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Doobie_wop said: Most of those are either to be expected or are of no benefit to Third Party studios in general. Hiring a studio to make a game for your IP isn't benefiting third parties, it's just farming out development, if I was to include your example, then Sony has helped 20 different development studios this generation. Funding The Last Story when it's your IP is not benefiting Third Parties. Bundling games should be standard practice. Also, even if everything you've listed was accurate, it still in no way stacks up to the amount of effort Sony and Microsoft has put into gaining third party support. |
Er, only 3 of those examples were Nintendo hiring 3rd parties to work on their own IPs. And Nintendo's worked directly with more 3rd parties this gen (on their own IPs) than MS and Sony combined, over 50 last I checked. Nintendo also funds and publishes projects for IPs they don't own though, like Fatal Frame or Glory of Heracles. MS does this pretty frequently too (Gears of War, Mass Effect, Alan Wake, To Human, etc), Sony's done it also on occasion (Heavy Rain) though more rarely.
Everything he listed was accurate, and honestly it's barely scratching the surface. Nintendo's done a ton more, including engine/tool sharing (FFCC MMLAAK), select bundling (WE Playmaker 2010, Tales of Graces, etc) or more sweetheart publishing deals (Layton notably). Nintendo's also notably the only developer that allows 1st party teams to work on 3rd party games (Heroes of Mana, DQ Swords, Fantasy Life, DQ Wars, SRT OG Saga Endless Frontier, etc). Nintendo also distributes tons of 3rd party games in Europe, from Etrian Odyssey to Ghost Trick to Inazuma Eleven... again, far, far more than either Sony or MS at this point. I think the real problem with Nintendo's 3rd party overtures isn't that they're not "doing enough" in terms of actual support, but they're not purely paying out for exclusivity or (more often in Sony/MS cases) exclusivity windows or exclusive DLC. The other issue is that, for the most part, Nintendo's incentives and support seem to be targeted at Japanese companies almost exclusively.
