Nintendo means bad news for 3rd parties!

[Bodhesatva]

Shane said:

Not only is there less food in Nintendo's ocean, but that whale will have no problem eating any of the fish that are swimming in its territory.

Nobody's denying that Nintendo makes great games.

Motorstorm and Resistance are interesting points. Why do teams like Insomniac, Evolution, Epic, Factor 5, and Bioware turn to Microsoft and Sony rather than Nintendo? Because Nintendo would rather promote its own internal software, or at least something like Mario Goes Fishing, rather than that of an outsider. You think Gears of War would have been nearly as big on Wii as 360? Or that it would have even been given the green light to begin with?

Rogue Squadron didn't sell as well as it would have on PS2. RE4 didn't sell as it did on Sony's systems and turned out to be one of the worst mistakes Capcom ever made, something they eventually realized (too late) and decided to port it to the PS2 and now have killed the developer that started the whole mess.

People are buying Wii Play in droves. This title is crappier than anything the third parties are making. Why are people buying it? It was made by Nintendo.

Ubisoft didn't put their money on Wii. They came out with a couple launch games (a look at the Gamecube launch schedule shows they did the same thing then), but they still know their big money is on 360, followed by PS3. Something like Rayman, much like Sonic, may fit more appropriately with Nintendo's userbase than it will with Microsoft's. However, it doesn't come close to measuring up to Clancy. Granted, we will see a Clancy on Wii here or there, but it won't come close to the 20 or so we'll see on the other platforms. Clancy, by itself, is more important than every single title Ubisoft will release on the Wii throughout its lifespan.

Nintendo can only get so far without third parties, even in Japan. As big as Nintendo's franchises, new and old, are, the Japanese will continue to want games from Square, Enix, Konami, Koei, Capcom, etc. I'd dig deeper into the figures if I felt the numbers on this site outside Japan were reliable, or that I could draw any real conclusions based on them. Only 19 third party games on Wii obviously means something's missing right there, as there were that many on launch day.

DQ's never been about being technologically advanced, but it moving to DS only helps out Wii in the sense that it's not on PS3.

Yeah, the success of remakes, Love and Berry, and Tamogotchi really proves the quality argument.

So many issues here.

 

First, Wii Play is selling because it has a Wiimote included, not because it's made by Nintendo. Most of the people I sell the game to have no idea that it's made by Nintendo, they just know that it's a game that costs 10 dollars more than a Wiimote individually.

 

As already pointed out, Resident Evil 4 actually sold better on the Gamecube than it did on the PS2 if you account for the huge disparity in install base. By your standards, Zelda: The Windwaker would have been a bigger game on the PS2, as well. Seriously, it would have.

 

And one last time -- third parties are already clearly shifting their focus to the Wii. Stop with the "Wii doesn't have many 3rd party games" argument, because it's patently false. There are more exclusive 3rd party titles planned for the Wii than there are for the PS3, and the gap is growing, not shrinking.

 

Given the small Gamecube userbase, the best question we can ask ourselves is: "Compared to the titles Nintendo released on the system, did Resident Evil 4 do well?" And the answer is: "Yes." While it didn't sell as well as Zelda: The Windwaker (which was also an excellent title, so not a bad thing), it sold better than Mario Party (several different versions), Metroid Prime, Pokemon (again, all different versions of the game), Paper Mario: TTYD, Star Fox Adventures, and others. So yes, solid third party software can compete in sales with solid Nintendo software. 

 

Really, this is just proves a simple concept: established franchises (Whether individual games are good or not) and quality, big name titles sell very well on any system. For Playstation, this has historically been some first party titles with a lot of third party ones; for the Nintendo systems, it has been (for ten years, at least) solid first party titles with just a few third party ones. But on both systems, one thing remains the same -- the good games and established franchises sell well. The end.