In this interview, I was surprised to see Carmack highlight one of the reasons why 3rd parties have a hard time competing on the Wii/DS; the fact that Nintendo makes top-quality games for Wii/DS.

While this was discussed a lot in the forum a few months ago it was starting to fall out of fashion as an argument, so it was interesting to see that some developers do worry about this.

I find the logic very stupid, since even without Nintendo there still are other 3rd party publishers to compete. Or is this again the same thing that Harrison said, that Nintendo makes quality games, and others make shit.

Btw. NJ5, have you checked MK Channel today?

I don't know why anyone would ever try to argue against that argument. This "fall out of fashion business". Most consumers have a set amount of money they can spend on games, some people can only by 3, some 10, some 15, whatever. Your game is going to compete against a company that spans more genre's than any other game company, makes more money than every other game developer combined, and can objectively be considered to have had the greatest influence on video games throughout its history.

How is that not daunting? That is downright scary. If any other industry had something like this, how many companies do you think would scary them away? I mean I believe developers have always been "left with scraps" when going against Nintendo. It's just with the Wii, Nintendo has expanded the user base so much, that now theres tons of "scrap" left over. So much you can't even really call it scraps anymore.

@Random: But the thing that makes the argument stupid is, that for example the last generation, Nintendo had addressable market of less than 25M (in home consoles), leaving 150M addressable market for competition.
So, we have 2 options:
1. If 3rd parties can't compete Nintendo, other 1st parties has to make better games than Nintendo (which leaves us to a question, that how do you compete them?).
2. Others than Nintendo can make games that compete Nintendos games, when the competition is similar, with or without Nintendo, in a certain number of software sold.

If others couldn't compete Nintendo, other than Nintendo platforms, wouldn't have sold 150M last gen, opposed to Nintendos under 25M.

This guy is dishing out on everyone.

3rd party developers are squeezed by all the companies in one way or another, so it's not surprising. Except for PC development of course.

@bdbdbd: I'll check it out now :)

@NJ5: But even in PC developement they need to go by OS manufacturers requirements/designs etc.

I agree that Nintendo's First Party titles are usually miles better than Third Party games on Nintendo systems (except S-E games, they seem very decent) but it just means Third Parties have to work harder meaning better games for the gamers, so he is just moaning and doesn't want to put in the extra work... as alot of other devs also don't want to do, which is great for us PS3 and X360 owners :)

Shigeru did say they need to stop using their 7th and 9th tier teams when it comes to Wii development, and that Nintendo makes games to sell consoles. Maybe if 3rd partiest cared about the Wii as a system rather than taking up (Money is everything attitude) the multiplatform trend which leads into half assed games. (Not saying all of them are, I'm using The Club as a refference for thi... I'm using Sega as a refference for htis.)