Topic: The WiiU debacle: Is Nintendo or publishers to blame.

[pokepal148]

Eh, I think the crash is happening no matter what, and while it might produce some upside for Nintendo, it still wouldn't leave them as anything other than the last living outlet of an obsolete system.

Depends, if nintendo survives with enough influence to reform the industry to their liking they have a chance.

[Mannypon]

I think Nintendo is in the best position out of the main 3 to survive a collapse.  Unlike the other 2, they don't overly spend their money in game production, they are definitely more conservative.  They have, I would argue, the most loyal fans.  Also, they have their handheld which its market is in a healthier state, especially in Japan.  They'll survive.  They might not come out the same, might have to downsize, but they'll still have people interested in their products I'd like to think.  I know I would still be interested in AC, Pokémon, Zelda, Advanced wars, etc, etc, etc.....

[NWR_insanolord]

The funny thing is Nintendo's in the best shape to survive a collapse for the same reasons they're in the weak position they find themselves in now. Their very conservative business practices, such as taking a profit on hardware and relying mainly on their big, marketable franchises, combined with their relative self-reliance, not depending on their (nonexistent) relationships with other companies, are what give them that.

[smallsharkbigbite]

I seriously fail to see why third parties continue to support platforms that cause them to lose money and even go bankrupt, but then I realize why, and I understand Nintendo's viewpoint.

It's not that simple.  Video game development is expensive and the market is constantly changing.  Someone may make a good shooter on PS3/Xbox 360 and have good success.  2 years later there are different competitors and with the market flooded and the sequel might fail.  A good example is IOS.  It was new and many games had great success.  Now the market is flooded with and it's hard to get people to notice your game.

I'd venture to say that most of these developers that go bankrupt are supporting the platforms that they profit from the most.  Sadly, they probably distribute all those profits when they have them and then declare bankruptcy when they have a large failure or several small failures because they don't want to inject the cash into the business to save it.  Most of these companies then re-org and come back from bankruptcy or are bought out by companies such as EA.  Most developers keep cash on hand really small and aren't set up for failures, which at some point it is inevitable that you miss the market with a game or two. 

If Nintendo's going to buy support, which I don't think they should do as it's a slippery slope that could put them in an even worse situation

You think third parties can support worse than now?  Worse case scenario you buy a few games and then you don't get the sequels because Nintendo isn't willing to support them and you're back where you are now.  I think EA would absolutely support the Wii U with games if they thought they could make money.  If you helped them make money, I think they would absolutely continue that support.  They may be a company run by jerks, but money talks and they aren't going to walk away from it.  They just don't think they can get it with the Wii U. 

[Evan_B]

It's not like anyone wants games from EA anyway.

[Oblivion]

It's not like anyone wants games from EA anyway.

You must be joking. Star Wars Battlefront 3 and Mirror's Edge say hello. I've been wanting to former since the PS2 days and the latter since 2008.

[pokepal148]

It's not like anyone wants games from EA anyway.

You must be joking. Star Wars Battlefront 3 and Mirror's Edge say hello. I've been wanting to former since the PS2 days and the latter since 2008.

great... two more brands for them to completely nickel and dime into horrible things

[Evan_B]

It's not like anyone wants games from EA anyway.

You must be joking. Star Wars Battlefront 3 and Mirror's Edge say hello. I've been wanting to former since the PS2 days and the latter since 2008.

Battlefront 3 will be a shadow of its former self, or worse. The Star Wars franchise is beyond dead until we watch its feeble resurrection by the hands of a terrible director and Disney, whose 'mature' titles have been nothing but half-baked ideas. And if you think EA isn't going to superimpose their bogus business practices on it, you're kidding yourself.

As for Mirror's Edge, I can't sympathize since I never ayed the first, but from what I've seen and what I know, first person platforming is never executed well and it didn't look like the original really broke that mold.

I seriously have no love for EA. Their hayday has long since past, and they really do stand behind shoddy business practices and advocations, like their treatment of homosexuality in their games.

[Oblivion]

What business practices do you speak of?

[Evan_B]

Their lovely day one DLC concepts, micro transactions, and DRM ideas. They may not have done it first, but they've done it the most offensively and least-customer friendly.

And, you know, how the quality of every developer that has been acquired by them has suffered. That's just an added bonus, though. Again, maybe it's a coincidence, but it seems awfully strange.

I just have no respect for a company that doesn't seriously question their state of business after being voted as the worst company in america for two years- and yes, that's a horribly skewed poll, but the way they respond to it is, 'look at how well our digital services are doing(because there's no alternative) and look at how we support homosexuality (when it's used for cheap fan service and as a meat shield for critique).' As a company designed to entertain in the medium of video games, I can say their antics don't entertain me at all.

