Well going back yes Nintendo doesn't give their developers complete freedom. But of the three they do seem to give the most freedom to their internal teams. I have heard it often from Retro employees and ever Rare ex staff that Nintendo gave them tons of freedom. I was upset about Retro working on Netflix rather then their own IP and talked with Retro staffers. I was told that they had actually wanted to work on Metroid.
Nintendo doesn't just give them freedom but Miyamotos projects often have developers given massive freedoms. Miyamoto has said multiple times that he is letting developers change and innovate giving them creative freedoms.
Nintendo has been giving developers a ton of freedom for a very long time. It has worked very very well for them. Of course sometimes Nintendo intervenes like Dinosaur Planet, but ask yourself why they did that? Their are several good reasons that have been given. But I personally believe this was because Rare was already looking to sell. Nintendo did not want to fund a title a new IP that Rare would take with them to who ever bought them. Why would Nintendo want to create another new IP for who ever bought Rare?
Nintendo's freedoms that they gave developers has been hugely successful. Skyward Sword, Mario Galaxy and several other titles. Nintendo has seen tons of success.
Also now the downsides people talk about like five year Dec cycles. If the game is coming from a successful developer like Miyamoto or maybe a studio like Naughty Dog or David Jaffe heck yes they should be allowed to take as long as they need to release a game.
I saw someone mention GranTurismo ya great example the game is one of the most successful titles ever released by Sony. Now I did not know the developer had complete freedom but it would make sense.
As for Rol's comment on hardware and launch line up. Well firstly I am not talking about giving control of hardware to developers. But a great example would be WiiU right now developers say Nintendo is giving them all the tools they request. This will lead to amazing support and products.
Sorry but from what Jaffe has said what Naughty Dog has said and what Insomniac has said Sony intervenes far too often and limits developers abilities. You wanna say how badly freedom has effected Nintendo well look how had Sony has done cracking down on freedom.
Sorry if Jaffe was given nearly complete freedom lets say like Miyamoto gets or Naughty Dog given the freedom of Retro or EAD. How different could this generation have gone if Sony had given Jaffe, Naughty Dog and Insomniac complete freedom?
PS all the problems people point out are things Sony themselves are saying needs to change. Such as releasing less games that are built better and supported more marketing wise. Say Sony gave the developers complete freedom instead of releasing 4 games per team per generation releasing only 2 but these games are not only better designed but they have a lot more marketing budget and longer legs.
I hear about problems with many big studios and one major problem is freedoms. Nintendo just had its most successful generation since NES and it was with more developer freedom then ever before.
-JC7
"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer
