Nintendo has announced that it is partnering with Mojang and Microsoft to bring a free Mario Mashup DLC to Minecraft Wii U Edition. This free DLC is set to launch on May 17th, adding Super Mario themed skins, music and textures for items and blocks to the game. It also includes a pre-made Super Mario themed world for players to play in. A trailer showing off this free DLC was also released, and you can check it out below. Nintendo has also confirmed that June 17th will be the release date for the retail version of Minecraft Wii U Edition, which will sell for $29.99. The retail version will also include the Mario Mashup DLC on the game disc.
This DLC is probably to try to improve sales of the Wii U version of Minecraft (because otherwise the DLC probably wouldn’t be free). However, there are problems… If you go to www.minecraft.net, you will see that you can buy the PC version for $26.95. The screwed up thing here is that Minecraft Wii U Edition will cost you $29.99 (yes, they seriously have the digital download priced the same as the physical release)… How does a very inferior version of the game cost more than the definitive version of the game? The Xbox One edition of Minecraft on the other hand will cost you $19.99 to download the game (which is clearly a more reasonable price given that it too is inferior to the PC version). Of course, Mojang could probably easily charge a full $60 for the PC version if they wanted to (except that this would slow sales a lot).
The original PC version is, and probably always will be the definitive version of Minecraft since the console versions are always lagging behind it, and are also plagued by far smaller world sizes (among other limitations). In short, Minecraft Wii U Edition is overpriced on top of it being an inferior version of the game. So it would seem that Nintendo would rather try to manipulate their fans into buying it by slapping a famous franchise on it rather than set a reasonable price. While adding a free DLC certainly helps pull more Nintendo fans to the Wii U edition of Minecraft, the game of course still isn’t worth it at all for anyone that already owns the PC version.
Funnily enough, in a way this free DLC for Minecraft Wii U Edition actually puts Super Mario Maker to shame, because you can make 3D Super Mario landscapes and much more (not to mention the fact that Minecraft doesn’t feel the need to be a giant dick by putting unlockables behind absurd crap like Super Expert Mode or Gnat Attack hard mode). Of course, Minecraft is a far superior game in general, and yet is selling at half the price of Super Mario Maker…
