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Resident_Hazard on 18 July 2008
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Soleron said:
fkusumot said:

I've believed since last summer that Nintendo had set up their internal development to crank out software for the Wii as if they thought they were going to be going it alone. In other words, they were prepared to have the Wii sell at GameCube levels, have very poor 3rd party support, and have to support the console pretty much by themselves.

With the Wii being a runaway success they haven't had to carry the entire release schedule on their own. So now they have a small backlog of finished product. If they're using the time to polish up these titles I think that could be very good. In this case hopefully success will breed more success. I'm hopeful.

 

That is a very good point. Nintendo really did think of everything. I too am hopeful this will result in the same number of 'core' games, just a year later and better quality.

 

The minor problem with that theory is that Nintendo stated completely different actual plans when referencing the Wii.  They're plan for the DS was to make it a success and to support the crap out of it and then to sit back and let 3rd party companies step in and reap ever greater rewards, and really, that seems to be working.  They also stated a similar plan for the Wii.  Support it heavily early on then, once it's established, let 3rd party companies take it over.

I think they planned from the start for the Wii to outsell the GC as it was once commented (by Iwata I believe), "if the Wii (Revolution) doesn't sell better than the GameCube, it will be a failure."  The DS was their way of testing the waters to see if something truly different would actually work because they also said, "if the DS fails, we'll take our next console back to the drawing board since it has similar design ideas behind it."

They planned for success the whole time, they never planned for failure.  I'm sure that they probably believed that they might end up "going it alone" for a while with the Wii and DS and that's probably part of why they cranked out so many "hits" in relatively short times, but they also needed to do that to warm up the machines for the 3rd parties to want to jump on-board.

 

Also, Miyamoto apparently believes E3 is something for more casual gamers to take notice of.  Since they left their biggest reveal, the Wiimote, to the Tokyo Game Show in 2006, I have little doubt that either that venue, or E for All is where they're going to churn out some of their more hardcore-leaning titles.