Topic: More Sony Lies

[mantidor]

"Not even the most enthusiastic PR drones claim that Nintendo has a chance at becoming #1."

Not true, Merrick said they have a shot at becoming number 1, not to mention, you know, Iwata, this person who happens to be the president of the company. Indeed, is stupid to release revolution saying "We hope to get the second spot".

[Gamebasher]

Yes, Mantidor, that´s right! They themselves believe they have a chance to become the No.1 again. And rightfully so! I believe they hit the nail head-on, interpreting current times correctly and how people need games that are far more simple to control!

And KDR_11k:

You may wonder why Nintendo do not snag the Indies as you call them. I don´t! Nintendo being tired of bad quality games, won´t take a chance on developers they aren´t sure of! That´s my belief! They know they have to deliver the best of the best quality in order to get ahead in the next generation, therefore they can´t afford to see software on their platform which "may of may not" meet required standards. I have so far not ever seen any software on the GCN which was so bad that it was comparable to rubbish games found on the Playstation 2! I think they (Nintendo) has managed to scare away a lot of the developers who simply do not understand the word "Quality" but only the word "money". There are exceptions, of course, in the way that some games become crap because they don´t get the required amount of developertime for various reasons, mostly economical, but this is not viewed by Nintendo as being their problem. Their "problem" is to get games out on THEIR platform which will as far as possible meet the high standards of their OWN games, so that these third-party games, will at the very least look close to being as attarctive for gamers to buy as their own first-party titles. So that is probably why you don´t see them snagging the indies! They simply do not see them as a "major asset" right now! So they will never give them the stamp of approval.

You may not see Sony leaving anytime soon, but I see it! I see it like it came from several miles away, starting with distant noise, growing more audible at approach, coming head-on until I can see the whole thing up in my face, and it passes me by like a runaway express train headed in the WRONG direction!

But, I never attempted to think Nintendo as a company trying to control people, only influence! and that is what they have been doing for over 20 years and still continue to do!

I don´t think that the whole issue of Sony´s future revolves around policies of any kind. It has to do strictly with developers and how they view developing for the PS platform. As stated in earlier replies, rumblings indicate more of them are growing tired of Sony and the rock-hard developement cycles on it.

Nintendo is al about GAMES, which Reggie said on numerous occasions. Also about business selling them, naturally, but it seems to me that Sony is only interested in the business aspect of it all and less in the games! They seem very hollow to me, looking from outside and inwards, whereas Nintendo are much more complete from that perspective. They are far more mature than Sony, as regards games!

"Microsoft is a bigger draw for publishers than Nintendo because they offer better conditions.

I believe that what I read on trustworthy websites like [...] IGN.com,

EXCUSE ME?

Lastly, a great console won't sell if it doesn't have a good public perception and lots of marketing. Look at the Dreamcast, even if Sega had continued making it the DC was selling very badly compared to any other current gen console."

Microsoft may be more interesting to developers of a certain type, but already now several other developers interviewed are VERY enthusiastic about Nintendo Revolution thanks to the new interface. I think it will only be a question of time before people will be so enthusiastic about the new control that they will only wan´t to play like that. No kiding! First Person Shooters alone will become uber-cool to play and who will wan´t to go back to a constricted joypad, wireless or not, which limits the degree of in-game freedom! Once you drive a Ferrari, you don´t wan´t to go back to a Toyota, do you? just for the purpose of emphasizing the ease of control with Nintendo revolution and the other controllers from Sony/Microsoft! Nintendo´s next console IS a revolution and that´s the end of that. No religious talk! I MEAN this, view it the way you want! I was damning the way RE4 was difficult in the aiming-department, and now my problem is gone forever with the new control!

I agree that they need to market the Revolution aggressively.

By the way, Nintendo themselves will work closely with IGN! So what is wrong with IGN?

Dreamcast online wasn´t free, to my knowledge. It came with a monthly fee. So I still see Nintendo as being first to market with truly subscription-free online gaming!


