Where has Nintendo themselves not done this? They've only got two titles up there, one of which is a new 2-D console Mario and an addition pack for Wii Fit that's only $20 by itself or with the balance board that's the same price as the original. They don't have a lot up there, mainly because they don't like announcing delays to things only tentatively slated.
In this case I mean the mantra from the perspective of Nintendo fans instead of Nintendo themselves. When Nintendo was pushing the "quality over quantity" line (which was all PR spin anyway) many Nintendo fans emphasized this when the comparison of the amount of games between a Nintendo console and a competitor came up. So for a Nintendo fan to just dump a big list of games, quality be damned, as a defense against criticism of poor Wii third party support it's a major contridiction of the attitude that so many Nintendo fans had for so many years. If quality over quantity was important to us then why is not so important now?
But, I do ask, how is Nintendo supposed to stop this sort of behavior?
I don't know. But it doesn't come across that they really care as long as Wii's fly off shelves. Last gen the third party was also quite poor, though understandable since the Cube had the smallest userbase. While I don't think Nintendo was all that competent at addressing that issue they did at least appear to make some effort with the Resident Evil stuff, Crystal Chronicles, Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes and Sega and Namco working on Nintendo games. This gen there was Mario & Sonic at the Olympics and I think they did a press conference for Dragon Quest X but aside from that there isn't really anything else. It's hard to say though because they're so damn secretive now we really don't know what they are or aren't doing. They might consider this a priority but they aren't letting us know that.
Or another lost mantra, "We will support the market leader." Loads of companies had that as their mantra. What happened around 2006 that changed all that?
Well Nintendo decided to change their target market. They're the market leader of the casual games market, a market they win by default by being the only competitor. The market leader of the old console market is Microsoft and they are getting the bulk of the third party support for the old videogame market. The Wii gets the bulk of the casual game market third party support.
Because it's all videogames and it's all consoles it creates the impression that Nintendo is the market leader and thus deserving of the best third party support. But it is effectively two markets, the casual one being the larger of the two and Nintendo having 100% of that market. It's like how the DS is also a videogame machine but the portable market is considered different, which is why the GBA's huge third party support did not trickle down to the Gamecube. A videogame company has four markets they can choose to provide product to: portable, console, PC, casual (and in Japan, arcade). There is crossover and I think the PC and console markets are blending together but product that flies in one market is not necessarily going to take off in another.
So if you look at console gaming as being seperated into two markets the Wii is actually getting very good third party support since it has a wide selection of casual focused videogames and is the first choice for any company making a casual game. But I'm not a casual gamer and thus not the Wii's target market. So from my perspective the third party support looks terrible. But that makes sense. I don't complain that games like Bioshock don't appear on the DS. They're not supposed to.
This is the only logical explaination I can think of as to why third parties appear to treat the Wii so poorly. I think the Wii and the other consoles are close enough in what they provide that the Wii should still be the de facto choice. I disagree with most third parties but I can understand why they would use this logic. They may not see that big amount of Wii users as potential buyers for the type of product they make for the old market.
Topic: Where is all the 3rd Party support for Nintendo consoles? (Read 15362 times)
