all feels like you know every element is playing into each other but when you kind of tear these games apart and release things later and just say okay well we'll we'll make that later down the line uh it just makes everything feel a lot more isolated like these free updates aren't really a part of the core experience they're just kind of like Band-Aids on top of one and I'm not going to freak out if this is done more because Nintendo likes doing it but I I feel like it severely hurtt a game like Mario Striker battle League it definitely really ruined that game's reputation potentially that series reputation and I would really hope Nintendo takes a good look at that and uh reconsiders what they're doing because this is something that makes sense from like a company perspective so as a company it's like hey we'll release this game earlier and we'll save a lot of its content to release later down the line we'll save money on development because then we only develop 70% of the game and uh then we'll get a bunch of sales and then we'll see if it's worth it to complete the game later down the line and we'll disguise us completing the game as free updates like oh my God we're giving you so much extra stuff well in reality uh while I think some people may not have caught on to this for a good while I think a game like Mario Striker battle league has definitely really showcased like what's really going on here so please Nintendo I beg of you stop giving me free [ __ ]

Channel: Scott's Stash

Views: 201,828

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Id: AM5pN4bkGP4

Length: 23min 28sec (1408 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 14 2023