Poll of the Day > Now, I hate Nintendo's business practices, too

(+) Yeah! (+)

But it seems like a lot of these critics, especially on Youtube are grossly misrepresenting the situation. Claiming Pokemon ZA is 120 dollars. Which is only true if including the base game at 70 (60 for the standard Switch), the DLC (while pretty disgusting that they're announcing it so early and essentially revealing they cut it to resell) at 30, and maybe 20 dollars for NSO if you don't already have it, but why wouldn't you at this point?

Yeah, the whole situation is pretty bad, but can we really just represent it properly. It really does the message a disservice.

You don't get engagement without hyperbole.

I just hate Pokemon so I don't really feel the need to treat them fairly

Nintendo, having their business practices bitched about since 1889. It's like a subset of people would just wither away if they didn't whine about them for some stupid ass reason.

So, it will indeed cost $120 to get the full experience.

I'm kind of annoyed with Nintendo lately, but the outrage bait internet culture is so annoying and contrived that it makes me second guess myself if I'm right. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter cause I'll just buy the Nintendo games that interest me enough. I don't need to have an opinion on every little thing they do or let it cloud my interest in the positive things about them. There are so many other far more evil corporations out there and it's unavoidable giving money to some of them at least once in a while

they are the disney of gaming, and their fans are the disney adults of gaming

dragon504 posted...

So, it will indeed cost $120 to get the full experience.

If you don't already have NSO, and an NSO subscription has uses beyond Pokemon. If Pokemon is the only game you're buying and you want everything, then yeah, you can spend up to $120 (though there are 1- and 3-month options for NSO that would probably be better than buying a whole year if Pokemon is going to be the only game you use it for, so $20 isn't necessarily realistic), but that's such an extreme that calling that the "cost" of the game is overtly misleading.

_Kaz posted...

You don't get engagement without hyperbole.

Pretty much. The backlash to the Switch 2's price has offered a bandwagon that gaming youtubers have to jump on to remain relevant, and that means lots of exaggerated clickbait.

bachewychomp posted...

There are so many other far more evil corporations out there

Yeah, that's really the thing. Yes, Nintendo's definitely too heavy-handed with their anti-piracy and patents and whatnot, but all of this boils down to "the big mean company is charging more money for the optional luxury than I want to pay!" That's... not a big deal, in the grand scheme of big mean companies. Even just within the video game industry, Nintendo doesn't make a habit of buying up studios and gutting them once their recognizable IPs have been milked dry, they're generally pretty good about DLC, they've avoided the worst of the predatory monetization that plagues the industry (at least in their paid games; the free ones are another story), they don't routinely generate stories about "stress casualties," nobody's getting raped on the job and having it covered up by senior management... They just sell games at prices some people don't want to pay. Oh no.

I keep seeing people complaining how unprecedented it is for Nintendo to announce DLC before release but its not. They announced DLC for BotW and Smash Ultimate before both games released. And Xenoblade. And a million other things. But suddenly NOW its a problem.

Eh, those were a little different. In those cases, they announced that an expansion pass was coming, but the actual contents didn't get pinned down until later (like for Xenoblade 3, Future Redeemed didn't get a trailer until like 7 months after the game came out if memory serves, then actually came out around the 9-month mark). I don't think anyone objects to releasing games with the plan to add more to them in the future, even if the pass to effective pre-order all of that content is available right out of the gate.

In ZA's case, it's content that is going to be ready and available right at launch. It's not "we're developing more to add to the game later," it's "we've already developed more that we just didn't feel like including in the base game." It may well work out that it's similar to the S/V DLC in that it does actually fit in as extra side content and not something that "should have been in the base game" (as people are fond of saying), but announcing it like this before people have had the opportunity to determine whether or not the base game feels like a complete product isn't a great look.

That said, there are some actual examples of day 1 DLC. FE13's first DLC pack went on sale on day 3 (not technically day 1, but I refuse to call that a meaningful distinction), and FE14 launched with the whole "you'll have to buy the other game as well and then also a third DLC campaign to get the whole story" thing right out of the gate.

Its not coming out until next year

bachewychomp posted...

I'm kind of annoyed with Nintendo lately, but the outrage bait internet culture is so annoying and contrived that it makes me second guess myself if I'm right. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter cause I'll just buy the Nintendo games that interest me enough. I don't need to have an opinion on every little thing they do or let it cloud my interest in the positive things about them. There are so many other far more evil corporations out there and it's unavoidable giving money to some of them at least once in a while

This is essentially how I'm feeling. I hate what they're doing for a number of reasons and don't mean to sound like I'm defending that behavior, but at the same time, we need to understand what we're hating rather than blindly being told that we NEED to hate someone or something unanimously. There is room to disapprove of something while still understanding that you can appreciate other aspects of it. In this particular case, I won't be buying the Pokemon game regardless, but I did buy a Switch 2 and am very much enjoying playing TotK again in full 60fps 4k. Does that make me a hypocrite? A part of me feels it does, but my logic understands it may not be.

I just can't hate on xenoblade DLC when the finale of 2 and 3's season passes were almost whole-ass new games. they probably had that in the works before the game released but mostly because they'd have to

papercup posted...

Its not coming out until next year

Oh, my bad. I checked the e-shop and saw a release date of 10/16/25, which matches the release for the base game, but looking closer that's just for a couple cosmetic items that will be available at launch and the story content is planned for the end of February.

In that case, I don't really care. I'd say it's still a bit of a bad look to have something so concrete to show off pre-launch instead of just saying "story DLC will be coming later," but you're correct that that's not particularly unusual.

agesboy posted...

I just can't hate on xenoblade DLC when the finale of 2 and 3's season passes were almost whole-ass new games. they probably had that in the works before the game released but mostly because they'd have to

Torna actually was content that was cut from the base game of 2 and sold as DLC, but it's a case where I'm 100% in favour of that idea. It was supposed to slot in somewhere around Chapter 8 (Morytha), but they felt that it dragged the game out too long and killed the pacing of the story, so they repackaged it as something standalone. It kind of shows in that Torna has some very obvious padding to it (all the community business), but I think it was a good move. 2 struggled with story pacing enough already, and chapter 7 was when it finally started to take off. Interrupting that momentum with a flashback would have just been a mess, even if it wasn't as long as Torna was in its entirety.

But yeah, Torna and FR are both well worth the price of entry. No arguments there.

dragon504 posted...

So, it will indeed cost $120 to get the full experience.

If that is the case, hasnt pokemon always been $100 or $120?

Alteres posted...

If that is case, hasnt pokemon always been $100 or $120?

I guess when you think about it, to get the "full" experience of Gen 1, you would need both Red and Blue version, so that's 100 dollars right there. Then you would need two Gameboys, another 180 dollars, and a game link cable, maybe another 20 dollars? So 300 dollars in total for the "full" Gen 1 experience. But this is also 1996 money so something over 600 maybe for today.