HappySqurriel on 03 May 2007
| Erik Aston said: First of all, Wii Sports is the first groundbreaking title of the generation. Second, if Nintendo OWNS a studio, that makes them FIRST PARTY. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a "second party developer." Either a console-maker owns 51% of a company, or they don't. A "second party game" is a game made by a third party developer, but published by the first party, like Donkey Kong Country or Gears of War. And lastly... There are a handful of "epic" games on the Wii, but this is a thread in the SALES DISCUSSION board. Who cares if there aren't "epic" games, if all those third party developers are working on the next Nintendogs? (Well... They aren't... But non-epic games from at least a dozen different publishers have good sales potential on Wii.) |
Second Party Developer is a term to describe the relationship between a developer who is published by (but not owned by) a First Party Publisher; often these relationships involve exclusive publishing contracts or partial ownership to add strenght to the relationship. The reason this is an important classification is that the developer will produce exclusive content for the console's of their publisher as long as the relationship lasts but the IP they created is usually not the property of the publisher.
