charlequin said:
No, not fixed. Nintendo is terrible at third-party relations, and it's ridiculous to suggest otherwise. They don't do a good job of bringing devs to their platforms, they don't do a good job of treating their development partners well, they don't nurture third-party franchises for the future or build brands that can last into the future. Getting decent third party support on DS took them outselling all other systems in history for like two solid years, and the Wii is floundering and has no third-party support to speak of despite trouncing both of its competitors combined because people want that badly not to develop on the system and Nintendo has given them no good reason to change this behavior. I don't know how anyone could call this "doing well" on third-party relations.
TTFW. Honestly this company just has to get with the times. There certainly has been progress with Monster Hunter 3, Dragon Quest X, Mario and Sonic, and giving third party games such as The Conduit and Shaun White gateway during their conferences, but they're still a ways off before even being comparable to the other two companies.
Developers don't want to work with the Wii because it's too weak, the controls are too intimidating, games sell on a legs basis instead of out the door hype, and on top of all that Nintendo isn't paying them to do so. It's crazy to persuade developers into developing games with a low end console? Really? Is it anymore crazy then trying to persuade them into developing for a console that is dead in the region where your franchises sell the most? I highly doubt Tri-Ace and Namco woke up and said to themselves "Let's make our biggest games targeted at our country on a niche console". No Microsoft had to persuade them to do that.
It's like Nintendo was frozen through time since the SNES days and were just unfrozen now and are just now learning to handle third parties. The Wii is selling like it is despite the lack of software due to the other companies screwing up this generation as well as not reaching out to the casual demographic. This is much like the original Playstation, it succeeded due to the faults of the Saturn and N64 as well as grabbing the previously hardly tapped older high school/ college market. The Xbox and Dreamcast saw the success and tried to grab the pie, but came nowhere near as SONY. Why? Because the Playstation 2 had Metal Gear Solid, the Playstation 2 had Final Fantasy, the Playstation 2 had Tony Hawk (the only then next gen version anyway), the Playstation 2 had the amazing new experience known as Grand Theft Auto. There is no doubt that the Playstation 2 was so successful as it rode on the wave of its predecessor, what third party games is the Wii going to ride on? The definitive version of an already fading out franchise (Guitar Hero?). I mean nobody is going to tell me that SONY or Microsoft, or even a new competitor like Apple won't copy the Wii's formula and try and make strong bonds with third parties.
Nintendo found success with their risk and if they want to keep it they need to break some of their super egos.
