/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.1245797]

Time for serious discussion: Nintendo and their relationship with third parties.

There's a lot of different opinions and points of view regarding Nintendo, while some people love them and praise as the saviors of vidya after the 1983 crash, other accuse them as being tyrant and hegemonic/monopolic, and generally assholes to 3rd party devs.

Where do we stand between the 2? And I don't mean picking a side, I want to read different opinions and see which kind of conclusions we can reach. Remember not all 3rd parties are poor victims, some of them are even more powerful than ones that actually manufactured hardware (EA, Activision, etc).

Remember, no need to shitpost or call people names, let's try and have a civilized discussion, this isn't /v/.

[Anonymous No.1245843]

>>1245797
Honestly, while many people like to demonize Nintendo for their seemingly draconian business practices during the 80's on the NES, it's understandable when you take into account they were trying to avoid the glut of unplayable garbage that brought Atari and the entire home video game industry to it's knees in the early 80's.

Atari had no quality control or licensing control over their system, and as a result anybody could make games for the Atari 2600, which led to a glut of shovelware that no consumer would want to pay money for, causing irreparable damage to the Atari brand itself. Nintendo's whole licensing system and QA practices in the 80's were absolutely the way to avoid history repeating itself again.

If Nintendo were going to jump-start the flat lining home video game industry, it would mean tight quality control on their part.

[Anonymous No.1245875]

Why not believe in both? They were very tyrannical but with that came some quality control which was needed after 83. 3rd party dealt with it until they had a chance to break away. They did loosen their grip at SNES/Genesis but most 3rd party had enough with Nintendo and left to go to Sony. The disk vs. cartridges might have been the straw that broke the camel's back to some.

[Anonymous No.1245907]

To be fair, Nintendo had half of a monopoly in Japan, because of how business works there. If you earn the top seat, you have the right to monopolize. That's why it's important for Nintendo to keep fighting in the home console market front in Japan, since Sony has had that market in a deathgrip since the 90's, and a key reason why most Japanese third parties support Sony over Nintendo.

Likewise, it would be a lie to say Nintendo was ruthless to all third parties; some of Nintendo's sub companies were third parties at one point. What gave Nintendo the reason to treat other, irrelevant companies better than the other? On that note, Nintendo has been the friendliest to Konami, since they were the one of the few third parties that was given the okay to make their own NES carts (which was usually left to Nintendo) and Nintendo conveniently ignored their Ultra Games division, which was Konami's method of pushing out more games and avoiding the 5 games per year limit set by Nintendo. That essentially allowed Konami to publish 10 games per year, and given it was Konami, that wasn't bad at all.

Oh, and Nintendo was nice enough to have Snake in Brawl as an advertisement for the MGS series, and Konami was paid in royalties at the same time, despite MGS having next to nothing on Nintendo. Either Nintendo is exceptionally generous, or Konami is exceptionally manipulative.

[Anonymous No.1245945]

>>1245907
I think with the whole Konami thing was mostly just a way to sell more brawls. Also maybe Nintendo wanted to give Sony the bird so they couldn't use it on their not smash bro.

But one of the biggest thing Nintendo did was force developers to only work with them. Which caused the biggest problem for Sega. There was even a lawsuit if I remember right about how much of a hold Nintendo had on developers.

I feel it was a necessary evil for them to do that. It's just sad they are still have that dark cloud hanging over them.

[Anonymous No.1246114]

>>1245843

Yeah, I agree, the tight controls was necessary at that time, although PC gamers might argue that quality games were still being made on PC by amateurs or small devs, I'm not so sure because I have barely played early 80s computer games, but I've read that, related or not, during those times PC gaming was also having some sort of crisis, but I'm not sure if that was true, maybe they were thriving at that time. What I know, though, is that at the time the Famicom was released, no home system would do the screen scrolling like the Famicom would back in 1983, not even home computers, and this is why Super Mario Bros. (1985) caused so much crazyness, playing a side scroller like that was supposedly something really new and unique for home systems (not counting arcades), most action games at the time were either single-screen, or the screen would have separate frames, instead of continually scrolling, or maybe had some sort of scrolling but incredibly slow. Again, maybe someone else, a PC gamer maybe, can correct me on this. I think home computers could do that shortly after, but the Famicom was the first in 1983, or so I remember reading.

