What if Wuthering Waves got the “Solo Leveling Arise Overdrive” / “Octopath Traveler 0” treatment every 2 years as a series of no-gacha $60 games?

This is a thought exercise. If you don't know, "Solo Leveling Arise" and "Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent" are both Mobile Gacha Games that are both still active, but they have done something extremely interesting… they released as premium complete content games without gacha as "Overdrive" and "0" respectively. Both games had 2 to 3 years of content to draw from and polish into a premium single-purchase package. Solo Leveling had mixed results but it is safe to say that Octopath 0 is a rather fantastic outcome of this idea. There has always been potential of doing this with dead mobile games that have redeeming qualities, but doing it with active games opens up a whole new world of possibilities (at least Solo Leveling is still making money, Octopath not so much?).

I would say one game in PRIME position to try something like this and perhaps release such a game package is Wuthering Waves. They just wrapped up their major "2.0 / Year 2" story ark and the story so far would make a very complete and rather epic $60-70 game package. The formula feels simple:

• $60 or $70 single purchase for a 40-60 hour experience
• no gacha
• gain each character when you encounter them in story or complete their character story segment
• gain the character's weapon after defeating some hard version of a boss
• no time gating / daily stamina system
• lots of "end game" content and bonus gameplay activities for 20-40 more hours of play

This would be a hell of a game for people who have zero interest in touching predatory gacha games. It would be an honest premium purchase produce. 2 years later there would be another one to continue the story with 3.0-4.0 / years 3 and 4 content for another $70 with only the new characters and story introduced in those years. Creating a traditional 3-5 game series by the time the gacha game achieves 10 years of service.

Would be quite a thing, no? If you prefer, apply this same thinking to Genshin, Honkai, etc etc.