Nintendo’s 3rd Party Troubles Are Their Own Fault

Nintendo's 3rd party troubles are the natural result of their own desire to innovate, and of their blue ocean strategy.

[smoothdude]

In intelligent article, I wasn't expecting that here.

[juegosmajicos]

Much appreciated. Hopefully you like part 2, which should go up tomorrow and personally I liked much more.

[Automatic79]

What's sad is that they have a pretty decent install base they should get more support.

[marloc_x]

Good read, looking forward to pt2.

Now, should I wait and get Watchdogs on my Wii U?

Tough call cause the other versions are getting dirt cheap already..

[ShinMaster]

Even before the Wii U, Iwata took away the autonomy of Nintendo of America when he took over. This meant the Japanese branch, made all the calls. This was right when the West started gaining a lot of traction as the most important part of the world sales-wise for the industry.
Tradition is great, but not when it starts to hurt your business.

A lot Western third-party relationships with Nintendo quickly soured, many that had worked with Nintendo closely in the past had their bonds broken with them, and it still hurts Nintendo to this day.
Third-party support in general is much worse than when Iwata originally stepped into the role as president of Nintendo, and it has only been getting progressively worse.

Under Iwata's leadership, Nintendo allowed the Wii to flounder for two or three years at the end of its life without much software support. This made it so the casual gamers that were attached to the Wii name went elsewhere for their entertainment, and it made it so any momentum Nintendo would have had going into the Wii U was dead.

The Wii U also suffers because of its hardware and its name(which ironically puts of the casual people they were trying to recapture).
Aside from the limited space of N64 cartridges, Nintendo used to easily keep up with other consoles up until the Wii. Graphically, they were among the best. Now their home consoles require special treatment because they've fallen behind modern gaming standards. I wouldn't consider that "innovation".

[3-4-5]

Nintendo can't MAKE 3rd party games.

THAT isn't up to them.

That is completely 100% dependent upon 3rd Party Developers.

[Baka-akaB]

No it's not 100% on them ... they've been negligent on that side since the n64 , and the pattern grew each successive generations .

Of course they are very successful on mostly their own .

But i can see where Ubisoft , as greedy as they are , comes from . They've always been supportive of Nintendo consoles for a long time , and while they did some big mistakes on Wii U , they've been burned on the Wii too with a few risky Ips , like Red Steel

[SilentNegotiator]

Making platforms that didn't please third parties for almost two decades, though...that's 100% Nintendo.

[ShinMaster]

Even before the Wii U, Iwata took away the autonomy of Nintendo of America when he took over. This meant the Japanese branch, made all the calls. This was right when the West started gaining a lot of traction as the most important part of the world sales-wise for the industry.

A lot Western third-party relationships with Nintendo quickly soured, many that had worked with Nintendo closely in the past had their bonds broken with them, and it still hurts Nintendo to this day.
Third-party support in general is much worse than when Iwata originally stepped into the role as president of Nintendo, and it has only been getting progressively worse.

Under Iwata's leadership, Nintendo allowed the Wii to flounder for two or three years at the end of its life without much software support. This made it so the casual gamers that were attached to the Wii name went elsewhere for their entertainment, and it made it so any momentum Nintendo would have had going into the Wii U was dead.

The Wii U also suffers because of its hardware.
Nintendo used to easily keep up with other consoles up until the Wii. Now their home consoles require special treatment because they've fallen behind 2 major platforms where every developer wants to publish a game.