>>1245875
Of course it's both, Nintendo is a company that works for profit, it's not hard to imagine they were kind of dicks back when they were suddenly kings of vidya world, but I want to know to what extent, since nowdays it seems the tyrants are some 3rd party companies now (aforementioned EA, considered the worst videogame company in USA), which in fact benefit from the homogenized console and PC market they've helped to develop, and huge responsibles for the current state in the industry along with Activision and of course the big 3.
So... this is not good vs evil, it's just business. So how can we really judge Nintendo, without resorting to "saviors!" or "tyrants!"?

[Anonymous No.1246127]

>>1245907
>>1245945


>>1245907
>>1245945

Could you elaborate on that japanese monopoly thing? I'm not really sure but I think the PC Engine did sort of fine against the Famicom, of course didn't reach its numbers but it was a good rival. NES practically dominated in USA and some of Europe though, that's for sure.
And yeah that Konami thing, the Ultra Series... hilarious. I think Snake in Smash Bros. is mainly due to Kojima asking Sakurai, since they're friends, and Kojima said he wanted Snake on Smash (Kojima wants Snake everywhere, Snake already appears as a playable character on the Smash-like TV Dreammix Megamix, for PS2 and Gamecube, and characters from Konami, Hudson and Takara). But yeah I must have needed the permission from Iwata, Brawl contains a lot of various music from the games, and also I think it was the first time people saw the Gekkos or heard the MGS4 theme, I think, since Brawl came out before MGS4.

[Anonymous No.1246140]

The NES was quality control working out good for everyone.
The N64 was quality control biting Nintendo in the ass. Games like Superman still happened, but they also lost fucking Square. Subsequent generations have only been worse, with less quality 3rd party devs willing to work on home consoles and somehow MORE shovelware.

[Anonymous No.1246150]

>>1246140

Was Nintendo 64-era still the same, corporative-wise, than in the NES era?

[NESfag No.1246156]

>>1246140
I don't believe the Wii has any more shovelware than the NES. Meanwhile the Wii is the console of its generations with the most games I like (including the console of its generation with the most horror games)
They were also tons of stuff much worse than Superman64 on NES.

[Anonymous No.1246561]

>>1245945
>Also maybe Nintendo wanted to give Sony the bird so they couldn't use it on their not smash bro.

Oh wow, they sure showed Sony. All Sony has to say is "But we have all the Metal Gear games, and will continue to get them".

[Anonymous No.1246564]

>>1246561
I meant to post the laughing Kaz pic.

[Anonymous No.1247098]

>>1246140
The Wii actually probably has the most quality, hardcore titles this gen, like Madworld, NMH2, Muramasa, Sin & Punishment, Little King's Story, Tauma Center, etc.

[Anonymous No.1247108]

>>1246140
The Wii actually probably has the most quality, hardcore third-party titles this gen, like Madworld, NMH2, Muramasa, Sin & Punishment, Little King's Story, Trauma Center, etc.

[Anonymous No.1247556]

>>1246561
>>1246564

Go to /v/. Also MGS is not an exclusive Sony franchise anymore, never really was, the only one that's still exclusive to Sony is MGS4.

[Anonymous No.1247559]

>>1247108

The Wii Fire Emblem is one of the most hardcore RPGs I've played the past generation. That game ain't for beginners.

[Anonymous No.1247573]

>>1247556
It's still something Sony has over Nintendo. Hell, Sony had third party over Nitnendo, and as of recently, the PS4 has been catching up to the Wii U's sales.

[Anonymous No.1247581]

>>1247573

It's OK Sonyfanboy, this thread is not about discussing whether Sony not having any exclusivities like in the past anymore (which is true, say hi to MGS, FF or Kingdom hearts not being exclusives anymore), this is about discussing Nintendo's relationship with 3rd parties, not console war bullshit (and much less current gen console war, again, go to /v/)

[Anonymous No.1247590]

>>1247581
I was just stating a fact, you're the one who's being defensive. So what if Sony loses exclusivity? That's nothing compared to the N64 that lost support left and right.

