Nintendo Enthusiats: No Mr. Adelman, You’re Wrong About Nintendo’s Third-Party Situation

[Mr Khan]

Shadow1980 said:

Mr Khan said:

I disagree, given that third parties abandoned Wii U *before* they abandoned PS360, that it's clearly not an issue of power. They simply aren't interested in putting their best foot forward in Nintendo's environment, and it would cost Nintendo a small fortune to get even a few of them to do so, and that's assuming that Sony and/or MS didn't try to stop them in the process.

Nintendo needs to focus on building their own environment, keep up the specific third-party partnerships (for abandoned games like B2 or Devil's Third and IP-partnerships like Pokken and Hyrule Warriors), and focus on tapping into low-end third party support that can't function elsewhere.

I knew the current third-party situation with the Wii U would come to pass from the very beginning. Once they started putting more emphasis on the PS4 and XBO their support for the Wii U would dry up. The Wii U got a lot of games that were purely seventh-gen (or at least originally so), including ACIII, Arkham City & Arkham Origins, Black Ops II, Ninja Gaiden 3, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, NFS: Most Wanted, Injustice, RE: Revelations, Deus Ex, and Rayman Legends, among others. But cross-gen games? Not as many. It got AC: Black Flag, COD: Ghosts, Watch Dogs, and a couple of Lego games, but that's about it. The Wii U's poor commercial performance probably accelerated the process, but there was no way third parties were going to continue supporting the Wii U once the PS4 and XBO became their primary focus. Even the 360 & PS3 have noticably reduced support this year and will likely have no major games in 2016.

Even though the Wii U didn't get the third-party games it needed (most cross-gen games were no-shows, and no purely eighth-gen games are present), it did show that third parties weren't just shunning Nintendo on principle. Given the relatively low costs of porting 360 & PS3 games to the Wii U (<$1M according to Ubisoft, which means they'd maybe need to sell only 50k copies to break even) it was probably more of a case of "Why the hell not?" Even if Nintendo fans (likely pretty much all of the Wii U's user base) don't buy a ton of third-party games, it was enough for some additional pocket change for the third parties. But once the PS4 & XBO came out it was obvious that it was more worth their time and effort to ignore the system that was already about to end up in third place in a generation it had a year-long head start in (the PS4 sold more in its first few weeks than the Wii U did in all of 2013). There were already two systems with a combined install base of almost 170 million plus two more destined to sell many tens of millions of units in their own right. These new systems were going to be where the real money is going to be made when it came to cross-gen games, but more importantly they offered the kind of power they needed for purely eighth-gen games. Ultimately, the Wii U was a victim of its lack of power when it came to third-party support. The sales situation merely exacerbated things.

But if Nintendo made a conventional system next time it would be suitable to the needs of third parties and would appeal to people other than Nintendo fans. Unless they can come up with another gimmick that resonates with gamers and is marketed well enough, then without third-party support the best they can hope for is 20-25 million. With strong third-party support, I think they could do three times that.

We must be seeing two different things. I look at Wii U third party support as a precise example of third parties shunning Nintendo on purpose. A purpose that was retroactively justified, but they could hardly know that (look how badly they blew it with the Wii).