Steel Diver is Nintendo’s Free-to-Play experiment

During an investor and analyst presentation last week, Nintendo revealed that it was working on a free-to-play game, which is due to arrive before the end of the year.

At this time though, it wasn’t revealed exactly which franchise Nintendo would use in it’s free-to-play experiment. Nintendo only said they wouldn’t use franchises like Pokémon or Mario due to the “degree of trust” that has been built with customers around pricing for these franchises.

At this year’s E3, Shigeru Miyamoto revealed to IGN just which franchise they would be using in their free-to-play trial, and that franchise is Steel Diver.

Miyamoto made it clear that Steel Diver under a free-to-play will not simply be the same Steel Diver that we saw at the 3DS launch, it’s design had to change to fit this new style of pricing. It was not confirmed whether the game will be coming to 3DS or Wii U, or potentially both.

What was confirmed though, was that Nintendo are exploring gameplay options that open the Steel Diver experience, including a four-player battle mode that Miyamoto feels will be “very interesting”.

Miyamoto stressed that the free-to-play revenue model will not affect the entertainment value of the eventual game. Nintendo are carefully focused on ensuring that gameplay is not going to fall victim to a revenue model, and that the game will eventually become available in a packaged form as well.

Nintendo plans to reveal more about the game “relatively soon”.