[ape007]

fantastic article,i put the blame on Nintendo (don't get me wrong i love my wiiu) but the wiiu to the 3rd party devs is a small distraction that doesn't deserve the time and money investment and will also will sell poorly

i saw some diehard Nintendo fans boycotting ubi and activision, do u guys realize how retarded is that??

out of all companies, Activision and Ubisoft stood with Nintendo through the thick and thin, they supported n64(Rayman 2, quake 2, tony hawk etc..) gamecube (all splinter cell games, beyond good and evil, all prince of Persia games, tony hawks, early CoDs etc...), wii (raving rabbids game, dance, CoD 4 reflex, BO1) and wiiu(Zombie u, rayman legends,Assassins 3 and Black Flag, watch dogs, CoD ghosts, BO2)

if anything you should all respect activision and ubisoft for standing this long with nintendo and the wiiu and direct all the hatred towards nintendo headquarters and their console management/planning

be thankful that watch dogs is still coming to the wiiu with complete optimization, other JAPANESE companies like konami, capcom and square completely ignored nintendo consoles, have some respect, damn fanboys are almost schizophrenic

[Baka-akaB]

Capcom brought them stuff like Viewtiful joe , Resident evil 4 , the RE remakes , RE zero , revelations , Tatsunoko vs Capcom , Zack and Wiki , and didnt drop their Monster hunter support .

I think you're just letting your disdain for capcom coloring this .

[ape007]

no man i was talking about the wiiu

their work with gamecube was a work of art

[Baka-akaB]

I stand corrected then . Even then i can see why . They got burned on quite a few of the titles i mentioned the original platforms ( well the RE wii versions worked well at least) or got low sales , saves the Monster Hunter series .

I know each gen is different , but those consecutive failures can have an impact or a scaredy publisher

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

Why should Nintendo gamers be thankful for getting games that do not have the same content support as the other versions of those games on other systems?
Why should they be grateful, and shell out for them, when they can get better supported versions of those same multiplats on older consoles?

The reasons/excuses third parties have for not putting all the same content into these ports, don't matter at this point; the majority of gamers aren't going to care what their reasons are.
All a gamer is going to care about, is that the older versions of these Wii U ports, such as CoD Ghosts and Black Flag, are going to have more content, and thus more value, than their Wii U counterparts, and that the same rings true for the PS4/XBOne versions as well.

If third parties want Nintendo's gamers to respect them, then they need to show equality in support regardless of cost.
No one should be grateful for being given a hand-me-down game with fewer features and thus lower replay/entertainment value, and it's cruel of anyone to blame Nintendo or its fans for the decisions in content support that third parties are directly responsible for.

[ABizzel1]

"When they can get better supported versions of those same multiplats on older consoles?"

This is almost always the go to response for Nintendo fans, the games are better on other platforms, which just goes to show that Nintendo consoles are a secondary console to being with in the eyes of people who say this. If you're a multi-console owner chances are you're getting on the best platform for the game, and in most cases that'll be the PS4 > XBO > Wii U > PS360, unless the game is nearly identical on all platforms and Gamepad support really improves the experience (such as Rayman).

If you're a Nintendo only owner, then it doesn't really matter what the other platforms get, so long as you get to play the game still. It's the same deal as timed exclusive DLC, and all the other crap Sony and MS go through. Equality in content should be equal, but in the real world we know it's not. Nintendo doesn't play that game so you shouldn't expect developers to give Nintendo all the content when they're not putting anything forth on marketing the game or anything else.

But then you have games like Tekken TT, Deus Ex, Batman Arkham City, Rayman Legends, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Assassin's Creed 4, Splinter Cell Blacklist, Resident Evil Revelations, and Darksiders 2 which were all undeniably better on the Wii U than the PS360 versions, all of which were good / great games, and many of which offered exclusive content for the Wii U, yet these games tanked in sales.

So what is it?

Are Nintendo consoles secondary consoles?

Or do you simply not care about supporting the good 3rd party games you have, because you only want Nintendo exclusives to begin with?

There's nothing wrong with it being a secondary console, because that's what it is to me. I love Nintendo's exclusives, and I was guilty of not supporting 3rd parties, but with the games costing $10 - $20 for these great franchises it should be nothing for most gamers to go out to the store or amazon and pick them up. I even have a blog making it extremely easy.