[Ian Sane]

I don't want the industry to crash and burn, but I don't want it to become sterile or for practices I don't like like DRM and microtransactions to catch on.  I need it to move in the direction that avoids such things and sometimes a bit of suffering is the only way to someone will learn.

Same with Nintendo.  I'd like Nintendo to just pull their heads out of their asses on their own but that hasn't happened in the 17 years that have passed since they shoved them up there in the first place with the N64.  So realistically Nintendo has to suffer to learn.  The Wii U being a huge flop thus far is exactly the sort of thing that could do that.  If in a situation where they have to get their act together or die, hopefully they'll get their act together.

So the Xbone being a huge flop would be GREAT for the industry IF it scared them away from DRM and always-online checks and locked out used games and all sorts of horrible things.  Of course they could also learn the wrong lesson and just assume that consoles aren't worth pursuing.  That's the risk we run.

I see two extremes of either the industry going in a horrible anti-consumer direction where games are sterile and generic because the risk of failure is too great to do anything interesting or the whole console model just dying outright.  Realistically either one is the same to me.  What I want is something in between.

The problem with game budgets is that it's kind of hard to offer us something for a few years and then try to scale back.  At the very least the PS360 level of production values is the lowest common denominator merely because it would be a ridiculous hard sell to ask customers to go backwards from that.  The PS4 and Xbone could both flop while the old systems continue to sell well (and the Wii U picks up steam) and then the market has dictated that that is our ceiling for the time being.  I never felt the other guys needed a new console, just Nintendo.

[Evan_B]

You know, Ian, that's a great point, an something I agree with. No one can deny Nintendo needs to seriously rework their development cycle in regards to console launches- it's especially insulting since they dropped support of the Wii in its last two years of life and STILL had nothing to show come Wii U launch- then again, they were trying to desperately save a dying handheld instead.

But I must admit, as neat as the PS4 looks, it doesn't seem to be a substantial improvement over its predecessor on just about any way, and I hope consumers see that too.

[Agent-X-]

I already feel like the industry went the direction of sterile games where doing anything interesting is too great of a risk. Indie developers have caught on like wild fire because they are the ones making really interesting games. From 1995 to around 2002, there was an explosion of innovation because of PC gaming and an acceptance of 3D-polygonal graphics. The market successfully offered games for everyone whether it was Sim Farm, bass fishing, deer hunting, or running amok committing crimes ala GTA. The 360 and PS3 were the first consoles from MS and Sony that I ever actually owned, and my 360 experience was so plain that I had to sell it and pick up a PS3 just to get a decent baseball game. I truly, truly missed out on the Xbox and the PS2. I think it's night and day the difference in developer values, and if someone had shown me the future of these platforms I'd have not bought them. That's right. I would have just been a happy Wii owner who continued to play games on PC.

The indie development revolution is rekindling some of that lost spirit, and I guess it took the mobile platform to bring it back. Kind of sad. Aside from those indie offerings, I wouldn't bat an eye if the industry died a hard death and had to be rebooted. There's way too much money being funneled at making the same types of games (shooters, mostly), and I don't see any truly new features or enhanced levels of world detail. It's not that I can't think of any games that really pushed the envelope in some way, but when I think back on them, they're all just shooters in one form or another. Even the best RPGs were sequels, shooters, or both.

[smallsharkbigbite]

You know, Ian, that's a great point, an something I agree with. No one can deny Nintendo needs to seriously rework their development cycle in regards to console launches- it's especially insulting since they dropped support of the Wii in its last two years of life and STILL had nothing to show come Wii U launch- then again, they were trying to desperately save a dying handheld instead.

Miyamoto said that their woes were related to HD development.  http://mynintendonews.com/2013/06/12/miyamoto-blames-wii-u-launch-software-delays-on-nintendos-leap-to-next-gen/
 
It makes sense, I remember at the start of the PS3, Xbox 360 phase hearing about how much more resources it took to develop HD games.  I don't expect the PS4, Xbox One to be an issue for third party developers since they've already been used to developing 1080p games.  It will probably make it easier because they'll have more system resources available and won't have to spend so much time optimizing to get the same level of performance. 
 
Not that it absolves Nintendo of responsibility.  They should have known that bigger teams were needed, and started transitioning earlier because as Miyamoto points out, you can't just double or triple development team sizes today and expect to be able double or triple output overnight.  I was surprised that the 3DS is listed, but they have to draw the 3DS screen twice to get the 3D image which adds a significant amount of pixels. 

