Can anything 'save' the Wii U?

[Mr Khan]

Norris2k said:

Mr Khan said:

lol.

But seriously, i'd say

1) Fuck third parties (as in, the big, multiplat publishers). They don't want you, don't bother trying to get them, fighting for them is a fool's errand. Make a device that's easy to program for and try to siphon what you can from mobile/indie development to round out the library.

2) Make it day-one profitable; any hardware that could get in the way of that (like the gamepad) isn't worth pursuing.

3) Integrate it with the handheld development environment to maximize library, both first and third party.

4) (Something they did right this gen and should continue) more third party partnerships with Nintendo IP to help diversify brand exposure. Just don't think that they're going to attract the mainline franchises because of that. Fund more orphaned third party games, as long as you think they can turn a profit or at least break even.

I agree with all (especially 4 that would give them more games, and more focus on main and new IPs) but number 1. Are they even trying, to be so unsuccessful with 3rd party ? What I heard is that their development kit are not on par with Sony/MS and that the documentation suck. How much did they lowered their license fee that were the highest before the PS1 ? Do they offer money and support like everyone else ?

I mean some studios had such a great relationship with Sony they offered themselves to be bought. The very little I heard from Nintendo is that F-Zero GX was not good for Miyamoto, that they don't need rare anymore, and I read something about the Argonaut Games studio (the first starfox) boss complaining how much their relationship with Nintendo had been disappointed (used and thrown away).

I could be wrong, but it's hard to think that with their massive money and massive Wii success, they fought to get 3rd party, but it failed all because of 3rd party attitude.

It's clear that they can't even get third parties to give them the time of day in the first place, like the debacle with EA where unprecedented partnership turned into the console treated worst by EA since the damn Dreamcast, and all happened before the console even landed. So it's not like "we tried, but ran into problems because Nintendo's a bad partner to work with," it's more "we refused to try." Now, they may have had good reasons for doing so, and i'm suppressing my innate bias against the major third parties in this, but my point is that trying isn't worth it for Nintendo, which might not be third parties' fault, and might not be Nintendo's fault, just that we're past the point where rebuilding the relationship is worth it for Nintendo.

My guess is that the only way Nintendo could have gotten worthwhile third party support would have been with an x86 machine with 8 GB of RAM: do what the competition has done, as close as possible. This would not be worth it to Nintendo, so don't bother.