Are third parties morons or are their actions deliberate?

[Mr Khan]

Doobie_wop said:

Mr Khan said:

Doobie_wop said:

 

 

1. The core market for third party games was there, in the beginning. Third parties (and to a lesser degree, Nintendo), failed to capitalize on that. Some early games banked an easy million even if they weren't all that good, but follow-up efforts never came. Test games never saw the follow-through, even if they were successful (like Umbrella Chronicles)

2. You can't call Metroid the end-all of FPS, and many Metroid fans (not me, i'm one of the few who classes Metroid Prime as an FPS) would find it insulting to do so. We can only imagine what would have happened if Infinity Ward had actually debased themselves enough to develop Modern Warfare simultaneously for Wii.

3. Its an environment where 3rd parties still think they're the king like gens 5 and 6, when it's become quite clear that they're not. The age of manufacturers bending over backwards for them should be over, and rightly so.

1. No. You can't deny that Nintendo had a different set of intentions and it worked out for them, Nintendo had a specific idea of a console in mind and that's what they got. Third Parties have to work around that and despite earlier efforts, it didn't work out. When they continue to try (NMH2, Red Steel 2) their only punished with lower sales. The only reason Nintendo needed test games is because the console was a risk to develop on.

2. Metroid is an FPS, the same way Bioshock, The Darkness and Half Life are FPS. World at War had a simultaneous release and the game sold significantly less than it's HD counterparts. Like I mentioned before, the Wii isn't as easy to develop for as many like to think because it uses a different control format, it's online system is buggy and the system is underpowered. People are also under the assumption that all Third Party games should be multi-platform, I don't because it takes away unnecessary effort away from the consoles that we know will sell enough copies. 

3. Manufacturers need Third Parties to support their platform, people blame the Wii's significant drop in sales recently because of it's lack luster software support, then that shows that software still drives the platform. The only reason you follow that line of thinking is because your strictly a Wii gamer, but had my PS3 got no Third party support I would have sold it. I don't know about you, but I play more than 5 games a year. 

I'm not saying third party support is non-essential, but its clearly peripheral to hardware sales at this point, outside of a few key franchises and regions. I buy and play third party games too, but they're non-essential for the manufacturers' hardware sales.

 

And on point 2, developers seem to be willing to overcome hurdles to port elsewhere, into even more hostile environments (PSP). There has to be something underlying here.