 Today, I'm going to talk about something I've wanted to talk about for a while But I was waiting for something new to happen to kind of support my my stance here and I want to talk about how Nintendo handles DLC and why on the surface level I've always been against the way Nintendo uses amiibo Now I like amiibo. I use amiibo every time I play Breath of the Wild I love the little bonuses you get. I love the collector's value of them I think as a collector's item amiibo are just amazing I think honestly collector's value is why the amiibo are probably so as popular as they are people like having little figures of their favorite Nintendo characters and they're affordable you know typically $13 for one $15 if it's a premium one obviously you can usually get a three-pack of certain ones for like $30 so you get them even cheaper like they are cheap collectible figures and I like them but they've always included this additional NFC functionality which allows them to do things like be essentially keys that lock content behind the amiibo now for most games this has just been costume changes you know Mario Kart 8 tap it in you can dress your mi character in various costumes and that's fine I don't really have an issue with costumes that don't really impact the game or give anyone an advantage in the game as a thing and even in single player games of Breath of the Wild you can you can unlock like the hero of time clothes and all that stuff that's fine none of that really gives you a competitive advantage in the game that players that don't have the amiibo don't you know don't get yeah they can't dress up like the hero of time but they don't need to like there's no advantage to it it's not even close to the best armor in the game or anything like that so I'm cool with stuff like this but there are times that I do not like content being locked behind amiibo and a lot of this deals with with dlc and included content and I've always been a supporter of of dlc I don't think dlc is the devil like so many other people do I back in the day back in the 90s and stuff more more so with pc gaming I would always buy expansion packs I mean I bought like two or three expansion packs for Age of Empires two or three expansion packs for Age of Empires two expansion packs for Lord of the Rings or Lord of the Rings Lords of the Realm like I bought expansion packs all the time The Sims is another popular game like expansion packs were cool with me yeah you'd spend like 40 bucks which was almost the cost of a whole brand new game but you would be getting so much content that it felt worth it and if you didn't have it it didn't necessarily feel like you you were missing out right if you just played the original Age of Empires never got any of the dlc so you didn't have some of the extra races and maps in there the original Age of Empires still was a really really great game so it didn't feel like you were missing out now to me that's kind of what dlc is right it's just a easier way to get expansion packs because back then you had to go buy a physical media and install it on your thing now you can download everything so why not do it cheaper through dlc the problem is obviously that a lot of companies have done some shady things with dlc whether it's locking content that's already on the disc whether it's day one dlc that adds like half of the game into the package so basically they shouldn't have just charged you 80 dollars for the game in the first place instead of 60 and just gave you everything i think that would have less backlash than than charging 60 plus 20 dollars for dlc but nintendo has generally done a really good job with dlc the dlc like for hyrule warriors i know it was koi tech well not 100 nintendo but i really thought it was was a value-packed proposition the original game was certainly worth the money and all the additional content you got for 20 bucks as well worth it i felt what they did with mario kart 8 with nintendo perfect stuff i mean yes on wii u i know on switch you can get all the content now for one price but back when they released it on wii u i thought that 20 dollar proposition was great because you still had a game that had all the the same amount of content you expect to get in every mario kart game and then for 20 dollars you basically could you know you know add half a mario kart game in terms of characters and tracks to the game so it was excellent i i like that kind of dlc and in some cases i actually like the dlc they're doing a breath of the wild now there are situations where i feel like nintendo drops the ball with dlc and i'm going to wrap amiibo into this because amiibo is actually part of the problem uh but it's not always exclusively the problem now the reason i waited to talk about this was one particular news that i thought was true but we needed to wait for confirmation um to enjoy fusion mode and metroid samus returns you have to have the squishy metroid amiibo that unlocks fusion mode as well as a fusion suit which again i don't think the suit actually gives you any advantages in the game over stuff you already have in the game it's just a costume change but uh so that doesn't that part doesn't bother me but fusion mode is a is basically a higher difficulty level in metroid samus returns and you have to own the amiibo as confirmed by euro gamer uh who confirmed it with nintendo you must own the amiibo to get this higher difficulty and there's some issues with this for starters you can't get a hold of the amiibo it is sold out uh and if if previous sellouts on amiibo are anything to go by it could be six months to a year maybe two years from now by the time you could finally uh get a restock that you could easily get a hold of this amiibo so one you know you yeah you could pay $13 to get this difficulty mode but it's locked behind an amiibo and there's no other way to get it so if you can't get a hold of the amiibo you can't enjoy a higher difficulty and it could be years before you can that's a problem that's one issue of with locking content behind amiibo another is the fact that they expect people to pay $13 for an additional difficulty mode uh that i can argue should just be included in the game we're talking about a game that is remastering or reimagining the original metroid 2 so if you're going to reimagine the original metroid 2 want a higher difficulty level be something that you should include in the base package as an incentive to buy it people don't need an incentive to buy amiibo uh i don't know if nintendo i think nintendo hasn't realized that these incentives to buy amiibo don't need to happen you just need to have really cool looking figures that people want that are associated with the games you can have costumes behind them whatever that's fine you know you can maybe even allow people to save data to it that's fine but they that's additional functionality people are buying these for collector's value uh and that's an issue paying for a difficulty mode to me is an issue and for a while i was okay with it in breath of the wild like you get master mode uh for your first dlc pack you know it's already released plus you get the trial of the sword and i'm fine with the trial of the sword be an extra content that's fine i realized we've had cable war deals and other things like it in the past but i honestly don't think trial of the sword uh even existed when the game came out like i think they actually had to build it from scratch so that's fine it's literally additional content that's cool but having an additional difficulty mode and charging money for that difficulty mode feels odd you know in zelda we've had hero modes for a while now uh doesn't really feel like we should be paying to get that difficulty mode uh even as much as i actually really like master mode a lot uh it's one of those things