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Soundwave on 11 September 2012
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lilbroex said:
Soundwave said:
I think it's an arrogant presumption to say "devs need Nintendo". More like Nintendo needs devs, not the other way around.

Lets look at where the new developers who have actually made a name for themselves the last few years are coming from:

Media Molecule - LittleBigPlanet series, made their name on the PS3 thanks to investment from Sony

Rovio - Angry Birds has become a global phenomenon and turned this unknown studio into a global powerhouse. Thanks largely to iOS.

CD Projekt RED - Has brought attention to the fact that big time game development is no longer just a monopoly for devs in North America/Western Europe/Japan. This small developer from Eastern Europe made Witcher/Witcher 2 a hit thanks to Steam/PC market.

PopCap Games - Developer of Plants Vs. Zombies and Bejeweled has made a fortune through iOS/Facebook.

Mojang - Developer of Minecraft the massively successful breakout hit that was basically developed by 1 guy in his garage. This game has sold *nine million copies* and counting, including 3 million on XBLA in just 5 months or so.

These are just off the top of my head as the big break out devs of the last few years. None of them needed a Nintendo platform.

Steam and iOS are the true booms for indie gaming. The three console manufactures are honestly dinosaurs with their $10 licensing fee/copy model. Microsoft is the most progressive with XNA being affordable enough that the average garage developer could make a game. PS3/Wii dev kits are expensive.

1. If that were true then arguments that only Ninendo games sell on a Nintendo hardware(one you made yourself in this thread) would be invalidated. NIntendo made a profit even at their worst(the Gamecube era). They don't "need" the devs to survive because they're software will always sale.

2. You are using the greatest outliers as if they are the majority when they don't even make a difference. In fact from the begining, you have been pushing the extremes of every event as if they are the norm.

A handful of rare sucess story are just that. Rare success stories. The majority of devs in each of those market didn't have 1/10th of the success of those devs you keep throwing calls to.


When I say new developers that is plural. I'm not just talking about 1 or 2 rarities. I'm talking about dozens if not hundreds. They can find success on Nintendo's hardware where they would find it nowhere else. It will have the biggest userbase and thus the biggest range of possibilities. With the anti-piracy effort Nintendo is pushing, they are almost guaranteed sucess as a low cost.

 

Nintendo also pushes variety the likes of which that has not been seen on any other console or even the PC in recent years. The industry has become stale and needs variety. The features of teh Wii-mote and the Upad alone will bring life back to gaming.

A small investment can go a long way on a new console.


The revolution has already started.

It's called iOS/Android and Steam.

If I'm an indie dev why should I pay $10-50k for a dev kit and then on top of that give you $10 for every copy of every game I sell?

Today is truly a golden age for indie devs where you can as a garage developer come up with an idea and bring that idea to an audience of millions.

Sony/MS/Nintendo honestly from an indie developer POV? F*ck 'em. Their business model is horribly outdated.

Look at iOS vs. 3DS eShop, most devs ignore Nintendo like the plague. They don't need Nintendo. Its far cheap to get a game up and running on iOS.

Nintendo is going to be one scrambling to try and improve things now because they've seen (probably to their horror) the rise of the iOS market has completely taken away their Brain Training/Nintendogs audience.

Nintendo makes great games, but painting them as some messiah for original game content is laughable. What new studios has Nintendo invested in? What new IPs have they let any new studio work on? At least Sony invests a lot of in new studios (Media Molecule and so on) and lets them work on new, original IPs, not sequels/spinoffs to the same 7-8 franchises over and over (and over) again.