 

[KDR_11k]

Developers understand the word quality (except for Derek Smart), it's the publishers that think only of the money. And Nintendo doesn't require a great track record. Look at Kuju, their track record were a few Mary Kate and Ashley games! If Nintendo doesn't see an army of small and creative developers as an asset perhaps they are blind. To me it looks more like they're considering indies a risk, they could leak confidental information (yeah, like big studios don't...). MS is on a full offense, they want to take everything first to get all the ressources quickly and leave very little for their enemies, keeping those from building up a good defense and crushing 'em with pure numbers. Every dev MS can tie up into an exclusivity contract is a dev less for the competition. Nintendo should try to expand their numbers much quicker than they've done before. Tying up devs is an advantage and even if they just produce crap it means the whole deal looks better (and people buy it) and the big devs follow. Of course, Nintendo is in trouble because their track record for creating viable markets is pretty bad lately so devs will be wary of making games for a Nintendo home console. So what will Nintendo do? They NEED more developer support but noone right in their mind would make a Nintendo console their largest source of income because it lacks both the customerbase and the good terms offered by the other manufacturers (Nintendo charges more than the competition per game). So Nintendo needs to create an environment where devs would risk making the Rev their main market. I'm not suggesting they should spend as much money as Microsoft on that but they need to be more aggressive.

Enthusiasm does not translate to games. Devs may be enthusiastic about the Rev but they can't just make games for it, they only do what their publisher okays (because the publisher controls the money, remember Mikami promising that RE4 will never end up on the PS2?). Those without a publisher usually can't get a console SDK. The general public can be very ignorant if the advertising tells them to buy something else or they run into some idiotic fanboy salesman so the controls themselves won't be a guaranteed selling point. The initial reaction will be "ugh, what's that?" anyway so there'll be convincing needed. They better do a lot of that. With a large lineup of games (and not just Nintendo games, they cannot cover the market alone) the convincing would be a lot easier and people wouldn't consider it a novelty.

IGN is a bunch of self-important idiots that listen only to money, a reliable source is supposed to be unbiased.

Even if DC wasn't free, what about the PS2 or the PC? Or do those not count because they aren't consoles?

[Gamebasher]

I don´t think Nintendo will go to any extremes in order to attract more developers. I really feel that they do things the way they can, the way THEY feel good about doing it, and that is the way that is! And the way it should be. They should not change themselves, just to attract more developers. That would hurt the Nintendo spirit of gaming cherished by so many gamers throughout the world. So that will never change, as it would hurt their coregamers. Their goal is to keep the coregamers, while attracting new ones all along.

I think they would prevail, even if they remained a number three in the next generation as well. But that is not to be. I see a big fight between Sony and Microsoft over the marketshares, and the winner will be the one who can ensure the most of games to play of a decent quality, cheap online access with a great service regardless of the low price, and to me that winner is the one with the most of MONEY which is, obviously, Microsoft! Sony is already hurting in several ways financially, so their limelight is starting to fade.

That would leave Sony as the loser, and Nintendo quickly overtaking them for reasons of people who will wan´t to buy a second console for the home which offers something different than XBOX360 (and the PS3 will be just the same as XBOX360) which most of them already will own at that time, so they choose Revolution! and there you have it: Microsoft in the number one spot, Nintendo in the second! Sony as number three! And what Jim Merrick envisioned for 2007 an emerging reality!

Even if all the developers are told by their respective publishers that games are to be made for only the PS3 and the XBOX360, so be it! THEY will SOON understand that they won´t be making as much money on those platforms, as they may think today, for the already stated reasons of a stagnating gamemarket where old-school gameplay is keeping more and more people from playing games since they take too long to complete, are too difficult to complete, or are just too darn complicated to get to grips with for the majority of people today. So the games they are so keen to get out on the two platforms WON´T sell as they are expected to.

Time is of the essence here, and people don´t want to invest as much of it as is required by todays games. Thus the industry has lost it´s goal of constant expansion, as it has come to an insurmountable threshold in time meaning it cannot go any further. THIS is what Miyamoto means when he talks about a stagnation in the market.

