Do you think Nintendo will be relevent next gen?

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RolStoppable said:

Hiku said:

Companies don't have to be certain before making decisions though. If they suspect it's not going to go well, they can chose to wait and observe. The first game I mentioned, Metal Gear Solid V, was announced and showcased as far back as in August 2012. Yet not at one single point in time since then was a WiiU port ever mentioned. This too was before any "clear" sign of WiiU's future sales appeared, as it was before WiiU even came out. And this is no doubt because Konami never thought the port would be worth making for the WiiU.

"Third parties wanted Nintendo to pay for ports"
And that is only a testament to the developers low expectations of the sales their games would generate on the system. Which is no ones fault but Nintendo's. It's their responsibility to make the console appealing to a wide enough crowd to make third party devs not feel afraid to invest in it. And Nintendo didn't do that. Because even before the console launched, there was a very big concern for the future. Specifically, that when the era of cross gen games started to come to an end, there would be no reason for third parties to make games for the WiiU because of the power and architrectural difference between it and the other 8th gen consoles, unless it's sales were very high.
Nintendo chose to bet on the expensive Gamepad instead, which apparently only garnered to a much smaller audience than they hoped for.

It's not about entitlement. It's simply about being profitable. If they thought the port would be worthwhile, they would make it. It's not like they have anything against making money. They're not asking Sony for money up front, because they know they have a good chance of being profitable on their system.

Because when we get down to the core of why third parties left WiiU, there's really only one single reason. That they don't believe the game will be profitable.
And even if the game happens to generate a bit more revenue than the cost of the port, does that automatically mean that it was worth it? No it doesn't. Because if that profit is only marginable, a company could have spent that time and those resources to work on a much more worthwhile project that could have given them more revenue.

If we look at Call of Duty: Ghosts that you mentioned earlier, according to VGC numbers (let's assume they're accurate) the Wii U version sold 0.25m on the WiiU, and 9.58m on X360. That's around 38 times worse on the WiiU. Now besides the difference in sales compared to the install base difference of the systems, the question is if those 0.25m sales were even worth it for Activision. It appears it wasn't, because they didn't release the next games on the system.
Watch Dogs is another example. According to VGC it only sold 0.07m. That's abysmal if even remotely true.
It's not like these companies have anything against making money. They just weren't doing that on WiiU. Some of them gave it a shot, and failed. Some chose to wait and observe first, because there were obvious bad signs from the beginning.

As for Indie developers, they generally develop more simple games that don't require as much coding or personel, and don't have many other more lucrative projects they could spend those already small resources on. Every game they make that are successful are often good opportunities for them to spread as wide as they can, because you never know if your next game will be popular as well. So porting those simpler and cheaper games make more sense. Unlike popular franchises like Call of Duty for example. Those guys always know that their next game will sell well. At least as things stand today. So they have more lucrative things to use their resources for than WiiU ports that don't don't end up selling as well as they want them to.

Your first paragraph is exactly what I was talking about. Third parties had made up their minds long before the Wii U launched, hence why so many games were never in the plans for the Wii U. Put into other words, this means that they expected Nintendo to pay for ports, otherwise they wouldn't bother.

I disagree that it's Nintendo's responsibility to make third party games profitable. That's the job of third parties themselves, just like it is Nintendo's job to sell their own hardware and games, and be profitable themselves. Hence why the idea of paying for ports of games that won't move Nintendo hardware is ridiculous.

Third parties are asking Sony and Microsoft for money upfront. If one doesn't pay, then the other one will get exclusive marketing rights and some sort of exclusive content, depending on how much they are willing to pay. So no, what third parties are doing isn't merely for profitability, it's about playing console manufacturers against each other to milk as many benefits as possible. Since Nintendo isn't willing to join this game, said practice that is already over a decade old by this point is going to haunt them time and time again. That's why Nintendo came to crossroads after the Wii U failure manifested: Either they will start to pay for all third party games (for clarification, we are still talking only about the major third party publishers) or they will do their business without all those games. Nintendo has already chosen the latter.

I didn't mention Call of Duty in this thread at all.

Explain it any way you want, but the increase of indie support for Nintendo platforms shows that there is a market for third party games. Well, for good ones at least. Lackluster ports that are sold at the same or higher prices than Nintendo software neither fly at retail nor in the digital-only space. Just like it isn't Nintendo's responsibility to make third party software profitable on their systems, it isn't gamers' responsibility to play charity and make tripe like Watch Dogs or Tengami profitable.

Then what's the problem? Third parties supposedly don't like Nintendo, apparently Nintendo fans don't like third parties, so you got what you wanted ... a system with no third party games. 

This is like the guy who complains that he doesn't have a girlfriend, maybe approaches one in a bar once a month, gets shot down, and then decides it's the fault of women for not seeing what an awesome guy he is or that girls only want guys with money. 

Sony doesn't pay for the majority of ports. The reason they are prioritized by third party developers is because Sony put in *effort* to make sure they market to the audience that buys third party games and also makes games themselves like Uncharted and God of War which appeal to the same demographic third parties are trying to get to. 

Third parties know that there's an audience for them on Sony and MS machines and that those two companies listen to them and prioritize around them starting with the actual design of the system right on down to marketing. 

Hence those types of games sell great on their platform. Same for Microsoft. Not so great for Nintendo.