Topic: Beamdog: No More Nintendo Projects

[NWR_DrewMG]

The MDK2 developer clarifies their stance on future Nintendo projects with a resounding "No".

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/29857

Beamdog, developer of the WiiWare port of MDK2, will not be developing any future projects for Nintendo platforms. The news comes via Beamdog Business Developer Director Trent Oster who announced on Twitter: "We don't do Nintendo development. Our previous experience with Nintendo was enough to ensure there will not be another."

Oster, who was interviewed by NWR last May after the release of MDK2, continued to say that his issues with Nintendo stem from a 6000-sale prerequisite before the developer would receive any income from the finished game, as well as a 9-month certification process and a low file size limit for WiiWare development.

He finished up by referring to the perception that the Wii was a toy, stating "The reason I say the Wii is a toy is the exceptionally low attach rate. You buy a Wii, Wii sports and never buy another game. Bad for devs. Not an insult to Wii users, but a 140 char comment on the sales of Wii vs software compared to other consoles. Sales are food for a developer. Dev's are like grazing animals, no food and they move on to feed the team."

At the time of the May interview, Oster had noted that while they didn't have any plans to release another Nintendo product, stating "We're waiting to see how MDK2 does on WiiWare before we make any decisions on platforms for our future development. We built a fun game, our fingers are crossed it takes off." Via his Twitter account, Oster confirmed that MDK2 didn't sell nearly as well as the studio had projected. The studio is currently working on an updated version of the classic PC title Baldur's Gate for release on multiple platforms.

NWR reviewed MDK2 favorably upon release.

[foxdark22]

I don't mean to be rude but, look at all the f***s I give.

[NWR_DrewMG]

I don't mean to be rude, but you bothered to comment which doesn't imply a lack of caring.

[KITT 10K]

I don't mean to be rude either, but I don't see myself losing any sleep over this.

[UltraClayton]

I don't mean to be rude, but this stuff is what Nintendo deserves for setting dumb rules.

[NWR_Neal]

MDK2 is a pretty sweet game. This sucks and highlights why Nintendo needs to make Wii U's eShop way better. Luckily they seem to be better with devs on 3DS.

[Tizona]

MDK2 is sweet, but it's also a port of a old game that was not too successful, financially, the first time. I'm not defending Nintendo, but a lot of time we hear a company blaming a platform or platform holder for their games lack of sales, I tend to think the blame lies equally with the designers and developers.
As a consumer, no matter how the designer tries to spin it, it comes of a little like sour grapes.

[NWR_insanolord]

I'm sure all those things factor into it, but it is a fact that Nintendo designed a horrible system for WiiWare from pretty much all angles. The 3DS eShop has been fairly spectacular so far, so hopefully that means they've learned from that, and will continue to do so with the Wii U.

[Chozo Ghost]

While he makes a lot of great points and while I don't blame him for wanting to move on, I think he is being very narrowminded in saying that he refuses to develop for Nintendo hardware ever again. I get that the Wii sucks, and the file size limit and poor attach rate are serious problems, but the thing is things change, or at least things CAN change. Maybe the Wii U will be a friendlier platform for smaller developers than the Wii has been? That's why I say he shouldn't just flat out refuse to develop for Nintendo ever again. If things improve he should reconsider.

[GoldenPhoenix]

MDK2 always seemed like a poorly thought out port to Wiiware anyway. They knew the memory restrictions and Nintendo's policy going into it (at least I hope they did). My hope is that the Wii U service will be on the level of PS3 and Xbox when it comes to not just interface, but allowing the developers flexibility in how large they want the game to be without having to sacrifice quality.

[shinyray01]

This guy shouldn't blame Nintendo for his lack of success.

[GoldenPhoenix]

I don't really understand why there is so much focus on Beamdog, they've been involved in 3 games, two were versions of MDK2, the other is an upcoming remake of Baldur's Gate. They have hardly demonstrated themselves as a competent and creative developer yet. I'm sorry they had trouble with Wiiware and NIntendo, but they knew what they were getting into whether it was memory restrictions or the amount a title has to sell before they received a profit. It sounds like sour grapes to me and maybe an attempt at getting publicity for themselves.


The fact still stands that they share responsibility in attempting to cram a larger game into the 40 mb restriction, and in turn the game suffered in some ways, though I did hear it was from horrendous. People just didn't buy the game in the amount they needed it to sell. They lost out on their business risk, just like other company out there. Undoubtedly some have benefited from their Wiiware games.

[ShyGuy]

I think the video games industry becomes less and less professional as time goes on.

[StrawHousePig]

I don't mean to be rude, but I won't be buying Baldur's Gate either.

It would be fantastic if there were a way to buy a game outside of the device the store is currently solely attached to, like directly from a link at the bottom of a review to the Nintendo web store. Other than not being designed to browse more than a couple dozen titles, no screen shots or preview videos, that's the only real shortcoming from my perspective. If you were able to buy through a website, none of how the Wii store works would matter at all.

