| RolStoppable said: The Gamecube fixed third party relations, but the lack of differentiation to the competiton remained. Despite getting more games than the Nintendo 64, the Gamecube sold worse. The one thing the GC had that the competition didn't have was Nintendo's games. People primarly bought the GC to play Nintendo games, because that was pretty much the only unique thing to it. As a result third party games didn't do too well (multiplatform games were bought for the PS2, the GC was usually seen as secondary console) and the quality of ports decreased over the years. Now what should Nintendo do? Diversify themselves while maintaining third party support is the obvious choice. If Nintendo wanted to win this generation in a PS2-esque fashion. All they would have needed to do was release the Wii with comparable power to the PS3/360. The fact that they didn't, shows me that they were unsure of how the public reception would be for the Wii.
If they had released another Gamecube (powerful hardware which can handle all multiplatform games), the fate of that console would have been the same as the Gamecube's one. People would have bought it primarly for Nintendo games and third parties would have released rubbish ports on it, because "only Nintendo games sell on Nintendo systems".
They could have released another variety of Wii with hardware to match and a desire to make a competitive relevant online network and they easily would have won this generation in terms of software sales, hardware sales and sheer amount of titles. (Essentially 360/PS3 libraries plus the famous Nintendo games).
Instead Nintendo released the Wii. They knew it would going to be tough with third parties in the short term, but it could pay off really big in the long term. The Wii differentiates itself from the competition not only due to Nintendo games but more importantly, the motion controls. This is going to make most games unique to the platform and they won't be available anywhere else. Exclusives sell systems. Nintendo was unsure of their new concept and it's public perception. Otherwise, they would have released a powerful console WITH the motion controls. Exclusivity sells systems but having a significantly weaker system in terms of hardware specs while trying to revolutionize the market is the wrong way to go or the worse of two ways to go.
But of course, Nintendo acted mostly in their own interest. That was to become #1 again. It's wrong to act as if everything is bad for third parties though, because the games that are actually tailored to the Wii's strength do usually very well (not all of them, but the success rate for quality games is still higher than on either one of the HD consoles). Besides, third parties didn't seem to complain last generation when they made PS2 exclusives and didn't port their games over to other platforms.
Nintendo protected itself. It knows it can release a console to it's core Nintendo fans. (People who will buy it, if only for Mario, Zelda, Metroid games). It came at a low price with outdated hardware in order to make sure (Regardless of how it's public perception was), they wouldn't be hurting too bad and might still snag a decent profit regardless. |
Had Nintendo actually moved into the HD market with Sony and Microsoft. They wouldn't be in this Catch 22. Nintendo wasn't as confident in the Wii as they should have been. So they are saddled with the fact that Third Parties will probably steer somewhat clear of primary Wii development over the HD consoles.
