By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Soundwave on 25 August 2015
Edit Thread
spemanig said:
Soundwave said:

They're never going to have "great" third party support again barring a miracle. Even if they made a machine that was identical to the PS4, that train has long since passed into the night and they've lost that audience. Sony/MS are not going to just hand it over.

Even in the GameCube days when they had basic parity with hardware, GCN third party games almost always sold a good deal less than even their XBox versions. In very small specific cases this wasn't true, like Soul Calibur 2, but how many games can you shove Link into?

I think the goal now is more realistically to retain/increase Japanese developer support. Japanese developers want to support Nintendo moreso IMO, the main stumbling block is the Wii U has the hardware power but not the userbase Japanese devs needs, the 3DS has the userbase, but because it's so ancient tech wise it can't do modern higher-end games justice in many cases (ie: Square-Enix cannot put any type of Final Fantasy XV or Kingdom Hearts 3 on it, because the power gap is simply ridiculously large, DQXI deals with it by basically making an entirely different game for the 3DS but not every game is going to to do that). 

If you can get that and some basics from Western devs (even just maintaining the Western support the Wii U had for it's first two holidays), that's pretty much decent enough for Nintendo. NX like any Nintendo hardware post-SNES will sink or swim based on Nintendo's IPs. 

Beyond that if they can get these IP on a portable format, it gives them a legitimate different way to enjoy said franchises (unlike the GameCube). I wouldn't mind being able to play something a fairly high end version of FIFA or even a scaled back Kingdom Hearts 3 or something on the road. That's something the iPad/smartphones really don't do, but you can't exactly put your PS4 in your back pack either. 


Sony and Microsoft aren't in charge of multiplat distribution. The have literally no sway in who goes where. If Nintendo makes a viable platform for third perties, they will come. This defeatist attitude of, "fuck third parties because they wouldn't have come anyway" doesn't exist, and Nintendo has never, and will never do something so intentionally against good relations with them as bringing back carts.

The GCN had minidisks. The other two didn't. Carts would be even more damaging than that.

They aren't going to get any support with carts, and their goal isn't to specifically target one group of publishers while completely ignoring the rest. Nobodies is. No sane console manufacturer is going to simply stop trying to gain support from certain developers just because it's a "lost cause." That's stupid. Japanese developers don't want to support Nintendo "moreso." Everyone wants to support Nintendo, but when every console since the N64 comes with a caveat, they aren't going to. That's not a western dev thing. That's an every dev thing.

There's absolutely no reason Nintendo can't get great third party support outside of making stupid decisions that intentionally antagonize devs like using carts when both other competition are using far less expensive to manufacture discs. Nintendo only lives or dies by their first party software because post SNES they've had nothing BUT their first party software. There's no reason that can't change on the NX.

I agree with the last paragraph, and I'm 100% sure that's the gimmick of the NX, but that can be done, and unquestionably better, with digital games.


One thing I think Nintendo fans sometimes gloss over about the GameCube era is most every multi-plat title sold the least on the GameCube. In some cases it wasn't even close, I'm looking at sales of some of the Madden NFL games and it's ridiclous ... like 1+ million for PS2, 500k+ for the XBox ... and 80k (lol) for the GameCube version. This isn't a mini-disc problem ... this is a demographic problem. 

Nintendo's problem in the console arena really is that to fundamentally compete with Sony they would really have to start marketing almost 100% towards college aged young males and making games that they like and making all hardware decisions for that audience first and foremost. Like Sony/MS do. They would also have to dramatically scale back the Disney-styled mascot games. One Mario would be fine, but it would need to have sports games, shooters, and violent action games. 

If they don't do that, then in comparison to the other two, Nintendo by default gets looked upon as the "kids console". Fairly or not, that's just how that cookie crumbles. "Yo, the new GTA is bad ass, but did you check out that new Yoshi game with plushie toy Amiibos? Or the new Kirby? Daaaaaamn" .... said no GTA owner ... ever. 

I honestly don't care even if they go digital only. To be honest I don't care if the games come on tampons or through magical fairies that fly in through the window from Nintendo HQ. I play the game ... to play the game. I don't care about packaging or whatever. But if some people just cannot live without a physical freaking format, then I think it's just better to give it to them then to pointlessly argue against them. As a business you get bigger things to worry about than that and with a unified platform.

I don't think third parties will care if Nintendo is using a $1 card versus a 25 cent disc. Even if a third party is so hell bent on a digital only release ... so what? Release your game digital only then. No one's stopping you or holding a gun to your head, Nintendo doesn't give two craps either way because they get their $10-$15 licensing fee cut either way. Nintendo themselves is starting to release some games as digital only, I'm sure they would not mind if a third party did that if that's what they wanted to do (at this point I think they'd welcome any developer support period).