List of Third-Party Developers supporting the Wii

[Erik Aston]

HappySqurriel said: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.

Strictly speaking, everything is either first party or third party, depending on who publishes it. A few people in here were saying Monolith was second party. Nintendo bought a controlling share of Monolith. That makes them first party.

"Second party" is really just a slang term. There are many different arrangements which could qualify as "second party," the only rule being that a game is developed by a third party, and published by a console-maker. It could be Square or Tose developing a one-off game with Nintendo characters, it could be a long-term relationship like Rare and Ninty had (and their continuing relationship for DS games), or it could be an exclusive publishing deal for one IP like Epic and Microsoft have with Gears of War. It says nothing about ownership of the IP, partial ownership of the studio, or the length or amount of games involved of the relationship. All it means is "third party developed, first party published."

And in most discussions on web forums, where people are throwing out long lists of games, 98% of the time the important factor is whether or not the console-maker has secured exclusive rights to the game. The only way a console-maker can do that (barring basically illegal policies like SNES-era Nintendo) is by securing a publishing contract. If a console-maker is publishing it, there is no chance its going to another console.