Calamity

You make a lot of charges without a lot of relevant and current facts -- and basically rule out all counter examples. So it is tough to come up with anything to say.

Your premise is that Nintendo ought to pay third parties to develop for them. They will never do that -- only Microsoft really does that. So end of that discussion.

Mike from Morgantown

Simply put it is bad business model to pay a consumer profit orientated production company money for production. Often this leads to an un/minimal profitible company. While many of the larger software companies do profit from there own sales many smaller companies tend to become relient on a major publication house to continue operation. Resulting that there company is surviving on hand outs. Companies like this end up producing continuations to their original idea or stuff the larger company makes. Often these smaller companies end up being forced to close shop, creative staff leaving, or just shutting down.

Ensemble Studios made great games, but are an example that they exist living on the handout of MS to directly produce games for their publishers. Some companies start making profitble profit and are purchased out. Bungie made Halo, but Halo didn't make money for Bungie. Though they probably recieved a percentage. That's why Bungie given the oppertunity managed to get themselves out of the trap.

Now companies like SE are another matter. They do produce and publish their own games. The problem with SE is that they produce one of the more expensive model of game developement. Cinematic orientated games stand at the top of developement costs and length of time. SE is all about these. That's why they merged with each other. Alone they could not produce enough games to support their business model. The gaps between release were impacting them strongly. This is why SE has used the DS as a remake console. It allows continous income to produce their new larger games. These remakes have ALOT less production values. Most of it's already done. Just need an art upgrade and port. Some of you may remember the attempt that SE wanted to buy out a more action game company. There were jokes about these games going to RPG version. Well that's incorrect. They didn't want the IP for RPGS, they needed easily and quickly made games to support their high tier game developement.

What this comes down to is that while FF13(HD), Versus(PS3) and FFCB(Wii/DS) will make money in the end. They are a draw on current resources. So they accept money to offset the development costs. This in business is a sustaining. Sustaining in the end leads to decline. The next FF14 will cost even more production in both time and money. The problem is that profit does not go up. Profit goes up by increase number of consumers. So if consumers are not increasing and production cost and drain is. When does it become not profitable. Well that's when the money hatting comes into play. Even this has it's limit. When does the money handouts become not enough. Well that's when things have to change. If it doesn't the money hand outs stop and the company goes under. if they are lucky they can hold off creditors and try to produce a revival game. In the end the actions that SE are displaying seem to be along the lines of sustaining and trying to stay afloat. FF13, Versus are assumed will sell the vast amounts. It's a gamble inspite of the current trend of consumers.

We can blame Nintendo for not loving it's customers and not paying out to others, but that's not true. It maybe hard to believe, but this is the better route for companies for the long duration. It forces effeincy, smart descisions and companies to stand on their own. Parent can't hold the hands of kids forever. They have to be self suffecient some day.

FFCB, will come out in some form if it's profitable. In the mean time expect ports to sustain and bring income sot hat they can come out.

I don't want to get into this argument, but you do realize that they are also bring Fragile, Sky Crawlers, and another Tales game to the Wii. Yeah they may not be existing franchises yet, but they still look good, and it is still support. Also Sky Crawlers is being made by the Ace Combat team(not 2nd tier), Fragile is being made by Tricrescendo(not second teir), Symphonia Dawn of the New world is being made by a second teir team, but the next main series tales sure won't be. I disagree with the rest as well, but I just wanted to point this one out specificly, and others could deal with the rest of your post. Anyway go on.

Edit: I would also like to say that Nintendo published Fatal Frame IV, and funded it and probably helped funded a few other third party games. While they aren't buying out every other game like Microsoft, they sure can't afford to do that. Microsoft has other things to recoup with if their gaming branch starts losing money, if Nintendo loses alot of money buying out, or publishing alot of third party games and have just enough next generation, and then they start losing again, they are finished, and most likely will take the route of sega. Right now the Wii is selling with the poor third party support like crazy. For what reason does NIntendo need third parties? Also what happens if they get too dependent on third parties like they did in the Snes days and then once they lost a good amount of that in the N64 days they didn't sell as much. Same thing is happening with Sony this generation. Last generation  Sony had almost all of the third party support, and depended on this. This generation sony's third party support is either lost, or made Multiplat meaning other consoles have these games, and not making  it as appealing to buy a console that is suppose to depend on Third Party support. Now you see Sony focusing on 1st and 2nd party games to make it more successful. What if Nintendo doesn't want the Wii or DS to be too focused on third parties, because as I said early if they leave and your console is meant to be dependent on third party games you are basically screwed. So there are many reasons why Nintendo doesn't buy out third party games like Microsoft. I'm pretty sure its not all arrogance as you say.

Well I think it has been replace by echoes of time but that's just my opinion maybe square is looking for ds/wii connectivity.Rather that single player FF wii game.

Echoes is primarily a DS game, being developed by a team not entirely the same as TCB team. Chances are they're still working on TCB. In what capacity is anyones guess.

Thanks for retracting the original point. I absolutely agree that there are many legitimate reasons for third parties to develop for competing consoles - I am not one of those rabid Wii fans who seem to think every game should be appearing exclusive to their console. There have been plenty of big successes on all three consoles this generation.

I don't agree that "we are at a stage in this generation when no clear winner is in sight". It's patently clear that the Wii will be the market leader by huge margins in all three regions. And the Wii is blowing its competitors out of the water by a similar margin as the PS2 did (only it didn't launch a year ahead of its rivals!)

I really take issue with this notion that game development should be paid for by the console manufacturers. It's a short-sighted method that can't be sustained over the long haul. Right now, Microsoft (and to a lesser extent Sony) are taking huge losses to attract developers to their platforms. In other words, games from companies like Namco, Square, and Konami are being paid for through sales of Microsoft operating systems and Sony HD TVs. It's questionable how long the console manufacturers will be willing to eat these losses to try and move more systems. If that's the only way third-parties can turn a profit this generation, they're in deep, deep trouble when the source gets turned off.

You know you've got an unhealthy industry when Microsoft has to hemmorage red ink to keep Japanese developers afloat. Maybe that's why this generation has been a wasteland so far for JRPG sales...

why should nintendo buy stuff in the first place? i know there is a lot of rumours about sony and microsoft handing over huge sums of money but how much of this is actually true. I bet MS didnt pay anything to get FFXIII, it was simply the userbase. im sure nintendo is trying to get third party support in cheaper ways, by trying to get good relations with them. for the publishers this is usaly done through publically showing support for them in statement, trade shows ect. Theve also got an internal team whose job is to help outside devs work on their hardware, they are probably the ones helping high voltagfe with the conduit



However, it can be argued that nintendo is starting to 'pay' for exclusives, by publishing them. would fatal frame IV be on wii if nintendo hadnt offered to publish in japan? how about all the devs working on the wii games announced at their conference. its highly like that many of those projects are only possible because nintendo is offering to be publisher. This way, nintendo pays for exlcusives but actually gets a good monetarty return. which is something they obviously like