There are no excuses anymore Nintendo fans, either support the good you have or you won't get any 3rd support at all. Your choice. Spread the word about this blog and these games if you want 3rd party support.

http://n4g.com/user/blogpos...

[-Foxtrot]

I've seen a lot of Nintendo die hards really ticked off with Ubisoft calling them as bad as EA just because they stopped supporting the Wii U recently...even though they were the ones who stuck by the Wii U the longest. What you going to do now...not buy WatchDogs even though you say it's lacking third party support.

I mean if Nintendo didn't meet them half way then what do you expect.

Seriously why blame devs when it's mostly Nintendos fault aswell. It's not devs fault Nintendo made a console which isn't as powerful as the other two. Then you have people getting mad at the devs who do third party games for them but they are dumbed down...again what the hell do you expect, least you are getting the game

Instead they invested their money more into the gamepad. I think devs would of rather seen a normal controller with more time spent on the consoles hardware. Least then you could justify the price because you are like "Well it is pretty powerful for a Nintendo console" instead of "Most of that money is spent on the Gamepad, that's why it's so expensive"

[KaladinStormblessed]

I agree man, boycotting their games is not going to make difference for the better. All these people saying they're never going to buy anymore Ubisoft games and stuff, where's that going to get you? I love Ubisoft, and honestly I've been leaning toward te side that a lot of WiiU owners don't even want to play games like Assassins creed on the misconception that they're all half assed ports and only nintendo games are good.

I don't totally agree that it's all nintendo's fault though, The WiiU doesn't actualy have any "revolutionary" controller that's hugely different from the rest, it's a classic gaming controller with a screen in it. So it's not the fact that it's too hard to develop for, they're just simply not making much money off the games. And when the graphics and fluidity and dlc is better/available on the competition it's a no brainier. That I do blame on the Wiiu hardware, though it's definitely still good.

WiiU only owners like me would totally get the games if they were interested in it, but most people are all on the bandwagon that Third parties make bad games without even actually playing them. And because of that they don't buy it then the rest of us that do like them are screwed over because not enough copies are sold to justify continuing support.

[ABizzel1]

My blog solves all those problems. Spread the word around.

http://n4g.com/user/blogpos...

There are good 3rd party games on the Wii U, many Nintendo fans just don't want to look, because they're too busy condemning everything.

[HexxedAvenger]

Wow.... that is a good article. I am eagerly waiting for tomorrow.

[nevin1]

Nintendo didn't have good 3rd party support since SNES.

[ape007]

yep but N64 had some amazing 3rd party games/exclusives that were built on the system

games like Turok 1, Turok 2, Turok 3, Duke 64, Quake 1/2, Doom 64, Shadow man, Body Harvest, adventure racing, TWINE, no mercy/WM games, Mortal kombat 4, mace, star wars shadow of the empire and star wars rogue squadron squadron and racer, rayman 2 etc...

plus they had rare ware support which was PHENOMENAL , plus the system was pushing for greater gfx and greater MP (4 players)

the N64 is waaaaay better than wii/wiiu

[SilentNegotiator]

Nintendo OWNED Rare.

[HentaiMasterRace]

Yep

[DanielGearSolid]

I like wat they're doing wit third party collaborations now

Its a start atleast

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

This.
Collaborations will succeed where watered-down ports have failed.
They're more interesting than ports of games that the majority of Wii players have already played on their PS3's and 360's.

[ABizzel1]

Again confirming the secondary console.

I agree the collaboration route could be more beneficial to them, but they have to stop with the "Japanese developers" only mentality for their collabs.

Retro working with Irrational Games on a new Metroid is a dream team match up (should be even easier now the Irrational is a smaller studio).

Nacom Bandi making Pokken Fighter is a dream team match up.

Hello Game's No Man's Sky should and could have been what Star Fox evolved to.

They need more collaborations like these.

