@noname2200.
What matters the most, despite the how, is the objective:
I think the most important part of what I bolded was "as part of a strategy to bring new strong titles to the system".
That's something that can excite you regardless of the how. It's Nintendo making an aggressive move to attract 3rd parties and reintroduce what they call strong titles to their console. In other words, main entries of big IPs.
The how, and (probably) why:
As for how they're approaching it, put it this way. 3rd parties are still playing hard-to-get despite Nintendo's proven new midas touch. One consequence of that would be that some of the 3rd party publishers may not want to bring some of their successful new IPs to the system, or at least not the main series. In order to court them, Nintendo offers to go through the back door, by offering to fund what the companies don't consider their cash-cows anymore, but were at some point in the future (which indicates their potential for success).
Seaman not good? Try these:
If seaman doesn't please you, consider MegaMan. You know as well as I do that Capcom canned Megaman Legends 3 for the 3DS. There's one. Shenmue. Mmm, I'm sure lots of people would want to play that. What about Crazy Taxi or Jet Grind Radio? Well, even if Nintendo can't touch this one, what about Killer Instinct? All these old franchises that have the ability to shine are out there, Nintendo is brilliant to refurbish the scraps.
About Seaman and why it matters:
Regarding Seaman, you don't see its value, but try to see its important in the Japanese market. I got this from Wikipedia:
|
Reception In Japan, the Dreamcast version of Seaman has sold 399,342 copies as of February 1, 2004, making it the third best-selling Dreamcast game in the region at the time.[4] The PlayStation 2 version of the game has sold 305,632 in Japan as of November 2, 2008.[5] Famitsu rated the game 29/40.[6] Seaman received an Excellence Award for Interactive Art at the 1999 Japan Media Arts Festival[7] and received the Original Game Character of the Year award at GDC 2002.[8] In 2008, Game Informer named the game one of the top ten weirdest of all time.[9] |
For seaman, I don't think it's the game itself that wasn't able to sell, it's more that Sega no longer had the ability to market it as a smash hit anymore.
Other less obvious benefits of this strategy - Return of the King:
Another thing we might want to consider. We don't know exactly which IPs Nintendo is reaching for, but one indirect effect of this strategy is to revive the old Nintendo, where they dominated the market. Since this happened at a time where those old IPs were born, it is another form of bringing back the old kingdom, so to speak. I'm not saying this is the way to go, but I'm offering factors and consequences of this approach that might interest us as fans.
As for the newer IPs such as Seaman, it could also signify Nintendo's defeat of the gamecube stigma and its victory over the dominance of the Playstation toppling once and for all, showing the actual power of the games released during that generation on either the Cube or the Dreamcast (which underperformed due to the dominance of the Playstation brand).
The risk and its mitigation:
By targeting the core and the Non-Nintendo fans, Nintendo risks failing to reach the casual.
My view on this is, as long as Nintendo is still able to pump out casual content (which is not expensive) and continues to attract the DS audience while expanding on this new front, Nintendo has nothing to fear. Actually, this is the bridge Nintendo is looking to make, so as to lock casual gamers in and converting them to core gamers.
