Former Ratchet and Clank, Skylanders dev confirms early Wii U development problems

[mike_intellivision]

chris_wing said:

hsrob said:
That Eurogamer article only maintains relevance if the problems still exist as many in the initial thread were trying to suggest.

We have numerous sources now saying that development is no harder than any other system. It's time for the mountain to become a molehill again.

The problem that this early inadequate SDK caused was a lack of quality ports & a complete lack of some 3rd party games (& the delay of at least one high profile 1st party game), this caused a game drought, causing low Wii U sales, resulting in a small install base, an install base that has provin itself to not buy 3rd party games.  Some of the initial issues with Wii U development may no longer exist but the problems & perceptions those issues ended up causing do persist.

 

impertinence said:

Nice try but the tweet confirms nothing.

Care to explain?  It states straight up that the issues did exist at one time.

If I recall corretly, there were mixed reports about the WiiU and its SDK issues.  Some said they were able to get demos up-and-running quickly while others struggled.  Futhermore, I recall hearing similar things about a lot of other consoles at that stage of developement as well.  For example, Sony platforms have sometimes been known to be notorious to program. But that never stopped anyone for developing for them nor did the early non-sales of the PS3 -- which points to at least somewhat of a double-standard being applied to Nintendo.

The most curious comment I found in the story was knocking the WiiU for needing a Day 1 update for certain features --w hen both the PS4 and XB1 needed the same thing (and some outlets even reported the XB1 would not play games wihtout the update).

The next most curious comment was the discussion on the on-line systems. The critique of that makes me think that the author had reason to want a different system. Given Nintendo's on-line history, it is not unwarrented to want to see improvement in its system. But I also read it thinking who would have benefitted had Nintendo gone a different direction.

Finally, the timing to me was a bit curious. Why would someone decide now -- 12 to 18 months after the event but while the console is still available is the time for an anonymous "tell all" feature. I could understand it after the company's game launch. I could understand it after NDA's expired.  But this almost seemed like a hack/hatchet job being put forward by a company to justify its decision.

Mike from Morgantown

PS -- Would the worst company in America do something like this?