It’s time for the Mario Sports games to go free-to-play

digitaltrends.com:

Every time a Mario sports game has launched in the past decade, it’s seemingly been the same story. Players get a strong core experience anchored by highly refined sports gameplay. The problem? There aren’t a lot of compelling reasons to actually play due to thin feature lists. We saw it in Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, Mario Sports Superstars, Mario Golf: Super Rush, and now again in Mario Strikers: Battle League.

The latter is arguably the most egregious offender yet. While it features some of the most complex and nuanced Mario sports gameplay to date, it’s severely lacking when it comes to game modes. Rather than including challenges and minigames to test players’ skill, there are three options: Freeplay, a small set of tournaments, and online play. All of those can be enjoyed solo, but it very much feels like a multiplayer-first experience built around its standout online “club” mode.

It’s a hard sell for a $60 game, but the problem might just be the format. Out of all Nintendo’s series, the Mario sports games could benefit from a more modern approach by adopting a free-to-play model. The trickier part is making sure that’s done the right way.

What’s funny about a game like Mario Strikers: Battle League is that it has just about as much content as other modern titles. It’s not unusual for a multiplayer-focused game to launch with one tight mode and expand on it later with updates. We already know that Battle League will get DLC, bringing more characters to the roster. The difference between that game and something like Apex Legends comes down to the initial buy-in.

Due to the nature of their $0 price tag, free-to-play games have much more flexibility than full retail ones. It doesn’t really matter how sparse the package