I think Nintendo is getting in deep with 3rd parties because everything they seem to do going forward (Mostly on Wii U) has had some previous incarnation from a 3rd party. Almost as if they were trying to get them to test it out for them it was officially announced.
"Everyone" was asking for motion cameras and Sony & MS were talking about Move & Kinect....
Ubisoft comes out with Your Shape with motion camera. It sold decent but I guess Nintendo wasn't really wanting something similar to PSEye or Kinect so nothing ever came of that.
THQ then comes out with uDraw and it's an initial success selling over 1 million units is it's first few months. 7-8 months later uPad is revealed and the uDraw tablet looks like it was possibly inspired by work on an early meeting with Nintendo or something and they decided to test out some ideas ahead of the market.
EA got tired of waiting for Nintendo to release the Vitality sensor, so they made their own... no one cared. I have no idea how it sold, but EA Sports Active could still be receiving updates I'm not aware of, so it might not be a complete failure of added hardware.
Activision (?) just came out with Spyro Skylanders which I think uses that NFC tech and that was a major hit if the hype around the internet is anything to go by.
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Is it possible that Nintendo is secretly having 3rd parties test out accessory ideas ahead of an official announcement? Is it all just a coincidence or is Nintendo getting inspiration from 3rd party efforts?
edit:
THQ came out with UDraw actually. And they did say that Nintendo was very helpful in them making it.
Oh, well then, let me modify post as to not distract from the overall point.