[Agent-X-]

But it doesn't really make THAT much sense, because the move to HD is really about art assets. Generally, art assets start out in HD. Numerous PS2 games were given remastered HD ports BECAUSE the HD assets were readily available. Is it really that challenging to move to HD?


I respect Miyamoto tremendously, and I assume there is some other level of complexity at the heart of their HD development issues. I'm not going to rule out that development for the 3DS impacted development for the Wii U launch. Nintendo is really supporting two different game platforms with the same type of products now, and therefore development resources are limited.

[Ian Sane]

But it doesn't really make THAT much sense, because the move to HD is really about art assets. Generally, art assets start out in HD. Numerous PS2 games were given remastered HD ports BECAUSE the HD assets were readily available. Is it really that challenging to move to HD?

Last gen moved in a much more Western direction while the Japanese third parties seemed to really struggle with HD.  Perhaps Nintendo is struggling the same way and there is something about Japanese development practices that makes this harder than it in theory needs to be?

[smallsharkbigbite]

But it doesn't really make THAT much sense, because the move to HD is really about art assets. Generally, art assets start out in HD. Numerous PS2 games were given remastered HD ports BECAUSE the HD assets were readily available. Is it really that challenging to move to HD?

I'm obviously not into developing but that's not my understanding.  I remember the big third party players indicating the extreme cost increase and teams having to be increased substantially.  http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs
 
This has a quote from Ubisoft where Wii games cost $8-9 million to develop and PS3/Xbox360 games cost $18-28 million to develop.  Here is a quote from EA, "Development is typically a third to a fourth as much for a Wii game then it is for a PS3 or an Xbox 360 game. That is really a function of the capacity of the hardware, and the fact that it is not a high-definition gaming box, so we're producing less art than for high-definition games."
 
It also wouldn't make sense to me that a PS2 game would be made in HD then downgraded for release.  I always thought the HD collections were PS2 games with high anti aliasing on them.  They looked better than the PS2 versions, but no-one would confuse the quality with a PS3 release as the textures and environments were just not up to par. 

[Agent-X-]

But it doesn't really make THAT much sense, because the move to HD is really about art assets. Generally, art assets start out in HD. Numerous PS2 games were given remastered HD ports BECAUSE the HD assets were readily available. Is it really that challenging to move to HD?

I'm obviously not into developing but that's not my understanding.  I remember the big third party players indicating the extreme cost increase and teams having to be increased substantially.  http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs
 
This has a quote from Ubisoft where Wii games cost $8-9 million to develop and PS3/Xbox360 games cost $18-28 million to develop.  Here is a quote from EA, "Development is typically a third to a fourth as much for a Wii game then it is for a PS3 or an Xbox 360 game. That is really a function of the capacity of the hardware, and the fact that it is not a high-definition gaming box, so we're producing less art than for high-definition games."
 
It also wouldn't make sense to me that a PS2 game would be made in HD then downgraded for release.  I always thought the HD collections were PS2 games with high anti aliasing on them.  They looked better than the PS2 versions, but no-one would confuse the quality with a PS3 release as the textures and environments were just not up to par.

From my understanding, the art assets typically start out in HD and are downgraded as needed. It's considered easier. For a common use example, most cameras take photos at high-resolution. What do we do when we go to share our photos? We scale them down. This practice has been around for decades in western game development, especially with PC game development. The costs of HD game development could be due to more than just HD art assets. My understanding of the process is that there are now live actors for motion-capturing and voice acting, loads more 3D modeling (high-polygon models), fully orchestrated soundtracks, and in general game engine costs are soaring due to the high complexity of graphics hardware. I believe all of this creates a need for many more people to be involved.

Now, here's some counterpoint to what I'm claiming about art assets. I don't believe Nintendo's Gamecube games have HD art assets. Some of the wall textures in Super Mario Sunshine were pretty stale and blurry--for some reason, this compels me to believe the texture was designed as a low-resolution fill in. Super Mario Sunshine pushed the GameCube's texture buffers with draw distances not found in many games at that time. I'm also going to call out Wind Waker, whose cel-shaded graphics and amazing draw distances were very unique to that game. There is an HD port on the way for Wind Waker, but I believe this is much more than a port and a simple bump in resolution as the textures from the original probably aren't fit for anything above standard definition.

The HD remastered PS2 games look alright. They aren't on par with original PS3 content, but I figure this is a combination of low-detail assets and game engines not optimized to make use of updated filters and shaders. Bear in mind that low resolution textures would have to be stretched to a higher resolution to fit upscaled 3D models, and I don't think this would be passable by today's standards. I've played the God of War remakes, and they looked decent. The engines are outdated, but the visual assets pass the eye test.


