Sunday, September 6, 2020

Nintendo creating artificial limitations with their products is bullshit and needs to stop

So the 35th anniversary of Mario is fast approaching on Sept 11th. So what Nintendo is doing in celebration is they announced a bunch of games involving Mario with their Nintendo Direct on 9/3/2020.

One of the major takeaways from the direct was Nintendo announcing a new all Stars game: 

Super Mario 3D All Stars


Awesome! We can now play 3 classic Mario games on the Nintendo Switch using better controls. However immediately after they announced the game, they say this will only be available for a limited time until the end of March 2021.... What??

Yeah Nintendo is making this game which will be available both physically and digitally only for a limited time... Seriously, why?

Well because, apparently Nintendo HATES money. This is Nintendo being stupid as usual. I do wonder which part of Nintendo made this call, was it Nintendo of Japan or Nintendo of America? 

Unfortunately Nintendo has been pulling this bullshit stunt for years. Let's look at a past example:

The NES Classic Edition, and the SNES Classic Edition. These miniature consoles were a very hot item. So hot in fact that they became impossible to find or even pre-order, and people were buying them out only to resell at outrageous prices to exploit the situation. It's not like there was an actual shortage of hardware or chips at the time needed to manufacturer these devices. Nintendo knows their market and knows that people are willing to pay a premium for the same games over and over. They knew upon the announcement and release of these miniature consoles they would be a hit, and they intentionally limited the availability of these units. There's no real justification or need for this.

In the case of Super Mario 3D All Stars it's even harder to argue the need for the product to be limited, especially when it's also being sold digitally. Like seriously, what's the justification for limiting the purchase of the game digitally? There's ZERO justification to do this except for negatively manipulating their audience.  That's it.... That's the reason... And it needs to stop. Nintendo has NO respect their audience or their fans. 

Also on a side note, with the upcoming 3D All Stars game, it appears Nintendo did the bare minimum for Super Mario 64 short of having it upscaled. From all the previews they showed on the game, its still running with a 4:3 aspect ratio. WHY? Any modern display now has a 16:9 ratio... Nintendo even pointed out stating they widened the viewing ratio for Sunshine and Galaxy. Why not Super Mario 64? Hell I've seen fan released ports of SM64 (on PC) that has it running just fine on ultra-wide (21:9) screens. Here's an example below. You can even see the UI layout has been easily adjusted accordingly to accommodate it:

For them to release Super Mario 64 like this is very lazy, especially charging a $60 premium for the same games they've already resold countless times now. 

It just goes to show you that Nintendo doesn't give any shits about their fans.