[Anonymous No.1247595]

>>1247590

You suddenly started talking about PS4 and WiiU sales.. wtf, back to /v/ man, thisis /vr/

[Anonymous No.1247613]

>>1247595
I've been meaning to follow up with:

The N64 sold only a third of the PS1's units, mostly due to the PS1 having all the third party support that people wanted. If Nintendo's own IPs were that strong, they would've saved the N64. By extension, those numbers will only go up because guess what, the PS4 will have those third party games that people want.

The NES and SNES sold well, and they both conveniently enough had impressive third party support.

[Anonymous No.1247623]

>>1247613

People, just ignore this sony fanboy. This thread is not about talking about WiiU VS PS4 current gen trash, this is /vr/, and this thread is meant to discuss Nintendo's relationship with 3rd party, mostly during the NES days, and how it evolved from there. Current gen is irrelevant and not /vr/

[Anonymous No.1247650]

>>1247623
I'm no fanboy, I'm just stating plain and simple, third party support is what killed off Nintendo's consoles at the N64. Nintendo wanted an exclusivity contract with pretty much all NES games, wanna take a guess why? So that the NES was the only home console that had those games, thus those are extra points to its side. The only other consoles that had third party games were home computers.

Nintendo enforced "quality control" so that the stigma of Atari would leave; problem is, this quality control boiled down to three things:

No offensive material such as religious imagery or sexual innuendos.

You paid Nintendo the licensing fees.

Game's code must not include any illegal opcodes; while these are harmless, they wanted to avoid them as they were planning on creating a custom CPU that would be backwards compatible with the legal opcodes but lose support for the illegal ones. However, only one licensed game has illegal opcodes in it's programming, TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project. This was released late in the NES' life, and making a further customized 6502 (the 2A03 was already a customized 6502) would be pointless.

Nintendo's exclusivity contract forced console games to be exclusive to the NES for two years before being ported to competing consoles; enough to kill off any initial interest the game had for those who didn't have an NES, and force said people to buy an NES for those games.

Eventually, the NES built itself up with third party games and franchises, and the SNES continued this trend because the SNES, PC Engine, and Genesis were about equal; for some time, each of those consoles had a viable market. Some third parties worked on all three, some stayed mostly with Nintendo, and some left Nintendo. The ones that stayed were the ones that had a following on the NES, such as Square. Others, like Konami, made some spinoffs for competing consoles while the SNES received sequels.

[Anonymous No.1247701]

>>1247650

You're right about the NES exclusivity thing, but, as you also said by the end of your post, by the 16 bit era that was no longer the case. The fact some companies like Konami or Square only released proper sequels of famous franchises on SNES was simply due to marketing strategy: most people who played Final Fantasy were on SNES, not on Genesis, but it wasn't as in the NES days anymore, companies were free to release multiplats, and they did. Games like Street Fighter II, or Letal Enforcers, and many others by Capcom, Konami, et al, were in both SNES and Genesis, no "tyranic hegemonic" behavior by Nintendo anymore, just these companies deciding whether to release some games multiplats, and some others exclusives.

>No offensive material such as religious imagery or sexual innuendos.

NOA, not Nintendo of Japan. I find it funny that people still think Nintendo of America censors and doesn't allow mature games and stuff, that thing ended with Mortal Kombat 2 back in like 1994 or so.

[Anonymous No.1247714]

>>1245843
Hilariously the majority of the NES library is fucking trash.

[Anonymous No.1247723]

>>1247701
Didn't have enough space to add that; Nintendo acted as a early version of the ESRB, only so that they didn't get any flack from the presses. Could you imagine if Nintendo allowed games to have satanic imagery or grotesque violence? Oh boy. Nintendo just didn't want a part of that controversy.

>>1247714
Name some trash NES games then. Most of the trash was left in Japan, we were lucky to have gotten "gems" like Ikari Warriors and Athena. Japan on the other hand had Super Monkey Daibouken, Black Bass, Hoshi Wo Miru Hito, and some other incredibly poorly made games.

