In an interview with Time, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata shared his thoughts on the current mobile games market and the insincerity of its free-to-play business model.
"I do not like to use the term Free-to-play," he proposed. "I have come to realize that there is a degree of insincerity to consumers with this terminology, since so-called 'Free-to-play' should be referred to more accurately as Free-to-start."
"The thing that concerns me most is that, in the digital age, if we fail to make efforts to maintain the value of our content, there is the high possibility for the value to be greatly reduced as the history of the music industry has shown," he added. "On the other hand, I have no intention to deny the Free-to-start model. In fact, depending on how we approach this model, we may be able to overcome these problems."
Iwata then explained that Nintendo's upcoming mobile games will not be tied to a single payment scheme. "There are games which are more suited for the Free-to-start model. We can flexibly choose between both revenue systems depending on the software content," he explained.