[Gemmol]

This article is dumb, people will do any or everything to miss the main important reason why 3rd parties do not put their games on Nintendo... I said it before, and it seems I have to say it again, look at sales, look at the numbers, 3rd party games always outsell Sony and Microsoft 1st party games, Look at VgChartz or where ever you get your numbers, ps1, ps2, ps3, Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One top 10 best selling games have majority from 3rd party, you may see one or two from Xbox or Sony, but the Majority comes from 3rd party. This is why I said in a previous post Sony and Xbox fans are really 3rd party fans, they all say this first party game bring me to this or that system, but the numbers call them out as liars, its just like that sony article a while back where someone said 4 out of 10 Playstation games make money.........WHY IS THAT because Sony fans are 3rd party fans............this connect to Nintendo because with Nintendo their top 10 is all Nintendo, you may see Monster Hunter or Dragon Quest in the list, but Nintendo own their list.......so in other words, 3rd party have too much competition from Nintendo, they do not sell as much so they go where they get majority of the love which is on Xbox and Playstation systems.........now please stop putting dumb articles, only fault Nintendo have is making games so good people do not buy other games

[Gemmol]

please use your mind people, not create things you wish to be true

http://n4g.com/news/1543674...

http://www.vgchartz.com/pla...

http://www.vgchartz.com/pla...

http://www.vgchartz.com/pla...

[juegosmajicos]

Hey, that's what I said in my article, that 3rd parties ignore Nintendo's consoles (not portables to the same extent) because they don't sell as much there. We agree on that.

I don't *blame* Nintendo for the 3rd party support. I'm saying it's their "fault", because it's the result of their business choices. They chose the blue ocean starting with the DS, it led to weaker systems compared to the competition, and this led to reduced third party support.

So the lack of 3rd party support is due to Nintendo's choices, BUT, as I will argue on part 2, this can be good for the industry, so we benefit anyway.

[SpiralTear]

"They chose the blue ocean starting with the DS, it led to weaker systems compared to the competition, and this led to reduced third party support."

That development philosophy didn't start with the DS at all. Nintendo used that "weaker tech, cheaper price" ideology as far back as the Game Boy. The Game Boy had weaker tech than its competitors too, but it did great on third-party support.

Third-party developers go to where the money is, because the system that sells the most becomes the system that multi-platform games are developed around. Horsepower doesn't drive third-party support. It never has. If it did, the PS2 wouldn't have been the dominant console in the sixth gen, and the 3DS (and all Nintendo handhelds) would've been killed off years ago.

[Gemmol]

I see what you mean

[juegosmajicos]

@SpiralTear: "Horsepower doesn't drive third-party support. It never has. If it did, the PS2 wouldn't have been the dominant console in the sixth gen"

That is true when the consoles in question, such as the PS2, can still handle ports of multiplatform games. In that generation, the power gap between the GameCube, Playstation 2, and Xbox wasn't so massive that it prevented third parties from porting games to any systems they wanted to.

That was not the case with the Wii, which most definitely could not get ports, even graphically downgraded, of Dead Space, Dark Souls, Deux Ex: HR, etc.

With the Wii U we all expected third parties to make quick and cheap ports to Wii U, like we know they can because there isn't such a large power gap anymore, but because they have a larger audience on both the new and older Sony and Microsoft consoles, they divert their resources towards those ports of their games.

To simplify it: in the PS2 era, developers had to worry about 3 versions of their game, all 3 with little graphical differences; in the PS3 era, developers couldn't port games to the Wii without significantly downgrading them, where it was even possible, so instead they allocated their resources on the other two systems; and now in the Wii U era, developers are making up to 5 versions of their games at any given time, so that allocating resources to the Wii U, with its small install base, is not seen as anywhere near profitable.

Ubisoft is unfortunately the best example right now: why would they spend money making mature game ports for Wii U, when they have to allocate resources toward the PS3, X360, PS4, Xbone, and PC versions of their games, on which systems they already have a dedicated fanbase?

So the issue with the Wii U, now, is how to make their individuality appealing enough to make the market come to them, not them to the market.