[NWR_DrewMG]

While I think that it is unfair to Nintendo to suggest that they are wholly to blame for the failings of MDK2, it's easy to forget that Nintendo's digital distribution service does not exist in a vacuum.  When a developer has to choose between WiiWare, XBLA, and PSN, iOS, etc, I see very little incentive to go the WiiWare route unless you really believe that the larger install base will pay off; in this case it clearly didn't.

[broodwars]

I DO mean to be rude (  ), so I have to point out that maybe if they wanted WiiWare sales for MDK2 perhaps they should have put a lot more effort into that port.  Despite the good review it got here at NWR, my time with MDK2 WiiWare was not a pleasant one.  In fact, I thought it was a pretty boring game overall, as well as requiring a needless amount of undirected precision for certain puzzles (I quit out of frustration at the part where you had to throw rocks you could barely see up in the air to get them to land through a hole in a distant building you could also barely see).

Nintendo deserves every bit of criticism they get for how they handled WiiWare (and the VC), but if I were these developers that WiiWare port of MDK2 would not be the battlefield I'd want to fight on.  Either that game was always crappy, or that WiiWare port was just messed-up.

[Lithium]

This is the first time I've heard of either MDK2 or Beamdog. I think that says a lot about why the game didn't sell.

[IamAwake94]

IMO Beamdog is not at fault here. They made a product for a service that is dead because of Nintendo. The WiiWare service, while although it does have some good games, is poorly marketed and organized. You have a horrible data cap and you have to have 6000 downloads just to make a profit for the first time. What if you product only sells 5000 downloads? Does that mean that you just put up a game for nothing and will never see profit from it? Sure, these devs may not have had good marketing but, WiiWare in general has not had much either. The E-Shop is certainly looking better each week, but they still have a lot to improve on to show developers they care about digital distribution.

[Chocobo_Rider]

Why does Trent care about disappointing WiiWare performance? Beamdog is one of the cornerstones of the industry and has proficiently provided profitable titles for decades now.  Sony and Microsoft will be tripping over themselves to ink exclusivity deals now that the Nintendo bridge is burned.

I can only hope Nintendo learns from this and changes their ways before they are, this time for sure, doomed.

 
 

[TJ Spyke]

Why does Trent care about disappointing WiiWare performance? Beamdog is one of the cornerstones of the industry and has proficiently provided profitable titles for decades now. 

What? Beamdog was founded in July 2010 (so they are less than 2 years old) and only released 2 games so far: MDK2 for WiiWare and MDK2 HD for PC. Maybe the founders of the company are former BioWare head people, but Beamdog itself is pretty new and doesn't have an impressive track record so far.

[Chozo Ghost]

I think NinSage was being sarcastic.

[TJ Spyke]

LOL, probably. I have seen comments like that which aren't sarcastic, but I should have realized NinSage wouldn't mean it.

[ejamer]

IMO Beamdog is not at fault here. They made a product for a service that is dead because of Nintendo. The WiiWare service, while although it does have some good games, is poorly marketed and organized. You have a horrible data cap and you have to have 6000 downloads just to make a profit for the first time. What if you product only sells 5000 downloads? Does that mean that you just put up a game for nothing and will never see profit from it? Sure, these devs may not have had good marketing but, WiiWare in general has not had much either. The E-Shop is certainly looking better each week, but they still have a lot to improve on to show developers they care about digital distribution.

I agree with much of what you say... but why did Beamdog agree to develop for the platform in that case?  When contracts were signed, with Beamdog agreeing to fund development from their own pocket, didn't they take some responsibility for making sure the chosen platform could allow their product to be successful?  I always assumed that taking business risks meant accepting the possibility of failure and being big enough to move on to the next project when that happens.

[Stogi]

Never heard of Beamdog before. It sounds like a hotdog delivery system.

I watched a couple videos of MDK2 which I've never heard before either. It looks ok, not great. Art style, gameplay and the interesting factor are all pretty bland. However, the type of game it is (3rd person shooter) definitely lends itself to the Wii.

If I were to place blame on someone, I would first blame the education system for not teaching the owners of Beamdog how to read. And I'd like to take the time to commend Nintendo for what I hope they did as Beamdog stuttered through the contract and that is yelling "To-to-today junior!" and high five-ing.

I'd then blame Nintendo for putting in place more restrictions than "Your bases are belong to us" Apple. Nintendo....Apple dominates the app field not because of their hawkish rules but because at one point developers had no place to go. Let me repeat myself...DEVELOPERS HAD NO PLACE TO GO. Ahem...that is not the same for your market, in fact it is the opposite. You weren't the first and unless you incentivise developers and react to the markets you won't be the last.

[Dasmos]

Never heard of Beamdog before. It sounds like a hotdog delivery system.

It sounds like an amazing hotdog delivery service.