Stately Citizen Journalism

iOS 13 not working with my old-as-time iPhone 6+ was pretty shocki***cough***interesting…well at least my iPad pro 10,5 isn’t too old yet…

I’d be down for actually turning on my brain in a card game.

Hearthstone is a farce, MTG: Arena is PC-only, and Elder Scrolls is a very bad game I happen to be very good at (for whatever reason). I have not had any synapses fire in a card game for like 18 months or something.

Don’t go in with high expectations, though. I can’t speak to the depth of the game yet; I was merely pleasantly surprised with the resource management and the positional tactics. Those things alone don’t make a game good if there isn’t much game behind them. I don’t know one way or another yet, but if you play, I’d love I hear your impressions as well.

I’ve read iOS 13 is bug-laden. It’s probably better for most folks to wait for 13.1 coming out Sep 24th. That is, unless you have a spare phone/tablet that won’t disrupt your usage.

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I haven’t had any problems, knock on wood.

I haven’t had any problems either. Apple Arcade is slick, and packed full of good games. Nothing else has been buggy for me, even iPadOS has been solid since beta 3

Apple Arcade is really tempting me, even though I hate that subscription model. The fact that my PS4 controller pairs with my phone now is a huge plus. I’m likely to cave in that front.

It’s free for the first month, and so far I have only played the MiniMotorways game, sequal to MiniMetro, and that is at least worth your effort for free trial.

Yes. I gathered you hate the model based on your posts stating such above. It’s a good value to me because I have kiddos who have iPads and enjoy gaming in them, with or without a controller. The games are good, no IAP, and the sub model is very well done. $4.99 a month is a nothing price for the value.

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So far, so good, actually.

The lanes are interesting, especially since you don’t have to attack straight ahead. Resource management is important, most of the cards seem fairly interesting, and the app itself has a fair amount of polish.

I’m doing the campaign for now, so I haven’t tried any PvP. And we all know that that’s where the rubber meets the road for card games.

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Yeah, I’m pleasantly surprised, too. I’m not a giant fan of the “urban fantasy” theme, but at least that makes it slightly more unique. The theme reminds me a bit of the long-dead Nightfall.

I have yet to do PvP either. I was intrigued to see a 2v2 mode.

Google Play Pass https://play.google.com/about/play-pass/

No Ads, no IAP

With Apple and Google now doing this, will be interesting to see if Nintendo will need to follow along. While it might seem a different market, my guess is that this will eat into the Switch Light market. Competing on the mobile/handheld front is so much harder for Nintendo these days.

In my case, these subscription models are pushing me away from ios and google and towards the switch.

I just feel subscriptioned-out. The business model feels like it’s dragging media and entertainment in the absolute wrong direction for me as a consumer. I know a lot of people like it, I’m just stating my personal perspective on it. It’s no different from cable TV companies selling you 200 channels you’ll never watch so you can see the 5 you like.

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This set of forecasts might be of interest to others here, since we’re talking about switch sales potentially being eroded. Separate discussion from this article: the list of Top 10 best-selling games is depressing…

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I’ve gone down the video-game-news-rabbit-hole, and I’m dragging you all with me : )

Valve (aka Steam) has been found guilty in France of illegally preventing the resale of non-physical games. I had a hard time finding a translation of l’article (which was in French), but voila, from reddit:

Lastly, google Play Pass is making developers quite nervous already, it seems. Some of the quotes in this article are utterly silly (it’s IGN, so you know what you’re getting), but it does quote text directly from google’s developer FAQ and then make (reasonable-sounding) comparisons to spotify.

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Holy smokes, Nintendo makes Apple look extremely generous, Mario Kart Tour on iOS has an optional $4.99 a month subscription. Bad timing on their part, indeed. :open_mouth:

Of course, my understanding is that Nintendo is happy to use mobile phone gaming to drive folks to their Switch and premium games, they would prefer folks were portable/handheld Mario Kart gaming on the Switch / Switch Lite with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Locking the 200cc mode behind this is pretty bad but I can’t imagine paying $4.99 for the above when you can literally use that on Apple Arcade. Premium subscriptions aren’t new in games but the timing for this one couldn’t be worse.

‘Mario Kart Tour’ Has an Optional Paid Subscription for an Exclusive Mode and Items That Costs As Much as Apple Arcade

If I recall correctly, Nintendo shared financial information on their mobile titles and their f2p far, far outperformed their premium titles. In that sense, you can’t blame them for their monitozation schemes. And while the profit may not have been there for them, it’s too bad they couldn’t get this into Apple Arcade as it is what both companies could use marketing-wise.

That’s my understanding, as well … the mobile phone audience, as a whole, prefers to spend money via IAP rather than on premium / paid games, alas. :slightly_frowning_face:

If The Wall Street Journal news reports are to be believed, Nintendo is sensitive to their brand image and has instructed their development partners to show restraint on microtransactions.

Nintendo Tells Mobile Partners To Limit Microtransactions So That Players Don’t Spend Too Much

Report Suggests Nintendo Doesn’t Want To Overdo Mobile Microtransactions

I also don’t blame Nintendo for not releasing a Mario Kart game for mobile phones that is an equivalent competitor to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch. It does feel strange that the optional subscription costs as much as Apple Arcade, and more than their own Switch Online subscription.

From July, 2019: Dragalia Lost Has Grossed $100 Million Worldwide, Becoming Nintendo’s Second Most Successful Mobile Game

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The one payment model missing is the traditional paid app. I know that Super Mario Run has a 1-time payment to unlock, but as a purely academic experiment, I’d like to see a Nintendo game without IAP that costs $5 or so up front, just to see how it performs against the others in this list.