[Ol_G]

Yeah ps2 shows that argument isn't true it was the weakest system gc an xbox were stronger but it still outsold both and got mayor third party support this thing has nothing to do with the hardware and we all know it this is just third partys afraid nintendo will come out on top and that they have to create innovative games for the fanbase so the boycott the console and the fans in favor of annual crap

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

My initial knee-jerk reaction would have been a harsh one, but I'm glad I stopped and read it before saying anything.

I can agree with you, in part.

See, I do agree that the strategy with the Wii was what put off a lot of third parties from developing their ports on it.

However, this is a new generation with a much more powerful console to use compared to last generation, yet they're still clinging to releasing newer games [Destiny, for instance] on older consoles first, instead of prioritizing development of those less graphics/power-intensive titles on Wii U.

The simple truth of the matter, is that Nintendo cannot solve this third party problem, because Nintendo isn't the one that decides what does and does not make it into these ports that third parties are releasing, nor which new ports make it over at all, and furthermore, Nintendo cannot force its fan base to support these third party ports on Wii U when other versions exist, for cheaper and much more well-supported, on other systems.

Trying to control the way third parties introduce their games to the system would only drive them further away by making them think Nintendo is becoming iron-fisted again, like they were in the NES era.
But without some sort of change to the way these third party titles are being introduced to the system, the cycle will never end, because in the end, THE FANS THEMSELVES are the judges of whether or not the games are worth purchasing.

Only third parties can change Nintendo gamers' minds about third party ports, and that can only happen by catering to the fanbase the right way.

If they're not willing to do so, then getting ports to sell will remain a hopeless cause, and both sides would be better off doing more collaborative games like Hyrule Warriors and Pokken Fighters, instead.

[BrandanT]

It's not just Nintendo's fault, part of the blame is also EA's

[randomass171]

And any third party publisher that provided a bad or half baked port which if I remember right was not all of the games that were contributed to Wii U's library. A lot of the earlier games were fair or even good quality ports.

[Iamnemesis4880]

Just to put it out there nintendo should have there games open to all consoles might get them out of cash woes.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

No, it would do more harm than good.

First off, Nintendo isn't in any "woes" in terms of cash.
Wii U is now selling at a profit and Mario Kart's sales are the direct reason for that, and it's only going to keep improving from here on out with the line-up they've got planned.

Second, going third party devalues their brands and cuts out the profits they'd make by sticking to their own consoles.

Last, but not least, there will never be a majority of gamers on Sony or Microsoft systems who would choose the newest Mario game over the latest Uncharted, Halo, CoD, TLOU, and other third party games.
They don't want Mario over those games[for reasons of taste alongside the fact that this is an expensive hobby to support sometimes, and players will always prioritize certain games on certain systems over others to save cash], and if Mario released alongside them on the same system, it would literally get buried and fade into obscurity instead of being center-stage.

Nintendo survives because Nintendo keeps their titles held close.

[Iamnemesis4880]

I get were you coming from.

[SpiralTear]

Remember when Criterion Games said that neither Nintendo nor EA did much to get the Wii U version of Need For Speed: Most Wanted into the public eye? I think that situation is the perfect example to describe the whole "Nintendo third-party" scenario.

Both sides are responsible.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

Thank you. Well said.

Just want to mention one thing; Criterion is also the same dev that mentioned being able to get a PC port of that game running on the Wii U "with a flick of a switch" [IIRC], so I don't know why third parties are still making the excuse that the system is hard to develop for when people like Criterion and Shin'en and Yacht Club and Platinum and various others aren't having that many issues getting great games to work well on the system.

If I can find the article where they used that quote, I'll PM it to ya. If you want that, that is.

