I'd agree somewhat if Nintendo took any form of financial risks in their consoles. There is absolutely no excuse for them not to be competitive on the hardware front, other than a complete fear of the potential negative side effects, that in essence is the exact opposite of 'ballsy'.

Nintendo certainly follows their own creative paths and doesn't die on the vine for third party support. So to that extent they're 'ballsy'. Nintendo literally makes a console with 10 year old + technology and re-brands it as a new console and you call them 'ballsy'?

They aren't ballsy with their pocketbook, which in regard to any business is the 'biggest' way you could be ballsy.

1) "Electronic Arts's relationship with Sega produced significant rewards for both companies. Genesis quickly became a lucrative new outlet for Electronic Arts, and Sega benefited from having a line of sophisticated games that appealed to and older audience more than most games on the NES.

Nintendo approached Electronic Arts about making games for NES in the mid-1980s, long before Sega announced Genesis. But Hawkins did not want to make games for the eight-bit console. He and many other Electronic Arts board members felt that NES was not powerful enough to run their computer games and they did not want to downgrade their games to run on it. Like many people at the time, Hawkins was openly disdainful of console games and critical of Nintendo's chances of success", -- The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent, p. 409.

Familiar rhetorics, isn't it? "Older audience", "not powerful enough", "do not want to downgrade" etc. He never really changed his stance on Nintendo and console in general to a lesser extent despite being proven wrong. For the record if you think Steven Kent is some sort of Nintendo-worshipper, he really isn't. He was openly critical about the Wii, thought it'd fail (many thought that way though), when was proven wrong was quoted to say smth like "I pity that people weren't smart enough not to buy this piece of shit", -- or smth along those lines.

2) When I was more interested in the subject VGC is dealing with, I did this chart. These are revenues from video game publishing on all relevant consoles at the time:

I still have methodology for this and links on the sources (though links might be broken by now). I went over trouble to check every fiscal report of major publishers back then and make them consistent (different fiscal periods, GAAP vs. Non-GAAP, currency conversion etc., no inflation depreciation though). The most questionable numbers are "Others" as I took them from VGC directly.

So to put this chart into words, Nintendo used to be HUGE, every fourth buck made in the biz was made by Nintendo just on two consoles versus sixth of them for the rest of the publishers, or two put it differently in 2009 Nintendo was as big as four it's biggest contenders put together. Nintendo potentionally could be literally not-reliant on third parties at all, the only way to convience third parties to make a consistent publishing business on Nintendo hardware is to make Nintendo hardware dominant by Nintendo software. Sony cannot do that, not even close, while Nintendo theoretically still could that.

Nintendo is basically eating EA's pie. EA is justified to be hating Nintendo.

If you think that's facepalm worthy, imagine me reading your replies. If you really find it that hard to just agree to disagree like adults, then don't bother responding to my posts. It's fairly simple.

I guess you didn't saw my post when I first brought it up, so you don't know other companies are doing this as well...

Hmm, I guess I should've put some imphassis that that comment was meant for sarcastic purposes. Seems like I failed to made you understand that and I was also agreeing with you in a joking manner. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Oh gosh, I'm sorry. Let me go look at all 12 pages, post by post and get back to you on that, hun.

Also, it doesn't surprise me. My only point is that I think companies are losing touch with what gamers really want, what kind of features they want on their consoles and that just as we sometimes demonize Sony and MS, Nintendo a cheecky little devil. I bet a lot of people would gadly trade some of those social/TV applications from the Xbox one for some bakwards compatability. They are also not very concious of the good that used games or LP can do for them. While it does cost sales and it is a business after all, there can be a lot of potential buyers the next time around.

This has been an eye-opener for me. I'll watch how this develops

I'm pretty sure this thread was about having the balls to stand up to 3rd parties.

You say he makes too many assumptions, but then you go on to make your own. (underlined)

It's either you play speculative or you don't.

