Nintendo and 3rd Party Development: Solving the Problem

[Mr Khan]

badgenome said:

Mr Khan said:

PS2 original and really not the same thing at all.

Better still, where are the Mario followers? Aside from the occasional Sonic game and Rayman, no third party bothers to put 3D or 2D platformers on board, either.

The only games 3rd parties make in Nintendo's footsteps were the expanded audience games.

I wasn't being serious, in case that wasn't obvious. But aren't there tons and tons of platformers on Wii because Nintendo is and always has been the "platformer console" thanks to Mario?

Anyway, I'm not saying that just because Nintendo makes, say, Metroid, third parties will flock to make Metroid-alikes. For one thing, even the real deal didn't sell all that many copies, and if Nintendo's Metroid can't crack 2 million copies, then that's not going to instill much hope in would-be copycats

Meanwhile, Nintendo's expanded audience stuff sold a fucking buttload. So did garbage that aped those games, like Carnival Games. The Wii's reputation as "that minigame console" was set very, very early in life, and Nintendo laughed all the way to the bank, at least for a while. Don't forget that this was more than okay with them, and it went to their heads in a big way. I can't be the only one who remembers them talking loads of trash and basically telling core gamers (and even their very own customers) to go fuck themselves. "Only nerds want a storage solution" and crap like that. Then everyone decided that rubbing their telephones was even more fun than spasmodically gyrating across the living room, and the Wii fad passed. And here we are.

It isn't third parties' responsibility to help create a particular situation on a particular console, or to do anything else but make money for themselves. The first parties have a bird's eye view of the situation, and it is their responsibility to make sure that the software is there on their console to appeal to every slice of the gaming audience they want to appeal to. They should have the support lined up well in advance of ever rolling the thing out the door. So when Sony and Nintendo suffer through horrible launches because they have no games, they are the only ones to blame.

I agree with the last point, although we should all be able to agree that third parties should have a bit more foresight and in general get their heads out of their asses (because their strategies on PS3/360 aren't the greatest thing in the world on the whole, either).

In Nintendo's case, though, it just really seems like they aren't big enough for their own market. I mean, it's not like Nintendo has studios that just sit around and twiddle their thumbs (except possibly Nintendo Software Technology), and if they're working at capacity and its insufficient, it means they need to expand, but as we've seen time and again in the game industry, while there are lots and lots of really talented individuals out there, forging them into an efficacious unit is hard, and there's nothing stopping the talent from walking out of a studio that you've bought out.