A biased review: Pokémon Shuffle

[DerpSandwich]

RolStoppable said:

DerpSandwich said:
I would also gladly pay once to get unlimited lives, but for them it's either a constant stream of disproportionate amounts of money considering what type of game it is, or nothing. So I choose nothing.

It wouldn't be nearly as bad if, like most other similar games, you only lost a life when you lost a match. I keep going back to play more, then getting frustrated and quitting again. I mean, combine the life thing with the fact that some of the stages are over in five moves. It's a game I badly want to play, and would gladly pay money for, and yet they just continually push me away. Someone explain how this is a good business model (considering that there are very few unlimited-disposable-income folks playing this, as opposed to smart phones, where it makes perfect sense).

I don't think it's a good business model, but I doubt that it is a complete failure. Supposedly around 95% of players don't use microtransactions in smartphone games, so if a similar ratio holds true for Pokémon Shuffle, then it's not that bad of a money maker. Let's say 4% used microtransactions and these 4% averaged $10 per person. At over 2.5m downloads, that would be 100k people or $1m. That should cover the costs for development and continued updates.

On the other hand, if Nintendo had released this game for $8 like the similar Pokémon Link Battle and sold 200k units (I'd say that's a feasible number, considering that Shuffle is a solid gameplay concept with the Pokémon IP attached to it), that would be $1.6m. That's certainly a better model despite a considerably lower amount of users. And it works, because people who buy dedicated gaming hardware expect and don't mind to pay for games. But Nintendo made Shuffle the way it is because the game is an experiment for different payment methods. They've tried plenty of things over the past three years.

The problem is I just don't think the same percentage of people are paying.  Probably nothing even close.  The smart phone crowd and the 3DS crowd are really different, mostly because of kids vs. adults.  It would be cool if they released some financials on it.