The Wii has netted Nintendo a lot of disrespect these past couple years, both from developers and gaming consumers alike. They claim that the reason great third party games don't have a majority on Wii is because a.) The system is underpowered compared to the competition and b.) it has a casual focus. Yet I can't help but recall the level of support received in previous two generations when Nintendo had made consoles that were either on par or more advanced in tech to the competition, as well as having a strong target towards hardcore gamers.
So, as the title suggests, I wonder "what is it going to take for Nintendo to get the majority of great third party support again?" If Nintendo had made their current console on par tech-wise with the 360 and PS3, and put all 1st party resources toward hardcore games, who's to say things would not have turned out just like the Gamecube, or even worse for that matter? Who's to say it won't happen next gen should Nintendo decide to go with top of the line hardware? I think we need to be reminded from time to time why the Wii is what it is. For me, I think of two examples. The first is a quote from Yamauchi from 2004:
"If we are unsuccessful with the Nintendo DS, we may not go bankrupt, but we will be crushed. The next two years will be a really crucial time for Nintendo." - http://cube.ign.com/articles/492/492253p1.html
The second is Iwata's keynote at GDC 2006: "Disrupting Development," where he likened Nintendo's new focus of targeting new markets to that of Pepsi who had done so in order to compete/survive.
Both Yamauichi and Iwata were pretty clear that Nintendo could not live on with the same old formula, and were forced to take risks. Given their eagerness to jump on new ideas, motion controls are something that could have always been in the plans for future hardware. But the turn for old-gen processing power and a casual focus, I strongly believe, would not have happened if they had received significantly better support for the N64 and Gamecube.
At times, the paranoid side of me almost thinks that 3rd parties would want the Wii to fall into the same Gamecube sales trap, so that Nintendo would be out of the hardware business and the decision to put their stuff on their consoles would no longer be a future consideration. Which brings up the "we can't compete with Nintendo software" argument. No matter where third parties put their games, they are competing with Nintendo, and the Wii's commercial success proves that they won't be going the way of Sega for a long time.
I suppose for Nintendo, it could have just been the right move at the wrong time. When the presence of Western devs (devs who rarely made a Nintendo console their platform of choice in the past) is stronger than ever before, in addition to many Japan devs are conceding that their teams aren't doing as well by comparison and are starting to target games for western audiences, winning over third parties as the market leader in generation #7 may not be as easy for them as it might have in, say, generation #5.
So what can Nintendo do that they have not done already?
Image? To this day, they can't seem to shake the "kiddy" image despite the fact that they've published multiple M rated games and don't restrict 2nd/3rd party content any more than MS/Sony. In some cases, Nintendo systems have even been home to the more explict version of certain games (BMX XXX, Killer 7, Conker). Personally, I don't think any more should be asked of them than this.
Moneyhatting? Nintendo is certainly capable of funding some exclusitive titles, and has done so numerous times, but there is a limit to how much they can bleed. Despite selling hardware for profit, Nintendo doesn't have the non-gaming divisions to fall back on financially that MS/Sony do, and though they, to our knowledge, do appear to be a tad stingy with their warchest at the moment, they still can't throw money left and right to every relevant third party, especially when exclusitivity can be whisked away in a flash as it was last time around with Tales of Symphonia and 3 of the Capcom 5.
Pray that the alleged "hive-mind Nintendo grudge" goes away? This one I've always been a bit skeptical on. Business is business, and holding Nintendo accountable for 3rd party Though, John Carmack did say the grudge had been alive and well at id for many a year.
Get lucky and predict which future game generations that third parties care less about install base and more about multiplatforming releases on the highest tech hardware (current gen), and which ones where the complete inverse applies (gen #6), and then make systems accordingly? Semi-Kidding.
I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty of points, but I think I'll leave it at that for now.
Thoughts?
