This is a common misconception. The Seal of Quality was never about promising or ensuring better quality games, but to guarantee that a cartridge for a Nintendo console would work AT ALL when placing it into the appropriate console, and that there was a certain standard of professionalism and quality when a customer bought it. Atari didn't have that quality control, and any so-called developer that got its hand on a dev kit and producing games out of a garage could pump out carts claiming to be legit games. There were devs out there not even bothering with proper materials, using scotch tape and Sharpies to label their games instead of proper labels and graphics, and repurposed VCR tapes as sleeves to hold games.

Buying Atari games got to be such a crapshoot that it was a cause for celebration just to put in a game and feel confident that it would work every time you turned the damn thing on. That's what made customers feel ripped off, but it was standard for the times.

Nowadays, the industry has come such a ways that we are pretty much guaranteed that the console games we buy will work for the intended console full-stop, no questions asked. If you want a modern example of how much like the Wild, Wild West the Atari business model was, look at the indy Steam community and all of the garbage pumped out daily for it. So many asset flips, broken "games" that barely run, and screensaver simulators.

One more thing: every single popular console ever is a shovelware factory. The NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, DS, Wii all have giant landfills worth of shovelware carts/discs lying around somewhere. A lot of this filth has now been relegated to the smartphone market and digital storefronts, but the deluge is definitely still there on every single console that's even remotely successful. I will never understand why people act like the popular Nintendo consoles are the only victims.

Because of Yamauchi and others like him. The domination of the NES and SNES didn't require Nintendo to go out of their way to try to get support. And Yamauchi's mindset against piracy (cartridges for N64, miniDVDs for GameCube) hurt support because of those formats lacking storage.

These shovelware games nowadays are usually digital only and because of that not such a waste of resources and space anymore and also not such an annoyance anymore.

Whatever decisions they have all made, whether we like them or not, has lead to Nintendo making billions of $ in profit over decades. It is expensive to do all the things 3rd party companies get from Sony/Microsoft, which is a contributing factor to those two company's gaming divisions making nowhere near the profits Nintendo makes. We may not like Nintendo having less 3rd party support, but sometimes things are "just good business."

?What games are those? I can't find them using my google machine, and want to know if I have any of them, so I can make stylized "Only Not On Nintendo" labels for the slip-covers.

Magazines back in the day before N64 launched were praising the 3rd party devs on board with the system.

I am sure that most of the arrogance that we are hearing about in this thread from Nintendo came from their leadership during the NES/SNES/N64 era's. Nintendo was on a total power trip during the NES/SNES and did some really horrible stuff. Nintendo even had antitrust crackdowns in the late 80's for monopolistic business practices.

That said, it is clear that the N64 was a big wakeup for Nintendo because the Gamecube was clearly designed to at least try to appease third parties (albeit it was a clumsy effort) and get them back. The Gamecube was touted as being easier to develop for and of course the 1.5 GB mini-DVD's basically eliminated the ROM size limit issues that the N64 had at the cost of Nintendo having to face their fear of piracy/loading times.

By the time the Wii U generation came along, it really seemed like Nintendo was making meaningful efforts to attract third parties. Indie games and the few third party titles that the Wii U got were heavily promoted during Directs. More importantly, I think that by the Wii U era, Nintendo realized that making HD games was far too demanding to do it by themselves, having third parties went from a nice-to-have to becoming essential. Nintendo really got third party support right for the Switch and created a platform that is quite accessible to third parties while stile being innovative in its own right.

In my view, Nintendo heavily values third parties in 2021 and the arrogance of the NES/SNES days is non-existent now. Nintendo realizes that the only way they can fill the release void of their own games (which is still a big issue for the Switch) is by having a stream of major third party releases. Third parties allows Nintendo to spend its time making masterful first party games rather than having to rush software out constantly. Of course, Nintendo makes non-standard hardware that tends to lag its competitors in speed, but I am pretty sure that Nintendo is not doing this out of arrogance towards third parties but because it realizes that the only way it can compete with Sony and Microsoft is by trying to carve out a unique market niche. If Nintendo were to try to compete directly with Sony and MS I do not think they would be able to sell much over 20 million units, and so going with underpowered, non-standard hardware is not Nintendo dismissing third parties, but trying to find the right angle so that they can access the market. As we saw with the Switch, once Nintendo hits gold with their hardware, even third parties like EA who makes a point to give Nintendo absolutely no favors comes back with their tails tucked between their legs.