[Anonymous No.1247869]

>>1247723
>Name some trash NES games then.

Fester's Quest, Hydlide, Back to the Future, Day Dreamin' Davey, Milon's Secret Castle, Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters, Dragon's Lair, The Waldo games, Dynowarz, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, et fucking cetera.

[Anonymous No.1247956]

>>1247701
>I find it funny that people still think Nintendo of America censors and doesn't allow mature games and stuff, that thing ended with Mortal Kombat 2 back in like 1994 or so.
They were still kinda strict on content up until the ESRB came into play. Even then they were reluctant to work with more mature titles up until the GameCube. Conker's Bad Fur Day is a good example of this.

[Anonymous No.1248102]

>>1247869
>Fester's Quest
Nothing wrong with it besides difficulty (it was even advertised as being obscenely difficult).

>Hydlide
Considering it's a port of a 1984 PC game originally released in 86, then localized here in 1989, it's just obscenely dated.

>Back to the Future
>Day Dreamin' Davey
>Ghostbusters
>Waldo games
Point taken.

>Milon's Secret Castle
Nothing wrong with it, just relatively non-linear, a trend for older games.

>Beetlejuice
The game does what it's set out to do. Nothing inherently wrong with it.

>Dragon's Lair
The US version is a sloppy mess. However, the EU and Japanese versions run much faster. It's another obscenely difficult NES game that relies on trial and error more than skill. The fact your character has delay in his movements is reminiscent of the original game's QTE's.

>Dynowarz
Just a short, bland game. Nothing bad about it.

>Robin Hood.
Like the above, but based on a Kevin Costner movie. The "digitized" graphics were impressive at the time, but have aged horribly.

Truly horrible games are like the ones you listed as well as gems like Silent Service, Ultima 5, X-Men, and the Rocky and Bullwinkle game. The ones you listed are just flawed, some more than others.

[Anonymous No.1249093]

>>1248102
>Nothing wrong with [Fester's Quest] besides difficulty

The difficulty came from the fact that the gun mechanics were lifted wholesale from Blaster Master, but the level design conflicted with those mechanics severely and you didn't get a reliable secondary weapon like Blaster Master's grenade to use when the gun mechanics left you in a bad situation. It is difficult because it is a shoddily designed game.

>[Hydlide is] just obscenely dated

Which would have been fine if it hadn't been a boring game to begin with.

>[Milon's Secret Castle] is just relatively non-linear

There's nothing wrong with making a "relatively non-linear" game and putting lots of obscure stuff on the side to reward the thorough or lucky. When you make every single part of the actual game that is necessary to reach the end something that obscure, however, you cross the line into shitty game. If you have to punch every square of empty space in a room to find a door to a hidden optional bonus, that is one thing. If you are required to do it in order to proceed to the next part of the game, that is completely different.

>The US version [of Draqon's Lair] is a sloppy mess.

Which is funny because we're talking about the assertion that shit games were left overseas and that only the cream of the crop made it to US shores.

>[Beetlejuice] does what it's set out to do.

The game does nothing. If a game sets out to do nothing and succeeds, that doesn't mean it isn't a shitty game.

>[Dynowarz/Robin Hood:] Just a short, bland game. Nothing bad about it.

Other than it being bland. See above. Video games are a medium of entertainment. If a game is exceptionally bland and fails to deliver entertainment, it is shit. If I go a restaurant and the service is perfectly acceptable but every single thing they serve is completely flavorless, I'm not going to call it a restaurant with "nothing bad about it" and I'm not going to bother going back.

[Anonymous No.1249134]

>>1247723
>Ikari Warriors
>gem

That game was fucking awful.

[Anonymous No.1249149]

>>1247723
>Name some trash NES games then

Anything by LJN.
Really did they ever make a game that wasn't trash?

[Anonymous No.1249152]

>>1249134
You forgot the quotation marks.

[Anonymous No.1249158]

>>1249152
>being this autistic
Just because it's a > doesn't mean it has to be a literal quote

[Anonymous No.1249380]

Nintendo is the Disney of games.

