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Hedra42 on 28 August 2014
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Soundwave said:

Most studios are going to say "we mutually decided to part ways" anyway after ending a relationship. It's standard PR. You're not going to say "well Nintendo didn't want us anymore", that doesn't make your studio look good.

Nintendo is a billion dollar company, if they wanted to continue to work with those smaller publisher houses like Factor 5 or Silicon Knights, they could, if they wanted to replace them they easily could too. Rare could have been replaced too. 

They don't want to.

If it's so hard to work with Western developers, why is it that Sony has no such problem?

I don't buy the counter-narrative that Nintendo lost most of their Western support basically by a "series of unfortunate unconnected events". The shift away from Western developers is corporate policy. I don't see any evidence in any of those links that there was any accident about it. 

First of all:

Rare - made the first move.

Silicon Knights - 'mutual decision'.

Zoonami - Unable to complete Gamecube project, but developed Wiiware game later on, before folding as a company.

Factor 5 - not strictly a 2nd party, but did develop exclusive games for Nintendo. Turned away from Nintendo due to weak Gamecube sales.

Left Field - Snowboarding 1080 Gamecube sequel proved too much of a challenge to develop. A large number of people left the company. (not implying that these two are connected) They bought back Nintendo's share of their company.

How do any of these factors point to a bias against western developers, or the deliberate ending of relationships on the part of Nintendo? Show me links and evidence proving that Nintendo was the proactive force in severing these specific ties.

With regards to not taking on new western developers in more recent years, that could well have been a strategic decision on Nintendo's part, or at the very least, looking for western talent seems to have been relegated to a lower priority than making sure their relationships with existing studios continue to thrive. But corporate policy? No way. If it were corporate policy not to have new dealings with western developers, they would not have made their Wii U SDK available to the west.

But you do bring up a valid question as to why Sony's 1st and 2nd party developers are so much more evenly distributed between Asia, North America and Europe.