Hedra42 said:
Soundwave said:
The Star Wars deal was due to NOA negotiating a deal with Lucasarts, one in which they actually beat out Sony:
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/110498/LF0065.shtml
I consider them basically 2nd party games, yes you could play them on PC.
Factor 5 also had direct help from Nintendo, for example Rogue Squadron was the first game on the N64 to use the Expansion Pak, even before any of Nintendo's Japanese games were using it. Every Factor 5 game made under the LucasArts/Nintendo was console exclusive to Nintendo with Nintendo having distribution rights and even assisting with development. Factor 5 even helped develop some of the dev tools for the GameCube.
Even Indiana Jones & The Infernal Machine was N64 exclusive on consoles (Factor 5 developed).
If we're including the full generation of Wii + GCN titles, then you need to include the N64 for 2000 and 2001 too, which adds
Perfect Dark
Excitebike 64
Starcraft 64
Banjo-Tooie
Ridge Racer 64
Mickey's Speedway
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Star Wars: Battle for Naboo
To the N64 side. That gives the N64 more than 30 Western developed games, which absolutely dwarfs their output on any of the GameCube (which still had projects in development from the Lincoln/Arakawa era) and certainly the Wii and Wii U where 90%+ of Nintendo's production is from Japan.
It's kinda crazy to remember that at one time Nintendo was working and financing games like Starcraft 64 and Command & Conquer 64 on their own ... today could you imagine them bringing say Diablo to the Wii U? No way, lol.
I can buy one or two relationships fizzling out, but all of them? And most of them really not replaced in a comparable way? That I don't buy. To me that's a concious decision on Nintendo's part.
I wonder what their future in the market really is if they continue on the way they are structured now because I don't think a console made up majority Japanese games will have big success in the West again (which is basically entire console business).
GameCube still had OK Western support until about 2004 but it definitely felt the pinch of not having Rare + a GoldenEye type hit to drive hardware sales. Then it drops off a cliff. Wii U has the least Western developed Nintendo games of any recent Nintendo console. Shockingly it's also by far the lowest selling Nintendo console in North America out of the gate (whoda thunkit).
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As I said, the lists of games are just a symptom of the breakups listed in the OP, and continuing to post lists of games and what Nintendo used to fund and no longer funds does nothing more than say what we already know, which is that there are far fewer western developers than there were.
And as I said, the issue here is that you claimed in the OP that the reason for that is down to Iwata/Nintendo bias against western developers.
You even named the topic "Nintendo/Iwata's Bias Against the West".
In the light of all the evidence showing to the contrary, it might be more productive now to consider what the real reasons are for this disconnect between Nintendo and western developers, which may lead to some insights as to what could possibly be done about it.
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I don't think there's anything that can be done about it. For whatever reason Nintendo just doesn't feel comfortable working with Western developers on a large scale any longer, whereas Sony and Microsoft's management has no such issue here.
I think Purple suggested a "real" reason in that Iwata is a micro-managing personality and the current bigs on the Nintendo board of directors (Iwata, Miyamoto, and Takeda) come from an environment very much rooted in doing things the Japanese way. I think that's basically it. That and they don't like the heavy turn over of Western studios.
The other thing I would say is I think Nintendo overreacted to Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day not being monster blockbusters, even though Perfect Dark was a hit, it was held back by the RAM Expansion requirement (basically) and being released a bit too late. Conker was released waaaay too late. The N64 in general went south by 1999 pretty quickly as a platform because of the cartridge decision, which wasn't Rare's fault either.
You would have to hire someone at the head of NOA who is as competent as Howard Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa were and you would have to grant them autonomy to make deals on their own. Two things I doubt Iwata/Miyamoto/Takeda/etc. will ever go for. I don't think Nintendo would be comfortable giving a Western studio the budget to develop something like Uncharted or Halo either today ... too much of a risk for them.