They have quality but it's standardized, and some see it as either the entire reason they only play it, the only reason they dismiss it, or just a accepted part of the company.

[Anonymous No.1249514]

>>1249149

They made NBA All Star Challenge for SNES. It's not as good as NBA Jam TE/Extreme, but it is pretty good for being both A) a sports game and B) made by LJN

>>1247869

Hydlide wasn't for NES originally, I think. In any case Virtual Hydlide for SAT is somehow even worse

[Anonymous No.1249629]

>>1249149
Somehow they released a legitimately good movie tie-in game.

[Anonymous No.1249770]

>>1247723
>Name some trash NES games then
Pic related and to name some others:
Attack of Killer Tomatoes
Captain Planet and the Planeteers
P'radicus Conflict
Ren & Stimpy Buckaroos


>>1249149
OPINIONS but I think Friday the 13th and Terminator 2 for NES are OK games no matter what AVGN says.

[Anonymous No.1249842]

Konami released several N64 games, including two Castlevania titles. That tends to get overlooked.

[Anonymous No.1249869]

>>1249149
LJN never made anything, they just published 'em.

Some of those games were made by Rare, Atlus and Westone.

[Anonymous No.1249875]

>>1249770
You sure love crappy games, dude.

Here are some I own.

[Anonymous No.1249879]

>>1249770
>Raid 2020

I've played this

It is one of the worst games I have ever played

[Anonymous No.1250115]

>>1249093
Fester's Quest had the "bullets dissipate when hitting the walls" removed in the European version.

And when I was talking about Japan, I meant to say that a lot of the bad games were left there. Truth be told, the NES's library was about 20% good, 70% average, and 10% awful. Most NES games are average at best, but games like these >>1249770 are classified as awful. We're talking about licensed games here, but some unlicensed devs made better games than some licensed ones. Tengen had a few quality titles under their belt, Codemasters was probably the best, and Captain Comic has the distinction of being the ONLY good Color Dreams game.

[Anonymous No.1250121]

>>1249875
>Spelunker
>Atlantis no Nazo
>bad

They're just very difficult, and in AnN's case, very dated. Spelunker hasn't changed much since the original Atari 8-Bit PC game, so it's just an old game, even for 1985 (when it was initially made). If anything, the sequel to Spelunker was worse.

AnN is a supremely ambitious game for its time, one of the earliest games with so many screens. It just suffered from awkward jumping mechanics and non-linearity.

[Anonymous No.1251210]

It's a complex subject OP. One one hand licencing was very restrictive and Nintendo were obsessed with keeping standards high. They relaxed a bit on the SNES by allowing big European publishers like Ocean in and enhanced Amiga Ports were rather trivial to some (While other Amiga devs were courted by Virgin Mastertronic like Pygnosis and Bizarre Creations)

On the other, they did actually want to keep studios they liked rather close and would push out the boat for them. So you had devs like Paradigim, Angel Studios and DMA Design create exclusive games for the N64 because Nintendo kept them close and treated them well but other publishers didn't really like the idea of having to design their games around the console than just making one SKY (Which repeated itself with the Wii and Wii-U). Hence why most of the multiplatforms on N64 were racing games and platform games because it was easier to transfer that over to the N64's control scheme.

Historically, the licence thing is one part. But the main difference seems to be that Nintendo just wants the third parties to try be on their level as regards developing for the uniquness of the console. Some wont and can't. Some will. And the problem for third parties as well is that they get hammered critically if they don't have that uniqueness inherent to a Nintendo platform. So it's all rather catch 22.

It goes a bit beyond "Nintendo were a bit of a dick when licencing". There's all sorts of problems unique to Nintendo platforms due to the way they operate. I don't believe that 3rd parties hate them as much. It's just Nintendo tends to try hold out on the "Multi-SKU" world and always has been which 3rd parties don't like as they would rather just port their game and be done with it.

