Why can't other 2nd party Nintendo devs ever compete with RARE?

[theRepublic]

NoirSon said:

theRepublic said:

NoirSon said:
The biggest hurdle appears to be Nintendo itself.

During the SNES, N64 and early parts of the GC era, Nintendo was a lot more open, experimental and less restrictive with the types of games it let its second party developers work on.

1. Since, a quarter or about half way through the Wii's life cycle there was a shift that contracted most games Nintendo would put support behind. We are only now seeing Nintendo shift away from that stance in terms of the games it supports but the fact is had Rare stuck around they wouldn't have done nearly as many original games as they did in the N64 era.

2. Retro could have done more games in the Wii era then Metroid Prime 3 (and technically Trilogy) and Donkey Kong Country Returns, Nintendo just didn't let them pull the trigger on allocating sources to other projects.

1. Is there any evidence at all for this?  Nintendo didn't support Rare's Conker's Bad Fur Day back on the N64 for just one example.  What change are you talking about?  Nintendo has always been careful about releasing only quality (and mostly family friendly) software under their name.

2. So people were just sitting around Retro doing nothing?  They didn't have more resources to allocate.  Games take a lot longer to make now due to the vastly increased complexity.  I'm not sure why the OP, and some people in the thread refuse to acknowledge this.

1. Yeah, Conker's Bad Gur Day was released on the N64, they also release Geist and Eternal Darkness on the GC. As I said the contraction seemed to occur about a quarter or about half way through the Wii's life cycle. They obviously still released quality games and took chances, but you can name a number of games they decided not to release sequels to on the Wii despite the system and its motion controls fitting the game play like 1080 Snowboarding, Star Fox or F-Zero. Then you have some less then family friendly games that could have helped parched the drought in the Wii's Western (or NA in particular) release schedule between their own major releases such as Diaster: Day of Crisis, Zangeki no Reginleiv, Fatal Frame/Zero 4 and the remake of Fatal Frame/Zero 2 and nearly the three extremely well done Operation Rainfall games. These were small releases that could have helped during the back half of the Wii's life cycle, heck not cutting of the creation of games like Metriod Prime Trilogy, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Punch-Out and a number of other games less then 18 after their release would have also helped in that regard.

2. I agree with you but the fact is Nintendo controls Retro and how much they have to work with. Nintendo was more content for most of the Wii's life cycle to have Retro work on either Donkey Kong Country or working to help other teams (such as their contributions toward Mario Kart 7 stages) then actually working on new software. Retro isn't a massive team but they should still be large enough that you can have some of them working on one big project and others working on something smaller even if it is only meant to be a eShop or DS/3DS title. If other Nintendo teams like Intelligent systems and even Monolith Soft can work on multiple projects Retro should have output then they do unless they are being muzzled on what they actually are able to do. We get several open sandbox games and their sequels in the last generation, while AAA development is hard and a much longer process, just putting out software can still be done in reasonable time if effort and the main company is willing.

What I said was that Nintendo didn't support Conker.  They refused to publish it.  Rare ended up publishing it themselves in NA and THQ did in Europe.

Nintendo has only so many resources to create and release games.  They have to make choices.  They can't just greenlight every idea.  They have limited manpower, limited time, and limited money.  Some games that appeared the previous gen don't get a sequel.  Others do.  Some brand new games get made.  And some games make an appearance from 2 generations or more ago.  An example of that being Sin and Punishment.

I wanted to check to see the number of games Nintendo has published for their most recent consoles.  This is for all regions.

Number of Nintendo Published Games Per Year (Any Region)
	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Year 6	Year 7	Year 8	Total
N46 ('96-'01)	7	8	12	12	14	2	---	---	55
Gamecube ('01-'06)	4	10	13	13	13	4	---	---	57
Wii ('06-'13)	3	15	13	14	13	8	11	1	78
WiiWare ('08-'10)	8	10	9	---	---	---	---	---	27
Wii U ('12-'14)	4	13	4	---	---	---	---	---	21
Wii U eShop ('13-'14)	8	4	---	---	---	---	---	---	12

This chart certainly surprised me.  With as prolific as Rare was during the N64 years, I expected the overall total to be much higher than the Gamecube and Wii years.  Not true.  Perceptions don't always equal reality.  The Wii does have 5 "New Play Control" games in there, so you could knock those out of the list.  Yes, some games are region specific, but this gives a rough idea of Nintendo's output.

I do wish NOA would have localized some more games, like the ones you mention.  However, that is an NOA problem in specific, not Nintendo in general.  Those games were all published in Japan, Europe, and Australia, so I don't know what the hell NOA's problem was.  If you want to argue that Nintendo should not be wasting time with games that will not release in all regions, I will 100% agree with that.  Or if you want to argue that NOA should be bringing in games that were localized into English anyway, I will 100% agree with that too.

I don't know what to tell you about Retro.  I can only assume they are working at full capacity.  There would be no reason for people to be sitting around doing nothing.  This is everything we know they have been involved in so far:

2002 - Metroid Prime
2004 - Metroid Prime 2
2006 - Metroid Prime Hunters
2007 - Metroid Prime 3
2009 - Metroid Prime Trilogy
2010 - DKCR
2011 - MK7
2013 - DKCR 3D
2014 - DKC Tropical Freeze

So they were working on smaller projects as DKC TF was being developed.  Unfortunately, no one is going to get excited about them co-developing a game we knew was coming anyway and a port.  I understand they did the DK assets in MK7 and the retro tracks.  Not exactly sexy work, but someone had to do it and Nintendo gave them the job.