el_gallo said:
Imagine once upon a time that DLC was just something you downloaded, it patched into the original game enough to show it was there and then that was the total amount resources necessary. The REALITY, the REALITY is that by now, all these bits of software and the tools to create them should be inexpensive and commoditized. Like when a car is made, they make loads of them, the tolerances are tight and they are churned out quickly and relatively inexpensively. The claims by many in the videogame industry appear to be that these games are still very much like fashioning an airplane. There is a set of plans but in the end, it is almost like they are completely custom creations crafted rather than manufactured. The industry can choose that path if it wants and many publishers are going broke as a result. That isn't the fault of Nintendo or anyone else. I just know that the numbers outside of the videogame industry are massive. Apple is selling as many iOS devices in a quarter as there are Xbox 360's sold lifetime as an example. Within that OTHER industry, the costs seem to scale appropriately, everything works well enough and the costs always seem to be going down, not up. The videogame industry keeps claiming the opposite of productivity and efficiency gains. They keep turning around and making each solution the problem. Each time the cost keeps going up. That isn't Nintendo's fault. Outside of consoles the servers don't cost so much they require a yearly online fee. Outside of consoles DLC doesn't need massive numbers of employees and teams just to make an add-on pack. These excuses are lame and don't match reality. Outside of consoles someone can release a game with online play, in game ads, for free and make $50k a day while EA needs to charge micro-transactions just to somehow make it through the financial quarter. It's bullshit and it isn't Nintendo's fault. |
I wasn't suggesting that it's Nintendo's fault or the fault of the publishers. Just that that's how the business works and that many third party publishers aren't making a worthwhile return on their productions on the Wii U. There are certainly ways to solve that problem that don't include dropping support completely, but (and I'm completely speculating here) it's hard to figure out what resonates with the Nintendo audience (even exclusive third party games don't do so well) and that solution would probably cost more than the cost of just porting games over - which is what these publishers want to do for all systems. I believe Ubisoft is doing more than enough considering the returns they're getting - it's almost charitable.