[Anonymous No.1251215]

It's a complex subject OP. One one hand licencing was very restrictive and Nintendo were obsessed with keeping standards high. They relaxed a bit on the SNES by allowing big European publishers like Ocean in and enhanced Amiga Ports were rather trivial to some (While other Amiga devs were courted by Virgin Mastertronic like Pygnosis and Bizarre Creations to create exclusive Mega Drive content)

On the other, they did actually want to keep studios they liked rather close and would push out the boat for them. So you had devs like Paradigim, Angel Studios and DMA Design create exclusive games for the N64 because Nintendo kept them close and treated them well but other publishers didn't really like the idea of having to design their games around the console than just making one SKU and porting it out (Which repeated itself with the Wii and Wii-U). Hence why most of the multiplatforms on N64 were racing games and platform games because it was easier to transfer that over to the N64's control scheme.

Historically, the licence thing is one part. But the main difference seems to be that Nintendo just wants the third parties to try be on their level as regards developing for the uniquness of the console. Some wont and can't. Some will. And the problem for third parties as well is that they get hammered critically if they don't have that uniqueness inherent to a Nintendo platform. So it's all rather catch 22.

It goes a bit beyond "Nintendo were a bit of a dick when licencing". There's all sorts of problems unique to Nintendo platforms due to the way they operate. I don't believe that 3rd parties hate them as much. It's just Nintendo tends to try hold out on the "Multi-SKU" world and always has been which 3rd parties don't like as they would rather just port their game and be done with it.

[Anonymous No.1253873]

bump

[Anonymous No.1253923]

>>1253873

I don't think you are going to get much more. We've established that in modern day terms, it's not so much licensing, but it's more Nintendo's mandate to be unique and not be constantly competing for a multi-platform SKU. In the 90's, sure. Licensing costs and loyalty were a huge part. Nowadays, it's very much down to how unique the Wii-U platform is in architecture and control scheme that games have to be specifically tailored around it and not brute force ported. You can see it in the gulf between 1st party and 3rd party efforts in Wii-U performance.

Drama wise, Nintendo not letting EA have Origin as it's own application for EA games and running it through EA only servers is the only real drama. Everyone else is just trying to maximise the SKU's and not putting an awful lot of effort in through rushed porting while Nintendo completely shows them up with their first party output. I don't think there's any old grudges carrying on except for the Sony one. Everyone's content but at the minute see the Wii-U as an afterthought.

That's the long and short of it really. Notice how many 3rd parties support the 3DS as well. Nintendo's well respected, even if they occasionally have spats with the likes of EA. It always passes. Just like with Square and Capcom on the N64.

[Anonymous No.1256363]

I was just reading this old 2003 article from Dorito Pope, and remembered this thread:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2003/08/01/346319/

God damn, that guy really wants Nintendo to fail, ever since a decade ago. Now I know why he's always attacking Reggie every chance he gets.

In this article, the guy basically keeps bashing Nintendo for being "irrelevant" and sticking to "games only" instead of focusing on media centers, while also commenting on how monopolic they were during the NES days. Funnily enough, he barely mentioned the 1983 crash indirectly:

>The Famicom was an overnight sensation in Japan. It had a tougher time cracking the U.S. market. American retailers, still bruised by the recent failure of Atari, weren't exactly enthusiastic about stocking another videogame system.

>serious gaming journalism

Geoff was never really serious.

[Anonymous No.1256389]

>>1249158
What the fuck, man? Are you mentally disabled?

[Anonymous No.1258893]

>>1251215
>>1253923

I'm going to assume you're the same person, so I'll make one reply.

What moves Nintendo consoles almost always was Nintendo's own games. This is a fact. This, however, does not mean that third parties are a lost cause. The more third parties support a console, the more games it will have. The more games it has, the more people will buy said console, and the more people that buy this console, the greater the chances of their games selling becomes.

It might not be their company motto, but Nintendo should try copying what Sony has been doing for 20 years. Make intrusive commercials that will DRIVE your consoles into the consumer's mind. Get with the big third parties such as Square, Konami, and Rockstar, and discuss how a console should be designed. Once they are satisfied with how the console is designed, ask them for a game of their popular series.

I'm not talking about ports or spinoffs, I'm talking about main series titles. Square could develop Final Fantasy 18 on Nintendo's next gen console (which we will call Nintendo 8), for example, but it must meet one of the three criteria. It is either exclusive, it is a timed exclusive, or it is released at the same time as the other two versions. All else will fail.

