With the announcement that Nintendo is outsourcing the SSB IP to Namco Bandai it struck me what they are doing.  Its really very clever.  Nintendos problems have been this up to now,

1)They don't have third party developers

2) They don't have enough developers to create all the games they have demand for.  

3) Third parties don't do well when competing with Nintendo first and second party content.

With all of these problem Nintendo came up with a risky solution which could solve all of them at once.  They are outsourcing their most stable titles to third party developers and co-developing the titles with them.  This solution

1)gets them third party developers

2) frees up development resources

3) gives third parties the unbeatable Nintendo IPs to work with so they are no longer competing with Nintendo, they are nintendo.... in a sense.  

Guy - "Nintendo's fans will decide your fate."

Namco - "I am Nintendo!"

Guy - "Not yet!"

Namco - "It's treason then"

Or something like that

I'm not sure if I can say I understand what you're trying to say.

Same here.

OT: it does sound like a smart thing for Nintendo to do.

I see it like this:

random guy on the internet: "The sales or your game is in hands of Nintendo fans"

Namco or another Co. that makes a game based on a Nintendo IP: "My game is based on a Nintendo IP, so it will sell like a Nintendo game (i.e: 5-10 millions)"

random guy on the internet: "Not necessarily. The IP is from Nintendo but you are not Nintendo. Your game still needs to be as good as if it was developed by Nintendo"

Namco or another Co ...: "But, but.. it's a Nintendo IP on a Nintendo console. It should sell like hotcakes! If not, we will never develop for you again!"

Or maybe he is saying something completely different.

Its a proven formula, they don't really have to elaborate on SSB that much just add some characters to it, think up a new feature or two and the game is done. I don't think its that far out to say a lot of the Nintendo games have been reduced to a science, so just loan a couple guys from the original team out to namco and other companies to keep them in line and watch your development teams expand.

I don't know that it's really "outside of the box" since it's not like they're the first company to have third party developers make games based on first party IPs, but it is a smart move.

Nintendo did this with Metroid: Other M this gen and with Eternal Darkness last gen. It's not really anything new, per se, or thinking outside the box, but I do think the additional development time for WiiU and 3DS games will force Nintendo to use this model more often.

Its not so much to be a Nintendo IP. It also has to be Nintendo quality in every sense of the name.. Nintendo.

So long as Nintendo is co-developing with a lot of approval, then that part should be there as well. After all while some didn't like the story and specifically definition of Samus in Metroid OM, you can't deny it was a quality title.

This really is not a bad idea for Nintendo and knowing how they protect their IPs (pretending Zelda titles on CDi did not exist), it should still be great smash bros game.

On my gosh second-party development?!? This has clearly never happened before. Sega definitely did not make F-Zero GX, Capcom never make three handheld Zelda games, and Square certainly didn't develop Super Mario RPG.

Did I win at Internet sarcasm?