[ABizzel1]

What Criterion said is it's easy to game PC versions up and running on Wii U, just like most devs said about PS4 and XBO. The problem then becomes optimizing games, and Criterion said Nintendo's development tools were awful, with many things coded in Japanese at the time of developing N4S, and the online infrastructure wasn't there. It was so bad that they had to code their own tools to simply be able to move on to the next phase of development, because to get answers from Nintendo you have to:

1. Contact NoA.
2. Who contacts a translator (English -> Japanese)
3. Who contacts NoJ
4. Who contacts a coder within Nintendo who finds the answer
5. Then contacts NoJ
6. Who contacts a translator (Japanese -> English)
7. Who finally contacts the dev with the solution.

No one has time for that when you're working on games with a deadline. Ultimately this is why you see a lot more Japanese 3rd party support for Nintendo. Hopefully they have this fixed, because it rubbed Criterion the wrong way, and that's sad because they were one of the few who went above and beyond with the Wii U version of their game.

[Blueraven316]

Nintendo has always been arrogant and back in the day treated 3rd parties like crap. Ever since nes their console numbers have been down. They got lucky with the gimmick wii and now it's back to the GameCube type numbers. They should study how sony and Microsoft court 3rd parties

[Ol_G]

You mean how they moneyhat for exclusivity yeah that's the way to go broke in a short time let's look at how much money Sony makes with this strategy.....

[tubers]

Perhaps iOS/Android (pmps, phones, tablets) also had a substantial effect with the article's defined Blue Ocean.

"..previously untapped audience (the elderly, families, and female gamers, among other demographics traditionally denominated “non-gamers”)."

"becomes so appealing that 3rd party publishers will throw themselves headfirst into it, willing to re-learn the business as they go. In this way, the pursuit of money and the pursuit of innovation will be one and the same, bringing great times for everyone involved "

iOS/Android, rather than Wii U games might be the effort 3rd party would rather focus on (still being in line with the defined "Blue Ocean").

[juegosmajicos]

I agree that smartphones are a blue ocean right now. Well, as much as now about it anyway, since I don't really know much about smartphones. But one thing I mention in part 2 is how the Wii and DS did influence smartphone design, and smartphone games, which isn't exactly bad for the industry.

[tubers]

Kinda.. just more options for entertainment.

Interested to see the smartphone design relationship you'll bring about. As I see it right now, it's probably a coincidence.

I'm sure you can imagine what those stuff are right now (smartphones). IMO, they're the next "PC"; home of the software (creation and consumption).

Biggest scheme probably is MicroTrans for phones and tablet games. That's a large "design" w/c I don't think Nintendo is remotely related.

[Adolph Fitler]

There attitude towards 3rd parties has been horrible & counter productive to there products since they entered the console business... It was too much about Nintendo ONLY... That tactic may have paid off for them, back then.. But there is a time where you have to join the rest of the world, & realize that it is for the gamers, as they are the ones that ensured your success, so ANY & ALL measures should be taken to give gamers the best experiences, & make available the techniques, tricks, software & secrets to ALL developers keen to make games on your hardware.. Is it not the least a hardware manufacturer can do? Jesus, even MS are better at this than Nintendo...
As I said, it may have been an effective tactic in the NES, SNES dominant days, but not now... Sony shares, as much as they can, & because they have such an open policy to developers, they allow us to get the best games from 3rd parties, even to the detriment of there own in-house titles. MS are similar, but they risk far less, by having far fewer 1st party developers & games.

Nintendo need to open up to 3rd party developers, & help them create more gems & bring some of the classic multiplats, past, current & future, as I believe this gen of machines will hurt them & the Wii-U more than ever.

[randomass171]

I don't see how any single side can take all or even most of the blame. Nintendo did not really help Wii U to sell early on and third parties did not do much to appeal to Wii U gamers. It was up to Nintendo to sell their consoles and it was up to the third parties to make their Wii U ports appealing. Neither side did anything and now here we are. IMO this is on both heads.

edit This is in response to some of the comments not the article.

[Dunban67]

It s Nintendo s console- it is thier business and they control what goes on the console

Nintendo is ultimately responsible 100% for its own machine just as Sony and MSFT are responsible for thier machines