Likewise, Nintendo handhelds are guaranteed moneymakers for anyone who desires to make games for it, so Nintendo should take advantage of it. If Konami wants to make "Metal Gear Solid: In Name Only Action" for the Nintendo handheld, they must first make a similar game for the Nintendo 8 first. But Nintendo will have knowledge of how much the development budget was, how much advertising it got, and how much money it made. Only Nintendo can tell them if this game is a failure or not, and if it succeeded, they force Konami through this hoop again. They WILL jump through these hoops for a piece of that handheld money. I guarantee it.

[Anonymous No.1261787]

>>1245797
as much as i love nintendo (their consoles are built well and i love their first party titles) i think they don't do much right when it comes to third party support as they force developers to use their ggimmicks reccently and have made some decisions like keeping the n64 cartridge based and having the gamecube use small capacity discs that make it no surprise that third party titles are more limited in supply

i remember hearing that nintendo basicallly kept the master system from becoming a huge thing since they didn't allow developers to port their games onto other hardware until like 3 years after it was released on their console or something but i don't know how true this is

regardless as of recently i buy a nintendo console for nintendo games and a different console for third party games but this gen it seems to just be pc and nintendo for me

[Anonymous No.1261819]

>>1245797
What are you talking about? The Gameboy Color was third party central. It's almost as if they made the Gameboy Color with 3rd party shovelware in mind.

[Anonymous No.1261860]

Nintendo usually hasn't offered 3rd parties a good deal for the past 2 decades. There's been high publishing costs, content restrictions, and occasionally hard to work with hardware. That stuff will be accepted when you are the only one providing a platform with a size-able user-base (which was the case with the NES and many of their hand-helds). But when you get competitors who also provide a competent platform but with better deals, developers will no longer put up with that. These large companies are not going to forget such situations easily. I think it's clear that some older devs/publishers nowadays don't want to see more Nintendo dominated generations.


I think there is a misconception about Nintendo quality control ITT. Getting a game approved by Nintendo ( or any console 1st party) has to do with hardware compatibility and and a lack of offensive material. It's not quality in the sense of what a reviewer would rate the game, but quality in that a consumer knew the game would work rightly with the hardware and peripherals.

[Anonymous No.1261908]

>>1258893

Well, you're talking mostly of current gen... I don't know, right now the industry is really strange. I don't really like Sony's marketing at all myself, maybe it's just my opinion but the whole "look how cool the playstation is, FOR THE PLAYERS!" thing looks like it's trying to appeal to someone else, not me, I don't know.
I generally dislike any kind of marketing though (Nintendo's happy go lucky family ads aren't for me either), so I don't know what would and what wouldn't work for real, marketing is certainly not my field.

As for Nintendo consulting 3rd parties like Square or Rockstar, I think big publishers like that want the industry to be as homogenized as possible. I'm not sure how that would turn out... we'd be getting just another consolized PC, and as this anon said:
>>1261787
For me this gen it's PC and Nintendo. I already have a PS3 and I don't see the point in buying a PS4 so far, most games I want are also coming to PS3 simultaneously, and now that Persona 5 was announced, the PS3 is set to have more interesting exclusives than the PS4 in the future. And for "ultimate grafix" I already have PC. Nintendo's WiiU might not be the most exciting thing ever, but at least the thing is still a console, and there's a couple exclusives I'm interested in for the future.

Anyway, are you guys sure Nintendo is still as restrictive as it was during the NES days? I think the main problem with the WiiU is that it's not x86 structure (i.e., publishers can't just "port over", they need to make a special edition for WiiU, when they can just make 1 game code and then port for PC, PS4 and Xbone since they all share the same architecture), but not sure if they're still as tyranic in terms of licensing fees, I don't even think they still censor that much. Yeah I know in some games, recently bravely default, some chick got her panty covered, but that's typical USA localization, has happened with Sony games too.

[Anonymous No.1262463]

>>1258893
>sony , learn from them

right? learn how to file for bankruptacy?