For any discussion like this, it helps to know the history of first party and third party relationships, and especially how platform holders have viewed third party developers.

Atari (starting in Gen 2) - "Third parties are the enemy.  They are competing with us on our own platform.  The first third party company, Activision, was formed by a bunch of ungrateful Atari employees that left us and formed their own company.  The rest are parasites that pump out shovelware.  Every sale to a third party game is a lost sale for us."

This is before any kind of royalty licensing models were started between first and third party developers, so the two sides were antagonistic to one another.  Also, aside from Activision, third party games were the worst shovelware here of any generation.  Third party games definitely had a perception of being low quality games.

Nintendo/Sega (starting in Gen 3) - "Third party games are there to support the more important first party games.  First party games sell the most and drive hardware sales.  Third party games help round out our library and give players more games to play between major first party releases.  We make royalties from third party sales and they get to access the platform and install base that we established.  It's a win-win relationship."

Nintendo had changed the relationship between third party and first party developers.  Now they were working together instead of against one another.  However, since third party games had such an awful reputation, Nintendo had to restrict what they could make on the NES.  This is why NES games had the Nintendo seal of quality on them, to boost the reputation of third party games.  At the same time Nintendo limited third party publishers to 5 games per year to prevent them from churning out shovelware like they did on the Atari 2600.

I also need to point out that Sega had essentially the same view on first/third party games as Nintendo.  What was the main 16-bit game that competed with Mario?  It was Sonic, a first party game.  Sega also saw first party games as the reason that people bought the hardware and third party games were there to support the first party games.  They did actually give a better deal to EA, but this was because EA had strongarmed them into it.  EA had backwards engineered the Genesis.  They told Sega to give them a better deal or they would publish all of their games unlicensed on the Genesis.  So, Sega conceded and gave EA what they wanted.

So, this is still the model that Nintendo still uses today.  It made them successful in the past and they are still successful with this philosophy.  There is really not a good reason for them to change how they see the relationship between first and third party games.

Sony/Microsoft (starting in Gen 5) - "Third party games are the main reason why our system is successful.  First party games help round out the library and give players something to play between major third party releases.  They also distinguish our system from the other non-Nintendo console.  The AAA third party games are what gamers want most and we have built our business around that."

This is the model established by Sony.  You can trace it back to the PS1 and especially Final Fantasy 7.  The PS1 was not selling especially well until Final Fantasy 7 launched on their system.  Sony then learned pretty quickly that they would be more successful supporting major third party games instead of competing with Nintendo directly on first party games.  This is the model they have been following since the PS1, and it has worked really well for them.  There is no good reason for Sony to change their first/third party philosophy just like there is no good reason for Nintendo to change their philosophy either.  Both companies have been very successful following their philosophy.

When Microsoft came along they copied Sony's philosophy, so they also focus mostly on major third party games.  Now that two console makers see AAA third party games as ultra important it makes Nintendo seem weird.  And then this narrative gets perpetuated over the years that Nintendo has a weird way of relating to third party companies.  In truth, Nintendo is not weird.  They are simply doing what they've always been doing.  They have not changed, but the rest of the gaming landscape has.

Furthermore, it would be foolish for Nintendo to make a serious bid at some Western AAA game like GTA 6.  Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Nintendo offers Rockstar some awesome deal that would make Rockstar $1 billion extra over what they would normally get for GTA 6 exclusivity.  Sony would then have to counter by making Rockstar an even better deal, because they need Rockstar to compete against Nintendo.  Nintendo doesn't need GTA, but Sony does.  So, Sony will always outbid Nintendo.  On the other hand, since Nintendo doesn't need Rockstar to be successful, they would never really make this deal to begin with.

I use this example to illustrate the basic differences in philosophy between Sony and Nintendo.  Sony does much more to cater to AAA game makers, because that is their basic business model.  That is not how Nintendo's business model works, so that is why they make less of an effort.

This. They made a monopoly in the NES and SNES days. Third parties jumped ship and most haven't looked back

Well, WWE2k20 bricked consoles and I'm not sure I'd say CP2077 worked on PS4.