Reggie “really chafes” when people say Wii lost the hardcore

[Mr Khan]

NightDragon83 said:

Mr Khan said:

NightDragon83 said:
Nintendo fans: We don't need no stinking 3rd party games, we've got the best 1st party games out there!

Nintendo fans 2 seconds later: Why aren't 3rd parties supporting Nintendo consoles as much as the others?

Why is a good question, and one that no-one has answered to any satisfaction. No, Nintendo doesn't need them, but it would be good if they had them.

If the Wii U can't get GTA, might as well stick a fork in it, because it's done as far as the hardcore gamers go.

Right, and 2K/Rockstar would be at fault for that, because it then means they lose a viable platform to put games on for the next five years, or they could invest in the ground floor, still make money now, with the opportunity to make more money later.

Again, the question is not answered to satisfaction, except that third parties are dumb, petty, and hateful.

The answer is simple... because major 3rd party games don't sell nearly as well on Nintendo systems, mainly because the Nintendo audience primarily cares about Nintendo games above everything else, and the fact that their current audience is made up of many expanded / casual gamers that don't care for graphics intensive, mature, and/or competitive online multiplayer games like the GTA's, COD's, Mass Effects and Assassin's Creeds of the world in the first place.

Take this example from last gen:  RE4, probably the biggest 3rd party exclusive on the GC and one of the best looking games from last gen period, barely sold a million copies in the west and less than 2m worldwide lifetime.  It was later ported to the PS2 with an inferior looking version but with extra gameplay features and options... and it outsold the GC version by more than 2-1 according to the data here on VGC.

Hell, the enhanced Wii Edition sold better than the GC version, and was one of only a few AAA hardcore games released during the Wii's lifespan.  So what are 3rd parties supposed to do when they know that releasing mature games on a Nintendo system, especially today, runs a huge risk and might not be worth it to them?  Take-Two for example knows that most of the people who are going to get a game like GTA are going to do so on consoles like PS360, or the PC.  Nobody interested in this game is going to buy a Wii U for the purpopse of playing GTA.

Yes, but if it's actually a game worth buying, Wii U owners might buy it. RE4 is a bad example, partly because they indeed chose to make it exclusive, and released it when the damage due to lack of third party games on GameCube was already done. As a multiplat, that's still a million more copies than they would have sold if they had made it PS2 exclusive, and that's the core argument here. People say "why do they still bother with Call of Duty on Wii? It's only a million copies versus ten million a piece on PS360," because that's a million copies that they wouldn't have sold otherwise. Once you make that first bridge to a platform, that's most of your future porting costs. If GTAV sold 1.5 million on Wii U, only, then it would still be more than worth it as both a present investment ($$) and as a future one.

Third party games not selling nearly as well on Nintendo consoles is because 3rd parties usually (and RE4 is no exception here, because of how quickly they announced that the PS2 version would have more features) make the Nintendo-console version the bitch version. Madden NFL All Play, insanely feature-stripped Call of Duties, a version of Rock Band without the ability to download songs or do anything but quickplay. The games come late and without options, and so they are scorned, rightfully, because they are the inferior versions, and so people who really want the game buy it elsewhere and people who are only mildly interested just skip it altogether. If you put real effort in (and the game isn't insanely niche to start with, or remove aspects of the game that made the series famous in the first place, a la GTA: Chinatown Wars), then you get results, this is a constant across all platforms and Nintendo platforms are no exception

Again: the blame falls on 3rd party shoulders, so where's the good answer for "why?"