Probably not it's just a vibe I got when exploring the city in The last story, it just felt like it was made for a console more powerful and then they had to scale down npcs and such. Pandoras tower just doesn't look as good as I think they were planning. Nothing to say they were 100%, just vibes i got is all.

Both games were conceived as Wii titles.This isn't a situation where Treyarch is scaling to COD for Wii. TLS and PT were conceived as Wii titles from the outset. 

What is so hard to get about this?

1st party development: Games developed, distributed and published by internal development studios such as Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft.

2nd party: Games developed by a external studio that is outright or partially owned or under contract with a 1st party studio, usually with IPs owned by the 1st party with the first party handling publishing and distribution duties.

3rd party: Games developed and published by a external studio or publisher. Distribution may be handled by a first party in some cases especially localization efforts but the IP is still owned by the 3rd party.


The Last Story, Pandora's Tower, Wonderful 101 and several other games are 2nd party developed games but like Eternal Darkness, Pokemon and many games before it Nintendo owns the IPs. They can sell it like they did with the Rare brands but it is still Nintendo's brand and IP until they do.

Yeah but, we've had 14 final fantasy games. In video game reality, nothing is final lol

The Last Story not count? I can't see Nintendo funding another one. And Mistwalker has gone in hiatus from making 'normal' games, and is now focusing on mobile instead :P

Pretty much the biggest hurdle, along with the fact that Xenoblade was better received, unless an executive or two with a lot of power were huge fans of the game it is unlikely to ever see a sequel.

A great shame, as had the game, along with Xenoblade and Pandora's Tower been released earlier in the Western regions or had enough push it the Wii might not have died the pauper's death that it did in most regions.  But that like the Wii U's aweful stumble out the gate is all on Nintendo's management.

Yeah, the fact that people had to gather a petition and push for it to release in NA just hows how terrible NOA has been in the last few years in marketing and sales.

Like you said Nintendo's mishaps and failure to market Xenoblade and The Last Story could have hurt the series before it has even begun. I hope Xenoblade X sells well on Wii U, in spite of this. Its looks like one of the great games to come  to the platform.

This is correct. 

Nintendo owns the IP rights to The Last Story.

I am just curious. I know little on the legal importance of copyright

How to read this document on Nintendo and third party copyright.

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Legal/Copyright/Nintendo-and-Third-party-Copyrights-655030.html

It looks to me as a layman like copyright of The Last Story is shared or does it mean something else?

The Last Story

©2011-2012 Nintendo/MISTWALKER

Do you know enough about copyright law to give an answer that a layman can understand?

That will only cover Nintendo UK.  Not NCL in Japan.   Which is the one that truly matters.

It's also unknown if that copyright covers just the title, the game design, characters or the whole IP.  But again, that's still UK (maybe PAL) only.

Here's one way to look at it.  XSEED had to go to Nintendo, not Mistwalker, for US publishing and distribution.  Another factor, Nintendo are the entity that applied for the trademarks for the game, not Mistwalker.