Nintendo are trying out a very interesting "Free to Start" system in a new game

[SlightlyJames]

So "Pokemon Rumble World" came out yesterday on the 3DS eShop. It's not a game I'm massively interested in but when I read about its monetization system via a post on reddit I started to give it a little attention.

To begin with it has a very standard free to play system, each of the stages in the game have a cooldown before you can play them again, you can either wait for the cooldown to run out or if you don't want to wait you can pay. There are also some other things that can be paid for such as additional stages etc.

The part that becomes interesting to me is that after you've spent $30 on these microtransactions the game doesn't allow you to spend any more money. In addition to the in-game currency (gems) you've bought at this point you also receive a drip of 20 gems per day, and the prices for removing cooldowns etc. are reduced.

So what you have here essentially is a game that has the large player base of a standard F2P game, people can get a taste of the game without spending a penny if they're willing to wait. If they want to drop the cash, they can. Once they reach the price of a standard downloadable title, however, the game removes all of the F2P elements and essentially acts as though they had bought a full price retail game.

This to me is a really smart way to do a F2P style game without being exploitative of customers and I felt like sharing it. Since Nintendo is going to be dipping their toes into the mobile market in the future I think this is an ideal model to be going ahead with.

[SortaCreative]

It's an interesting concept.

It all hinges on whether or not it's worth actually buying the game at the eventual 30 dollar tag or just waiting.

It'll also be interesting seeing how free to play mechanics like premium currency work in a traditional sense. In theory it sounds great.

I've always like free to play games that allowed me to just play a set amount upfront and unlock everything in a sense. I play alot of mobas and the reason why I never played League and what annoys me about Heroes of the Storm is the fact that I can't pay that flat rate. If I know i'm going to play a certain game for a while (like Heroes) i'd happy just pay 30 quid to unlock everything (characters and/or stages depending on the game, skins and other stuff im not bothered about). But Heroes doesn't allow me to and because of that i'm a little wary of actually spending the money. My limit would be around 30 quid but I know that's not going to get me much in Heroes so I don't spend it.

Smite did that. They had the buy all gods pack for 21quid and I bought it, played it, loved it. Didn't feel cheated or pestered. All the other premium stuff was there for me to buy if I wanted but I had the one thing I really wanted, character choice, in a way that was fair for me and the developers. So I do like this idea by Nintendo. It's nice to see them coming out with a forward thinking, fresh idea for once.