You are acting a complete hypocrite and I have no respect for you.  I assure you, you are no martyr.  I mocked you because of YOU started insulting me.  YOU started with the combative attitude.  YOU started insulting other types of games as though only YOUR tastes are any good.  If you say otherwise, then you're a liar.  Out of all the different types of gamers out there, I despise the self-righteous, "the games I like are superior and special" kind the most.  And you want to pretend you acted like an adult?

"Nintendo never lost third party support due to "greed". Anyone who believes that is a fool."  I suppose you DIDN'T start out with a direct insult from the start?  Good god, I can't believe you're trying to pretend you didn't start this.  That kind of sickens me.

"So I honestly don't know what the hell you're talking about there."  No, that's not combative at all.

"In an older issue of Game Informer, Bing Gordon, a former Chief Creative Officer for Electronic Arts, remembers what it was like dealing with Nintendo during the 8-Bit/16-Bit days.

“Nintendo was operating with near monopoly power,” Gordon says. “They had like a 95 percent share of the console business, and they had earned it because they took a huge risk. If a publisher wanted to get in bed with the NES, they had to fly to Japan, state its case for a development system, and if Nintendo deemed it worthy, there was only one deal on the table. Nintendo would sell the company a dev kit for what Gordon calls “a ridiculous price,” and after a game was finished the publisher had to send it to Nintendo, which would ultimately decide whether our not it would be manufactured.”

Gordon couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Wait, we spend all this time and we build a game but we don’t know if we can bring it to market?,” Gordon remembers asking.

Nintendo responded, ‘That’s right, and if we decide to bring it to market, we manufacture it and we’ll tell you how many we’ll build. You pay us half the cost, and then we manufacture it when we feel like it. When it’s done in Japan, you pay the second half of the cost, and we release it and you figure out how you want to ship it.”

Nintendo had the ability to block your game from coming to the market if they didn’t like your game. Especially if the game was similar to one of Nintendo’s first party games, negatively impacting Nintendo’s profits. EA had zero interest in a relationship with a company that punished their developers. A company called Sega would release a brand new 16-bit console called the Genesis (MegaDrive), and Electronic Arts saw an opportunity to bring their games to that platform. "  --  http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=160229

Sounds warm and fuzzy, doesn't it?  Whatever, I know you're going to rationalize and justify that, as though they were doing it for the good of mankind.  Anything I say about what Nintendo has done, you're going to white-wash it, which makes it pointless talking with you.  What is your response to Nintendo being fined by the European Commission for anticompetitive business practices?  That they were doing it for the fans?

Yes, I am treating you just EXACTLY as you describe, and for a damn good reason.  I mock you because you insult me just because I suggested a damn gaming company isn't all sunshine and roses, something which I consider to be a LOT closer to childishness.  Have a NICE day.

Seriously, this "Nintendo doesn´t have good relations with third parties" talk is just bullshit

If that was true, we wouldn´t have so much shovelware for the Wii. Even Activision and EA made versions of their FPS for the Wii. And EVERY third party wanted and produced their games for the DS. Even Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty and Assassin Creed were on the DS.

The only thing that prevents third parties to work with Nintendo right now is that as development costs are always increasing they prefer to develop games for the devices that have the biggest install base. Right now the best option for any developer to get some profit is launching games for PS3 and Xbox360.

It´s not interesting for them in this moment of transition and uncertainty to spent even more on producing WiiU versions of their games, specially with the low sales. But we´ve seen many developers launching games for the 3DS lately. By the way, we are not seeing many games for the Vita, which is a Sony product. Interesting, huh ?

And what about all those projects Nintendo in partnerships with Monolith, Sega, Level-5, Platinum Games, Mistwalker etc etc. Aren´t they 3rd-parties also ?

It´s doesn´t have nothing to do with Nintendo policies. It´s just about money, it´s just about what can guarantee better profits for developers. That´s why Nintendo is not getting games, and nothing more.