 I think everyone knows that Nintendo is very important to the video game industry even if you're somebody who primarily plays on PlayStation or Xbox, PC, mobile phones, handheld PCs. Heck, maybe you game primarily on Mac for crying out loud. The point is most people can agree Nintendo is important. And that could be for various reasons whether it's their legendary IP and Mario's and Zelda's and Pikmin's and Pokemon or if it's just in what they've done for the industry in terms of bouncing it back back in the 80s when the market was being oversaturated with bad video games of very little let's just say quality control and so many system options that it probably confused the market. And even if you just want to talk about expanding gaming at times with brand new ideas whether it was the D-pad or stuff like when they popularized motion controls and touchscreens before smartphones or even a thing. I know that Nintendo has done a lot and this is because I've been a big Nintendo fan for a majority of my life at least 30 plus years at this point. But what's also interesting is when we look at modern gaming today and I'm someone who does have experience with modern gaming I game on PC. Heck, I game on Mac a little bit too to be honest. I have a PlayStation 5 and an Xbox Series X and S in my house and multiple switches. It's interesting that when I walk around playing all these various games and I've played some of the best of the best games this year that Nintendo's importance seems to only be growing for me. Now Nintendo doesn't get everything right. They certainly make their fair share of mistakes. The fact I can't message friends on Nintendo Switch or even on their phone app is pretty damn ridiculous for a paid service. Having to pay by the way for multiplayer in general sucks. Nintendo is one of the last companies holding out on charging in the console space to play online. But there are just a lot of industry trends that have been going on for many many many years and Nintendo kind of defies those bad industry trends and there's one major thing they do that allows them to do this and it's maybe one of the most criticized things at the company. But if you look at the alternative you have to say you know what all right Nintendo I think that's a pretty fair trade off. So what are we talking about here? Well Nintendo does this thing where they defy a lot of the bad industry trends even though there's a maybe a super lucrative thing they could be doing instead that would certainly please investors. Let's just dive into some of these bad industry trends that Nintendo defies typically not always typically there's always exceptions to the rule and Nintendo isn't perfect then they make mistakes and they do dumb things and make anti-consumer decisions at times like any other company. But let's talk about one thing that's maybe been around the longest and that's DLC. Now look Nintendo absolutely has DLC and they've had good and bad DLC but we're talking about the type of DLC that exists that makes the base game feel like it's being piecemealed to you where a game comes out and it feels incomplete without said DLC and Nintendo does a really good job for most of their games releasing what would you consider to be a final product and while the DLC comes in general that DLC is in addition to and often praised. Let's just do a recent example the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC is wrapping up here in November on the 9th and that is adding an additional 48 tracks they just doubled the size of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe which had already been doubled in size from DLC that they dropped for Mario Kart 8 back on Wii U and the crazy thing is when Mario Kart 8 came out it was the same size as all prior Mario Kart games so the original $20 DLC back on Wii U was already considered a massive value addition and then they do it again and add even more value that's what we mean by the original Mario Kart 8 back on Wii U maybe today would feel like an incomplete game but at the time it didn't feel like they cut content from the game to deliver you a lesser experience they really created what was par for the course for the entire Mario Kart 8 you know the entire Mario Kart series today it might feel antiquated to go back to the number of tracks and playable characters and carts that they had back in the original Mario Kart 8 when it came out but that's because of Mario Kart 8 the the amount of DLC they added just really expanded it now expectations are obviously much higher for that next major console Mario Kart but that's just one DLC what about Xenobite Chronicles 2 and 3 those games do feel complete they are whole experiences it doesn't feel like they cut something from those games but then they went ahead and dropped DLC for both of them and gotta say that DLC is not only massive it's impactful and it adds to an already complete experience same thing when they did these Super Smash Bros DLC adding all those fighter passes is anyone going to try to argue when Super Smash Bros Ultimate came out that it did not feel like a complete package it was literally the most content-rich Smash Bros game of all time and Nintendo has this tendency a lot of their games if they add DLC to really add impactful DLC and not add DLC that makes the base game feel like it wasn't complete at the time and this is just unfortunately not true across the whole of the gaming industry and no Nintendo is not the only ones that get it right there's supposedly some Elden Ring DLC coming out yeah Elden Ring feels like a complete experience but you guys know the games there's so many that come out that just feel stupidly incomplete without some form of DLC you have stories that just are cut off randomly you have you know modes entire modes just missing from the game added in through DLC and like Nintendo did that a little bit with Breath of the Wild I don't think Breath of the Wild felt like an incomplete game but you know they added Master Mode and all that stuff which feels like it probably should have been in the base game I'm gonna be honest it felt like a cut feature which is ironic because we have no DLC coming for Tears of the Kingdom and there's no Master Mode maybe they'll add it as a free update someday but we got Master Mode slash Hero Mode for free and then some of the earlier entries such as Skyward Sword where they had their Master Mode was called Hero Mode but you know what those are sort of the exceptions as I said Nintendo is not perfect but it didn't mean Breath of the Wild didn't feel like a complete game they didn't cut content so that's one thing that Nintendo seems to do well and this is probably maybe even the least valuable thing that I'm going to talk about because again other companies have done a decent job at this what's some other stuff that companies lean on a lot I know what about microtransactions well I understand that it's been widely accepted in the mobile phone space and that's just how things are because games are mostly free to play so they gotta have a way to charge you microtransactions have led into almost every major IP it really doesn't matter what the game is if it's a triple A experience on some sort of system you can almost expect there to be microtransactions and Nintendo's had a lot of opportunities in the you know console space here with their games to take advantage of it thinking some of the power-ups and costumes in things like Mario Odyssey or things like Kirby and the Forgotten Land or how about the Zelda games think about how many outfits exist in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom and yeah they could have charged you piecemeal money to buy individual items even if you could obtain them in the