I think you guys are right, though, about western developers vs Japanese developers. It's probably the case that Nintendo is not expanding to fit the needs of HD development. However, I look at the games they are creating, and I don't see that much of a difference from Wii to Wii U for Nintendo's main offerings. It doesn't take a whole extra year to make that Super Mario Bros level art in HD, so....

[MagicCow64]

I think the Japanese vs. Western thing is a good point. In my book a lot of the best looking Western current gen games have pretty damned unambitious gameplay. It's spackling a lot of high-def assets onto very limited environments with minimal interactivity. Not everything, obviously, but I feel like the difficulty Nintendo and other Japanese devs have had stems from a deeper design philosophy thing. It's probably not just a matter of turning on the HD asset firehose. There's got to be a place to aim it and a reason. To my eyes Pikmin 3 is the best looking thing Nintendo has showed so far, and I think that's because that's the game where it's going to matter the most. With the design of Super Mario 3D World what it is, would crazy HD graphics influence the game's reception that much? It would still be a lot of cubes and grass.

[Ian Sane]

To my eyes Pikmin 3 is the best looking thing Nintendo has showed so far, and I think that's because that's the game where it's going to matter the most. With the design of Super Mario 3D World what it is, would crazy HD graphics influence the game's reception that much? It would still be a lot of cubes and grass.

Looking at from a creative perspective I would think that the styles of games one would be instinctively drawn towards developing would be ones that would clearly benefit from the new capabilities of the platform.  The improved graphics capability of the Wii U would be very beneficial in depicting nature and having multiple characters on screen at once so Pikmin 3 is an obvious and natural fit.  X comes across as the sort of thing Monolith Soft would have wanted to make for years but couldn't until the hardware allowed it as Xenoblade strived to have large countrysides and the Wii U would allow for them push that further.  Super Mario 3D World comes across as more generic and commercial to me and I think a big part of that is the design of the game does not seem to require the Wii U to achieve.  Realistically it would have been done on the Gamecube or maybe even the N64.  Super Mario 64 seemed really ambitious partially because it was so clear it could not have been done on the SNES and with 3D being a new thing to play with it's natural that the dev team would be drawn to making a game about exploring a 3D world.

[Kytim89]

I am going to go out on a limb and say that based on what has transpired thus far it appears that Sony could recapture their throne and be the number one game company of this generation. This is why Nintendo is going to have to be aggressive in order to maintain whatever edge they have over Sony, especially in Japan. The ball is really in Sony's court at this point and it will be interesting to see how Nintendo and Microsoft react to Sony and the Playstation 4.

[JTurner82]

I am going to go out on a limb and say that based on what has transpired thus far it appears that Sony could recapture their throne and be the number one game company of this generation. This is why Nintendo is going to have to be aggressive in order to maintain whatever edge they have over Sony, especially in Japan. The ball is really in Sony's court at this point and it will be interesting to see how Nintendo and Microsoft react to Sony and the Playstation 4.

Sony may be formidable, but I still say Nintendo has a chance of succeeding.

[Agent-X-]

Nintendo's idea of succeeding is one that can coexist with Sony being #1 overall. All that matters to Nintendo is that they sell enough software to keep their profit margin steady.



Kind of hard to see that happening unless console sales spike, though.

[shingi_70]

I am going to go out on a limb and say that based on what has transpired thus far it appears that Sony could recapture their throne and be the number one game company of this generation. This is why Nintendo is going to have to be aggressive in order to maintain whatever edge they have over Sony, especially in Japan. The ball is really in Sony's court at this point and it will be interesting to see how Nintendo and Microsoft react to Sony and the Playstation 4.

Sony may be formidable, but I still say Nintendo has a chance of succeeding.

Not without a price cut, and more software (which they showed at E3). Right now The Wii U's price is too close too the PS4 to be even reccomend it to others, unless they want something that's focus is being family friendy. 

[Kytim89]

I am going to go out on a limb and say that based on what has transpired thus far it appears that Sony could recapture their throne and be the number one game company of this generation. This is why Nintendo is going to have to be aggressive in order to maintain whatever edge they have over Sony, especially in Japan. The ball is really in Sony's court at this point and it will be interesting to see how Nintendo and Microsoft react to Sony and the Playstation 4.

Sony may be formidable, but I still say Nintendo has a chance of succeeding.

Not without a price cut, and more software (which they showed at E3). Right now The Wii U's price is too close too the PS4 to be even reccomend it to others, unless they want something that's focus is being family friendy.

The problem with the PS4 versus the Wii U is that for an extra fifty dollars you can purchase a system that can churn out quality first party titles and a robust third party library over the Wii U. I am having this issue as well. I can pay fifty dollars more and have better third party support. However, I am loyal to Nintendo, so I will stick with the Wii U.