Nintendo Improving Relations With Third-Party Developers
By Ron on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 5:10 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Nintendo, Nintendo
Nintendo’s Wii has taken off in a big way. Unlike the Gamecube, which flopped like a beached humpback, the Wii has sold through millions of consoles already, and looks poised to continue that trend. So, what’s Nintendo doing different this time around?
According to the New York Times, Nintendo is ‘coming out of its shell.’ The effort to do so seems to be aimed at third party software developers, who in the past have developed few games for Nintendo’s consoles. For example, about a year and a half ago, Nintendo went over to Namco Bandai’s Headquarters to demonstrate a Wii prototype. Apparently, Nintendo listed several reasons why the Wii would help
both companies make money, and urged them to develop games for the console. “I had not seen that attitude from them before. Nintendo was suddenly reaching out to independent developers,” said Namco Bandai’s chief operating officer, Shin Unozawa.
Third party developers are key to the success of any console, and with Nintendo opening up their doors to court more of them, it just shows their dedication to pushing their console product to the next level.
‘Unlike the Gamecube, which flopped like a beached humpback’
a dish on the nickname, dolphin, perhaps?
Flopped? Hardly. GameCube sold 11 million units worldwide, just a million less than the Xbox did. But unlike MS console, the Cube actually was not sold at a loss for most of those years since it launched (Nintendo did lost some money at the beginning, though). Where the Cube failed was with getting third party support. But it never failed or flopped when it came to delivering good first party games. Only a few first third party games were brilliant on cube. Like Resident Evil 4 for instance.