game they still could have offered us the option to just buy them without finding them and Nintendo decided not to do that in fact Nintendo's really only participated in the microtransaction stuff primarily in their mobile games which yeah again that's a totally different space and it's a reminder that Nintendo will participate in some of these practices but only in areas where it's a widely accepted practice and while microtransactions are heavily featured in many triple A console games Nintendo doesn't really feel that that adds to the experience I mean imagine all the microtransactions they could charge in something like Splatoon 2 or Splatoon 3 they have games out there that are ripe to take advantage of their consumers and make a buck or an extra buck here or an extra buck there and Nintendo just doesn't do it again they're bucking the industry trends now as I said there's a trade-off for what they're doing we'll get to that in a moment but we have more things that we need to talk about what about season passes right everyone's looking for that next big mega free-to-play or super cheap game that could just sell you season passes you know what game Nintendo has could really abuse their consumers with season passes that they wanted heck every Splatfest as an example yeah we're talking about Splatoon 2 Splatoon 3 it is right Mario Kart 2 all these like massive multiplayer games Nintendo has are ripe for season passes and Nintendo could be charging us 20 bucks every few months if they wanted but they don't and that's a credit to Nintendo not wanting to not only not piece me all their games but find other ways to keep those communities active as an example they add content to Splatoon all the time but why do they add content to Splatoon to keep the community active the Splatfest the new maps the new weapons the new gear this keeps people consistently active without having to charge them more money it's just expected to be included in the price of the base game so when you think about that from a logical perspective yeah Nintendo is doing really really well with these Splatoon 2 Splatoon 3 games without season passes and keeping the player base engaged again it's an industry trend I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it but gosh everyone's trying to do it except for Nintendo so far anyways this could all change but this really really spells why we need Switch to be here and we need Nintendo's next generation to come and help lead the way in a different way now the other thing we need to talk about and again Nintendo isn't perfect with this uh buggy launches there are a number of games that come out in this industry that are super super buggy uh where you've even heard some things with spider-man 2 I personally haven't ran into much in spider-man 2 but we've been hearing a lot about buggy launches and we're not going to pretend that Nintendo doesn't have them they published Scarlet and Violet and we know how big of a mess that game was Xenoblade 2 had some performance issues way back in 2017 most of that went away with the DLC and obviously Xenoblade 3 doesn't have the same issues but yeah Nintendo has had some performance slash bug issues with some of their games but the funny thing is those are like the exceptions most of Nintendo's games come out and they run very very well and they're relatively bug free you almost have to try to trigger a glitch or a bug versus so many other games that just hey we'll release now patch later and Nintendo just doesn't really participate that much in that culture again they're not completely innocent but we all know a majority of Nintendo's games just come out and frankly they just kind of work now there's a few other trends as well we could talk about the idea that Nintendo tends to put most of their game if not their entire game actually on the cartridge so you don't have to download giant multiple gigabytes of information just to play that's obviously really really nice honestly I could go on and on and on about the many examples that Nintendo provides for how they do things differently and avoid some of the common issues I find in this gaming industry and that's why this is so important that it's being led by an actual platform holder and not just an individual developer because I think it really spreads a greater impact on the industry when one of the leaders of that industry from a platform perspective is you know really going forward with this and again this isn't me trying to tell you Nintendo's perfect we can talk about all the issues with NSO all the issues with their eShop and a lot of things Nintendo needs to improve especially with their online and some of their communication but when it comes to these specific aspects Nintendo should actually be praised for how they handle most of this stuff in general and it again it's just nice to see a platform holder really looking ahead now I told you that there was a cost for what Nintendo's doing there is a uh a caveat to all of this Nintendo can afford to not be pushing micro transactions not releasing buggy games and patching them later not doing season passes because Nintendo tends to not lower the price of their games for five plus years that's right uh MSRP for Breath of the Wild technically hasn't changed since launch although it's pretty hard to just straight up buy the game beyond digital at full price at this time it's since years the kingdom comes out it's pretty much 45 40 bucks and under at most retailers but the point is that we're all we're like seven years into the system so Nintendo the the caveat is they just don't lower the price of games and that is one of the major criticisms lodged at Nintendo all the time why the hell is Mario Kart 8 deluxe still 59 99 when it was originally a Wii U game why this why well because Nintendo isn't doing all these other things that other companies are doing to make money after a game launches they continue to make their money by continuing to sell games at MSRP prices and maintain somehow maintaining their evergreen status I even wonder sometimes if how Nintendo prices games helps them stay evergreen because when parents and people go to stores and they see a full price game they might still think that game is new I don't know that that's true of all consumers I'm speaking from a more general consumer sense that might not keep up with all the latest news but usually when you see things at full price for other systems it signifies it's a new game so I don't know I'm just kind of throwing that out there is maybe it helps a little bit it's not like I've done enough market analysis from a professional perspective to state that but again I do think the reason Nintendo doesn't feel like they need to microtransaction they need to do all this stuff they need to always shove DLC in our face with incomplete games is because Nintendo is going to keep releasing games at full price and keeping them there for many many years and it's just it's significantly different than what the rest of the industry does and that is the trade-off and I'm going to be honest I think I like that trade-off versus having games nickel and dime me every single day so I don't know maybe I'm a little crazy and you can call me Nintendo defense force I you know I think they should discount their games definitely much sooner than like six plus years later but I will say that if that's the cost for us not to have broken games at launch us not to have games of ripped out content put in the DLC us to not have microtransactions and season passes it should sign me right up man all right guys I'm Nathan and Robert Jans from Nintendo Prime let me know do you think about this stuff down in the comments below and I'll catch you in the next video