It's Time For Nintendo To Embrace Live Service
I already know the hell I’m going to get for putting ‘Nintendo’ and ‘live service’ in the same sentence, but hear me out: Nintendo’s online games would be so much better if they had more long term support. I’m sick of getting invested in multiplayer games like Splatoon 2, Pokken, and Arms, only for them to quickly get abandoned and lose any chance they had to develop a strong, loyal community. I see online games as an investment of my time and money, and I wish Nintendo offered a better return in the long run.
When I say ‘live service’, people often think of either free-to-play, microtransaction-heavy cash grabs that focus on quantity over quality, or they think of misguided, corporate-designated design pushed out to capitalize on the latest gaming trends. There’s no reason to take the worst examples of live service and paint the entire industry with the same brush though. For every Clash of Clans or Marvel’s Avengers, there’s an Apex Legends, Destiny 2, Fortnite, and Final Fantasy 14. These games have all grown over the years, both in terms of content and the size of their communities. With Nintendo’s games, the best time to play is typically the day they come out. Without further development, Nintendo just ends up leaving most of its games to die on the vine.
Related: Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Needs To Take Lessons From Persona 5 Strikers
Splatoon is probably the best example of a series that would thrive with a live service model. Splatoon 2 felt like a necessary sequel given that the first Splatoon was on the Wii U, but why do we need Splatoon 3 instead of ongoing support for Splatoon 2? It had a decent live service release schedule for the first two years with new weapons, map rotations, and Splatfest
Read more on thegamer.com
