Maybe placement matches would help, but if they are intentionally ranking low to stomp on people, I guess they’d throw those matches.

So, that’s how ranked play works and only has humans. Problem is, ranked is awful right now. Even in the lowest ranks matches tend to be hopelessly lopsided. I’m not clear on why but it may be streamers and whatnot creating new accounts to stomp on low ranked people.

It’s in quick match where they are inserting bots, and there aren’t ranks to use.

What people are missing in the comments is that you can choose to play a bot match if that’s what you want. But you CAN’T sign up to play against people and guarantee that that’s what you’ll be doing. And they are not transparent about it.

It isn’t in the US but is in Japan where the companies are based.

Why would it sustain those numbers? It’s fine to play a cool game, be satisfied with it, and then move on.

But if you wait then you get a good game for cheap, so it’s only really a problem for the goobers who pre order.

If they continued playing simply because they spent money, they’d be yet another victim of the sunk cost fallacy.

I buy very few Nintendo games for this reason. It may be a good strategy overall, but they’ve definitely lost more revenue by keeping prices high than they’ve gained from me.

The MMO element seems like it’d ruin the whole thing for me.