Why do developers act like Nintendo fans are obligated to buy their shitty games?

[gumby_trucker]

RolStoppable said:

Mr Khan said:

To be fair, the article was only part of one example, and we fast went off-topic to discuss the treatment of retail developers, who deserve many of the harsh words given here. Nintendo's online service is poorly developed with the threshold system (though given how much people bitch about "how much shovelware there is on Nintendo systems" it's hard to wonder that they're not imposing punitive quality controls somewhere), but i would agree that the bigger issue is the utter lack of promotion that WiiWare games receive, both in promotional pricing and just in awareness creation altogether

It is hard to understand why Nintendo can't just copy what they see the competitors are doing, at least when the competitors practices are actually beneficial (and not just core-beneficial), which is definitely the case when you compare WiiWare to XBLA or PSN Games

The biggest issue are third party developers themselves. Nintendo made it possible to put up demos, but that chance was of course only used by developers this could have been beneficial for, in other words the few who actually made good games. If you ever paid attention to WiiWare, you will have noticed that out of the available demos more than 90 % were for games that fall in the top 10 % of quality that is available on WiiWare. Developers like Icon Games would not provide demos, because they are dependent on people buying the cat in the bag. For such developers it is for the best if people know as little as possible about the quality of their game and a demo is completely counterproductive.

If there really was a serious problem with WiiWare, then how come that the good developers who were right there from the start are still here today? Obviously because they managed to succeed. Why? Because over time the shovelware got increasingly ignored and the actually good games garnered the sales. That's the exact same thing that happened in the retail sector.

A question I have been asking myself a lot recently is whether or not there are 3rd party games that can find success on Nintendo platforms who wouldn't have found a similar (or higher) level of success on other platforms. If I was developing a game this is something I would seriously consider before deciding on platform.

Nintendo platforms this gen offered a cheaper development environment as well as a different audience than PS360 (but not compared to iOS/Facebook) but this also came with its own share of draconian restricitions.

The fact that excellent games can find success on a service is no indication of the quality of the service. Like it or not, the performance of mediocre games is actually a far better measurment of this.