I repeat that the majority of the games that such publishers will put out on XBOX360 will be on PS3 and vice versa, but NOT on Revolution which makes it a better choice for people as they wan´t to get a second console which offers something substantially different than the other two. That will help Nintendo to gain recognition with more publishers who are probably right now sitting on the fence waiting to see what happens when the Revolution is lauched to market! But that is not to say that there isn t already publishers who have decided to release games on revolution.

What I am trying to say is that Nintendo has already triumphed. The upcoming consolewar is not with them, it lies between Microsoft and Sony! That is probably why Nintendo say they are in no direct competition with any of them!

So they´ve never had a BETTER reasons to advertise the Nintendo Revolution massively!

In what way is IGN a bunch of "self-important idiots"? I think they do a good amount of Nintendo coverage, and will be running their online service too. So you must be one of the nly people who dislikes them, KDR_11k!
 

[TMW]

No...pretty much everybody hates IGN.  =P

[Kairon]

IGn does a good job of getting a lot of Nintendo coverage, but the fact is that the IGN editors for the Nintendo sections don't believe in Nintendo philosophies (i.e., they don't understand the reasons for failure and the actual spirit of Nintendo in the way we do) in ways that jive with most die-hard Nintendo fan's views on the company and industry.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

P.S. And Sony and Microsoft get their exclusive devs through moneyhats. Nintendo can't compete with Bill Gates on that score, which is why innovation and quality built from the ground-up are much more important to Nintendo than outright competing with MS or Sony.

Oh, and Nintendo has a long history with second-parties who have proven underwhelming. Factor 5 churned out possibly the worst game under the Nintendo name with Rogue Squadron 3, Rare has spent the last 4 years making Perfect Dark 0, yes, but also making ...uh... Kameo, which I figure is their next Banjo-Kazooie. Silicon Knights turned out the great-voice-acting but blah-gameplay Eternal Darkness, and Retro studios had to lay off DOZENS upon DOZENS of people and be tutored intensely by Shigeru Miyamoto before they could release Matroid Prime. BTW, Metroid Prime 2 appears to not have been very successful, which shows that Retro still has a lot of work to do.

[Artimus]

Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
IOh, and Nintendo has a long history with second-parties who have proven underwhelming. Factor 5 churned out possibly the worst game under the Nintendo name with Rogue Squadron 3, Rare has spent the last 4 years making Perfect Dark 0, yes, but also making ...uh... Kameo, which I figure is their next Banjo-Kazooie. Silicon Knights turned out the great-voice-acting but blah-gameplay Eternal Darkness, and Retro studios had to lay off DOZENS upon DOZENS of people and be tutored intensely by Shigeru Miyamoto before they could release Matroid Prime. BTW, Metroid Prime 2 appears to not have been very successful, which shows that Retro still has a lot of work to do.

1. Rogue Squadron is a Lucas Arts title, supported but not totally controlled by Nintendo. It also received decent if not good reviews.
2. Banjo Kazooie sold very well and received strong acclaim from reviewers.
3. Eternal Darkness received RAVES and few others think the gameplay is blah.
4. Metroid Prime was a HUGE success, Metroid Pirme 2 also received rave after rave and sold mediocre, but not horrifically.
5. Sales do not equal quality, and lack of sales does not equal lack of quality.
6. One mediocre game out of three does not make Factor 5 a bad developer.
7. Rare made Battletoads, DKC, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and several other major selling titles for Nintendo.
8. Nintendo sold rare when they slipped.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

I can argue that MP2 and F-Zero GX were victims of bad market/release timing, not product quality, as both are top-notch games, I believe.  MP2 had to compete with Halo2 for attention last holiday season, while F-Zero GX was released a day apart from Soul Cailbur II.  MP2 still managed to be more successful than Pikmin 2, and Pikmin 2 was still behind Eternal Darkness as of September.  

Factor 5 was never a 2nd party, and all the Rogue Squadron games belong to Lucas Arts, never Nintendo.

Edit: I'm tardy.  

