| Aielyn said: 1. Games sell consoles, not the other way around. |
While it's true that software drives hardware, it is not 3rd party publishers job to drive hardware adoption for Nintendo.
Let me explain a publisher's job is to bring software to the audience, that means bringing games to the platforms where there is an audience for the game not creating the audience on a platform where it doesn't exist. It is the platform creators job to build a platform that attracts an audience so that publishers want to bring their games to that platform so the platform holder can then take a cut. And it is not in the publishers best interest to split the audience up on new platforms, in fact it's in the publishers best interest to try and keep the audience on as few platforms as possible. Because each new platform increases costs.
So now you may be trying to formulate the counter arguement of publishers always support new platforms etc. Well that is out of necessity a new platform usually means that consumer focus is going to shift as the marketing push of the platform holder will move on to the new platform, and as seen with current trends in software sales late in a console generation sales tend to slow down due to the huge amount of available software especialy used. And the transition to a new platform will lead to consumers looking for new software for their new platform which allows publisher to sell games to people that would not normally be able to sell to those people which is why you see a lot of new IPs launch at the start of a generation.
Now with the Wii Nintendo failed to convince 3rd parties that there was a market for many their AAA games on the system. And as such publishers largely and gladly avoided the system for many of the top games so they would not have to deal with creating Wii SKUs that were drastically different thanks to the outdated specs and control scheme. And many 3rd parties did support the audience that the Wii had with games like Just Dance etc which were very successful. With the Wii U Nintendo is trying desperately to convince publishers that they can build a market on the system, via publishing deals like for Byonetta 2 etc. But until they prove that market exists (or the third parties that were willing to risk investing in the platform) don't expect wide spread acceptance of the console for 3rd party AAA titles.
MS and Sony will face the same problem but they will have a much easier time of it thanks to being the successors to consoles where 3rd parties were very successful. But it's no sure thing ether Sony lost much of the audience they had built up this generation to MS which forced many more publishers to support both platforms. MS or Sony could fuck up and fail to create an audience that publishers want to access, just like Nintendo did with the N64 from the SNES. Wii U could end up being the dominant platform for the audience for the games that 3rd party publishers make just like the PS1 did back in the day. But it's up to Nintendo to do that not 3rd parties, publishers exist to serve their share holders not Nintendo, and if they don't think that Nintendo can attract an audience that they want to serve then they won't invest in the platform.
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