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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Why don't western 3rd party developers support Nintendosystems?

SNES & N64 were actually relatively well supported by Western devs although Japanese games were generally more popular in the console scene. Games like Wolfenstein got SNES releases and a lot of FPS' made their way to N64 from the PC after Goldeneye showed the market was there.

As for Gamecube, with Microsoft comming onto the scene, porting from PC to X-box (and vice-versa) became incredibly easy and PS2s marketshare was just too huge to ignore. The limited space on the disks probably didn't help matters with games becomming increasingly large in size; 1.5 Gb just wasn't enough.

Now, Wii is a weird one. It actually has some decent 3rd-party support, just not in traditional genres and traditional games. The power issue obviously doesn't help, especially for developers comming from a PC background. The Wii offers very different experiences to the HD consoles and the software seems to reflect that.



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Developers are lazy.

Publishers are idiots.

N64
- Publishers: Cartridges too expensive; Nintendo is Kiddy.
- Devs: No space for FMV on cartridges; Nintendo is Kiddy.

GC
- Publishers: PS2 already out and selling well, already has a huge fanbase; Nintendo is Kiddy.
- Devs: Small disc space (not that it stopped Nintendo); Hard to develop for compared to XBOX (though probably no harder than the PS2, but PS2 had a headstart); Nintendo is Kiddy.

Wii (before launch)
- Publishers: Xbox already out with fanbase; PS3 will mimic PS2 success; Nintendo is Kiddy.
- Devs: ZOMG no HD; Similar architecture to GC; Nintendo is Kiddy.

Wii (2007)
- Publishers: Argh, forgot to make games for Wii because it was supposed to fail... best make Wii Play knock offs and charge full price.

Wii (2008)
- Publishers: Some of our cheaply made games were bought, lets make more.
- Devs: Look at the games selling on the Wii, they don't interest me as our studio was created in the PS1/PS2 boom so I don't want to make games for Wii... also HD POWAR!

Wii (now)
- Publishers: see above.
- Devs: The what?

---------

The above added together, are also keeping alive the whole "Only Nintendo games sell on Nintendo system" thing too, though in SNES and N64 days this was probably started because Nintendo was strict about what was released on their system.



SaviorX said:

Rockstar (then known as DMA Design) was prepped to be Nintendo's new Rare/Retro; a second-party associate.

Ninty dropped em in the N64 gen. Then they got vengeance in 2001.

Yeah, there was definitely bad blood between Rockstar North and Nintendo after the whole Body Harvest debacle.  Nintendo at one point even wanted them to turn it into a RPG before they finally just pulled the plug.

To this day, I doubt Rockstar North will ever develop on a Nintendo platform after what happened with N64.



Better question: Why do u care?

Look at the shit they put on the HD consoles...why would you want to play that?



jarrod said:
SaviorX said:

Rockstar (then known as DMA Design) was prepped to be Nintendo's new Rare/Retro; a second-party associate.

Ninty dropped em in the N64 gen. Then they got vengeance in 2001.

Yeah, there was definitely bad blood between Rockstar North and Nintendo after the whole Body Harvest debacle.  Nintendo at one point even wanted them to turn it into a RPG before they finally just pulled the plug.

To this day, I doubt Rockstar North will ever develop on a Nintendo platform after what happened with N64.

TakeTwo *will* force them (at least in regards to properties TakeTwo has a say in), so long as Nintendo's next console is in the multiplat loop next time around. Given all the "multiplat everything" ravings of various publishers, they won't leave devs with a choice.



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.

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Mr Khan said:
jarrod said:
SaviorX said:

Rockstar (then known as DMA Design) was prepped to be Nintendo's new Rare/Retro; a second-party associate.

Ninty dropped em in the N64 gen. Then they got vengeance in 2001.

Yeah, there was definitely bad blood between Rockstar North and Nintendo after the whole Body Harvest debacle.  Nintendo at one point even wanted them to turn it into a RPG before they finally just pulled the plug.

To this day, I doubt Rockstar North will ever develop on a Nintendo platform after what happened with N64.

TakeTwo *will* force them (at least in regards to properties TakeTwo has a say in), so long as Nintendo's next console is in the multiplat loop next time around. Given all the "multiplat everything" ravings of various publishers, they won't leave devs with a choice.


I don't think Wii 2 will be "in the loop" for nextgen, but it should be able to get 360/PS3 direct ports with little trouble.  I still expect any GTA ports we see on Nintendo hardware will come from Leeds though, not North... even a GTA4/Episodes release.



I think some developers simply don't want to compite against Nintendo in their own console. Maybe they feel that if they release a game will be eclipsed if at the same time Nintendo launchs Zelda or Mario (or something like Wii Fit or Wii Sports Resorts).



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11/20/09 04:25 makingmusic476 Warning Other (Your avatar is borderline NSFW. Please keep it for as long as possible.)

I wish they would support Nintendo consoles more.  I would probably buy their games.  I'm just not going to go out of my way to be able to play them though.

They are a business.  Their job is to serve the consumer, not the other way around.



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In my opinion, the reason for western (not only western, eastern join this club as well) developers not support Nintendo is because they have close ties with Sony and Sony knows if third-parties left them behind to support Nintendo, they're as good as dead. Sony can't, by no means, survive only with it's first and second-party titles, so a strong third-party support is vital for them. Third-parties don't want Sony to go down, so they don't support Nintendo because it's Sony's major competitor.