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MaskedBandit2 on 23 August 2014
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padib said:
MaskedBandit2 said:

lol of course they do.  They need the licensing revenue.  They need the genre diversity.  They need the games to fill in the gaps between their own releases.  They need a larger and expanding audience to sell to.  They need the consumer mindshare and retail presence throughtout the whole year.  3rd parties bring all of these.  No console maker can survive on their own, and frankly, there's no point to either.  

@bold. Nintendo did fine on their handhelds. I don't see why it should be any different for their home consoles. All their most popular systems were successful on and only on the success of 1st party hardware, even the NES. The only possible exception may be the SNES.

If licensing revenue is the issue, then 3rd parties could also make more money on Nintendo platforms. It goes both ways.

What Nintendo needs is coming next gen, and that is a unified game library between its portables and its home consoles. Problem solved.

1) Handhelds are a different market and in the past have had less competition.

2) Handhelds are cheaper to develop and quicker to develop for, meaning higher margins and more games out in a shorter amount of time.

3) Their handhelds still have had a large selection of 3rd party games in the past.  The 3DS still has some Japanese titles. 

Their consoles have always had some semblance of 3rd party support (their weakest having the least), and the majority of software sales on the Wii were from 3rd parties.  The Wii is exactly what I'm talking about when I say Nintendo has to establish the audience and 3rd parties will follow.  Their success with motion control and the likes of Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit, Wii Party, and Nintendo's appeal to kids brought in gamers and games and made the likes of Deca Sports, Carnival Games, Game Party, Zumba Fitness, EA Active, Just Dance, Skylanders, Disney Infinity, Lego games, etc succeed so well.  These games help carry momentum, spread positive word-of-mouth, instill retailer and publisher confidence, and provide a ton of licensing revenue for Nintendo.  

This is what they need, and what they are not getting with the Wii U.  They haven't got any sizable market onboard beyond their own fans, so 3rd parties have no one to sell to, which is exactly why 3rd parties can't make any money.  It doesn't go both ways here.  Right now, beyond the couple of IP aimed at kids, the 3rd party console market is mainly geared at the teenage-20s male audience, so I'm assuming that's the types of games this topic is addressing.