[Kairon]

Quote
Originally posted by: Artimus

Quote

1. Rogue Squadron is a Lucas Arts title, supported but not totally controlled by Nintendo. It also received decent if not good reviews.
2. Banjo Kazooie sold very well and received strong acclaim from reviewers.
3. Eternal Darkness received RAVES and few others think the gameplay is blah.
4. Metroid Prime was a HUGE success, Metroid Pirme 2 also received rave after rave and sold mediocre, but not horrifically.
5. Sales do not equal quality, and lack of sales does not equal lack of quality.
6. One mediocre game out of three does not make Factor 5 a bad developer.
7. Rare made Battletoads, DKC, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and several other major selling titles for Nintendo.
8. Nintendo sold rare when they slipped.

Argh, I keep forgetting that Factor 5 wasn't second party, lol.

#1 and #6

Well, my personal view is that RS:3 is painful to play. After the beautiful fluke that was RS:2, I was aghast to discover that Factor 5 exhibited serious weaknesses in game design and game control (i.e. the "foot" stages as well as the "speeder bike" stages) and that RS:2 was really the best they had, I found the RS:3 missions disjointed and far less engaging or tightly scripted than RS:2's.

But that's my personal view. To me RS:3 is more like a 7.6 on the IGN scale because of the very undesirable ground stages and the flight stages that added nothing new and indeed, may have been a step down from the mission design of RE:2.

#2

Banjo-Kazooie may have sold well (not an indication of quality, see #6), but it was vastly inferior to Mario 64 all throughout. In fact, Banjo-Kazooie showed that Rare would never catch up to Nintendo in terms of platforming because it exposed a very critical misjudgement on Rare's part: collection. BK was roundly criticized by gamers at the time for the "collection" aspect that it rammed down their throats. Collection was only a superficial aspect of Mario 64, but Rare's BK made it a quickly dated game mechanic. In essence, BK was intensely flawed from a game design perspective as well.

This collection aspect also served to hold back Rare's DK 64 game. Incidentally, the collection aspect was completely gone from Conker's Bad Fur Day, a game I enjoyed infitenitely more.

#3

Eternal Darkness received raves because Nintendo fans couldn't bring themselves to call it what it was: a beautifully cinematized game that had ho-hum gameplay. Given that Silicon Knights praised Miyamoto for teaching them so much in the realm of Gameplay, one wonders exactly how mediocre Eternal Darkness would have been without Miyamoto's intervention.

Beautiful cinematics does not a good game make anyways, tell that to the people who were all hyped up on FF7 and thought they would get the same quality game with FF8. Either way, it appears that Nintendo felt that Silicon Knights wielded too many weaknesses to financially invest in for the next generation.

#4

My analysis of Retro was NOT against Metroid Prime (obviously, it was a success), but pointed at the amount of effort that went into it. Retro had to abandon 4 out of its 5 game projeccts, layoff huge numbers of people, and had to have monthly meetings with Miyamoto. Nintendo basically took Retro and the Metroid project in hand because Retro studios themselves were unable to do it by themselves. AND, my mention of MP2 is not to say that they failed, but that they haven't reached a point where one can call them a dependable quality developer as of yet without Nintendo's constant intervention.

#5

I agree. This is why I still look forward to the next Conker Game and the next Pikmin game. This is also why this next item doesn't matter...

#7

Rare had provided million sellers for the N64, but were they competitive? Looking at Rare's longer-and-longer dev times and BK franchise of questionable quality, Nintendo guessed that they weren't.

#8

Nintendo sold Rare when it became apparent that not only did Rare have a completely opposite game philosophy from Nintendo (tech and conker-esque cinematics first vs. Nintendo's gameplay and gamedesign first), but when it started to look like they were going nowhere with Kameo and however often they tried, their action/platformers (i.e. Star Fox Adventures) seemed to lack something.

I again reiterate, Nintendo has had a long history with interesting but essentially flawed second parties. One wonders whether they're going to completely abandon the concept, or if they're merely going to phase it out with publishing partnerships as with Kuju or N-Space.

Either way, Nintendo has had real difficulty with second parties and small-third-party partnerships, and they cannot rely on this method for delivering content for their systems. ...I guess they'll have to rely on the innovative allure of the controller.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Artimus]

Basically all you're saying is you don't like a few games everyone else does, therefore Nintendo has bad second parties.