that even if master mode wasn't ready at launch it kind of should have been shouldn't i mean they spent the last six months or so development getting the game working properly on switch you're telling me that like they couldn't have a few few team members on the side working on master mode and just tacking that in right before launch or even as a day one patch or something or even as a week later patch like they could have just patched in master mode for free it didn't need to be something you paid for and whether or not people would have paid 20 dollars for a dlc pack that was just trial of the sword with some costumes and then you know the story mode at the end i don't know people probably would have paid 20 bucks just for the story mode dlc so i you know it is what it is i i it frustrates me that things that should basically be included with the game are being charged extra for so you're being charged extra to get a difficulty mode that makes the game better at least better for some people i don't i don't understand locking it and metro is even worse because it's difficulty mode hey it's available day one but it's behind a 13 dollar amiibo that you can't get your hands on and this has always been my issue with locking content behind amiibo when you lock content behind a consumer product and you don't give consumers any other way to get that content let's say you could you can't get a hold of that amiibo but you could through the game spend five dollars digitally and get that mode unlocked i would still have an issue with the fact they're charging more money for difficulty mode but at least there it would you know kind of make it so the amiibo thing wouldn't bother me as much because then you wouldn't have to buy the amiibo in order to get that content but you have to get a hold of these amiibo that are really hard to find to enjoy the content that you will gladly pay for i it's just it baffles my mind that nintendo kind of gets away with this they're not getting a lot of flak for continually doing this and i know you know they don't always lock major content behind amiibo but they've done it enough times now uh where they have locked you know entire game modes behind amiibo that it it's something that we need to start uh calling nintendo out for i'll give you an example in breath of the wild which i absolutely love breath of the wild but there's one thing in breath in breath of the wild with the amiibo i i don't like i don't mind all the random drops these are all things you can get in the game right besides the individual costumes which i think are cool and just a neat little little hey you own that amiibo cool here's a throwback costume ipona ipona is the only horse in the game that starts out with a max bond okay so well this isn't a competitive multiplayer game if you own that link smash amiibo which by the getting your hands on the link smash amiibo is easy to do today it's not hard to do uh if you own that amiibo you get ipona for the first time that you tap it and ipona is a piece of content this isn't a costume this is something in the game that gives you an advantage over other players and i know it's not it's a single player game so who cares if someone has an advantage that other people don't but some people will care that you have to work really really hard to try to build up a max bond with a horse when other people can just tap an amiibo and you instantly have a max bond horse in addition it's not just any horse we're talking about ipona an iconic horse in the zelda series it's not attainable in the game there's there's not a side quest to get ipona ipona is not available out in the wild or locked in a dungeon in hyrule castle there is no ipona in the game unless you have the amiibo and it's not even ipona is technically not even the quote-unquote best horse in the game uh there are horses that can take more damage or horses that deal more damage or horses that are faster and you can max bond all horses but to have that kind of a horse instantly in the game the moment you're able to use amiibo is an advantage for a lot of players in fact it might cause players to not even go hunting for horses because hey i have a max bond ipona horse that probably isn't going to be killed unless i'm really stupid so it's one of those situations where i feel like that's really stupid content to lock behind an amiibo that should just you can have that as an easy way to get ipona but ipona should be in the game and this is where i always had these issues with amiibo because nintendo is trying to create this value proposition you're not just getting a collectible figure you're also getting in-game content that you can't get anywhere else but if you can't get a hold of the amiibo then you literally just can't get that content at all and even if you could get a hold of the amiibo you're saying yeah some people might just want that content in the game and not pay extra for it or some people might want that content in the game and be willing to pay extra for it but they don't want the amiibo figure or they can't get a hold of the amiibo figure so they just like another way to purchase that content i would love to have fusion mode available for metroid samus returns day one without the amiibo not just included in the game i would pay five dollars to have that mode but that's not an option and nintendo keeps doing this with amiibo and if anything i know there's not a huge backlash i'm one of the few people out there you know giving this heavy criticism over nintendo locking content behind amiibo but it really bothers me that we aren't making a bigger deal about this uh and maybe this is much to do about nothing maybe you don't care maybe you're totally fine with nintendo doing this you feel like it increases the value of your product and if everybody can't have it oh well it's like a collector's version yeah not everyone can have all the cool collector's goodies but uh i have i have major issues with how nintendo is starting to handle their amiibo and locking content behind them and starting to handle dlc in general charging for a difficulty mode and zelda that should really just be there at launch i don't think people are calling out nintendo enough for these practices so they're starting to think that these practices are okay and they can make them normal and i feel like we need to uh let nintendo know that we don't like this stuff so they stop doing it so we can kind of hide the storm before it gets worse because this locking the difficulty mode behind an amiibo for metroid samus returns uh could set a precedent for future games even on nintendo switch and i don't think any of us want to find out things like in the future salomon road you know salomon mode in platoon 2 is really really fun and also people don't like this locked behind a time thing but at least it's included with your game now imagine you would have to buy a specific amiibo to unlock salomon mode that that's crazy but that's the road nintendo is kind of tempting fate with here uh when it comes to this particular amiibo for metroid samus returns anyways let me know what you guys think down in the comments below as always i am nathanian ruffle jance from nintendo prime if you like this video you know what to do if you dislike the video hit that dislike button subscribe for more and if you already subscribed thank you so much i can't tell you how much i appreciate it and love seeing those sub numbers go up every single day because it lets me know i am doing something that you guys are getting some form of entertainment out of uh even if some of that entertainment that at least seems to be people just wanting to yell at me and tell me to quit youtube because i don't know i guess they can't just watch a different youtuber beats me anyways i will catch you guys in the next one