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

[gumby_trucker]

RolStoppable said:

gumby_trucker said:

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.

Why would that be?

I don't quite understand what you mean. Better services sell worse games?

No, but a service should do as much as possible to promote transparency in order to help a product find its audience. Games that are scored 8-10 in reviews are more likely to sell based on the review alone. But games scoring 5-8 are more likely to be treated with caution by the informed consumer, as well as be ignored more often by the remaining consumers due to little word of mouth.

I'm sure every one of us has been in the situation where a demo of a niche game persuaded us to purchase it, despite not looking particularly appealing based on screenshots or reviews. Many times a product is released that is mediocre due to time/budget constraints, but even a small level of success could be enough to allow the developer to make a higher quality game next time, not to mention invest some of that profit into patching and polishing the already released game, which is something you can't even do on Nintendo platforms...

The hard-headed mentality of "only excellent developers are welcome here" does very little to encourage growth on Nintendo platforms. If you're already an excellent developer, chances are you're doing fine on an alternate platform and have been for some time, in which case you don't NEED Nintendo's silly restrictions... These restrictions are only useful if they help create new markets, but new markets don't usually start out with AAA levels of success.

I think this why many small developers see Nintendo environments as hostile, and I can't really blame them.