[ThePerm]

Nintendo needs to build up its second party support actually. Last generation it created retro but lost rare, and gained and lost sk....they need someone to produce titles to tide us over when Nintendo isnt providing enough. This generation aside  from retro and sk  was all japanese. Banjo Kazooie and perfect dark used to provide our western counterpart

[IceCold]

Of course Rare couldn't catch up to Nintendo in terms of platforming; who can? But Banjo Kazooie was still a great game, regardless of the collecting. You may not have liked it, but there were many, many people that did.

And whatever you say about Eternal Darkness, it was still an excellent game, and deserved to sell a lot more. You make it seem like the gameplay was severely lacking, and I disagree.

Yes, Retro was a mess and all, but you can't deny that it has talent. Once they get their affairs in order, I look forward to seeing what they can bring to the table. So what if MP2 sold badly? Did Pikmin 2 fare any better? The fact that it didn't sell better certainly doesn't show that Rare still has a lot of work to do.

And F-Zero GX...what a crying shame... I'm convinced that the game could have done infinitely better if it weren't for the mistakes that Pro mentioned. It had all the requirements - graphics, gameplay, dazzling speed.. it really had potential.

[Kairon]

Quote
Originally posted by: Artimus
Basically all you're saying is you don't like a few games everyone else does, therefore Nintendo has bad second parties.

No, I'm ALSO correlating my likes and dislikes to Nintendo's actions. I'm proposing a hypothesis that explains Nintendo's past relations with second parties, and overall used this history to explain that second parties have insofar been unable to provide the support that Nintendo needs.

I actually do like a lot of the games I mentioned though, it's just that I don't think I'm blind to their faults. I happen to be an avid A-wing pilot who's still working on perfecting his game against Star Destroyers (I happen to want to relive the moment in Star Wars: ROTJ where an A-Wing crashes through the Super Star Destroyer's Bridge). My brother and I beat all three threads in ED and are inspired by some of SK's conceptual ambitions for the game, I didn't buy GoldenEye but my brother and I played PD for hours on end in both cooperative campaign and with our own individual map settings. I also like the distinctly British characters that PD on the '64 had, and I seriously hope that PD:0 does NOT destroy this atmospheric effect.

Now, it's clear from my previous criticisms that I'm not crazy about these companies. But then again, apparently Nintendo wasn't stock raving mad about them either, and that's why they eventually let these companies go in different directions. So maybe there's something to my likes and dislikes after all?

Anyway, what good is a hypothesis without predictions. Here they are:

Nintendo will keep Retro. I don't think Retro is a perfectly integrated entity yet, but they've received a lot of tender loving care (and money) from Nintendo, and have experience with a key franchise, such that there are a lot of developed resources in Retro that Nintendo is hoping to draw upon without the growing pains which came before Metroid Prime.

We won't be seeing much of N-Space again. Geist had a relatively long development time and it's "possession" feature turned out to be just a redecorated puzzle element. UNLESS N-Space has some amazing concept to do with the Rev Controller, I think Nintendo won't return to this studio for further projects.

GameFreaks, under my criteria, is also not exactly a stellar development house. What with so many handheld pokemon games being so similar, that suggests that this company may have a weakness. BUT, Nintendo will keep this company, because they're a cheap property so it really couldn't hurt to hold onto them AND they're a legacy brand under the Pokemon moniker. Interestingly enough, the company MAY have hidden creative talents that could bring them to more prominence, perhaps Drill Dozer? Either way, let's be fair. The Pokemon handheld games, stagnated as they are, are still heads and shoulders above any pokemon-clone competition.

Kuju is an interesting question. I'm almost ready to write them off because having played through Battalion Wars it turned out very one dimensional and displayed some problems with exactly how the missions were designed/scripted/executed. Also, it lacked key aesthetic elements that I would've expected, such as clear markers between campaigns. I was 3/4th through the game when I realized that I actually WASN'T still in the first campaign. BUT, for a company to have gone from Mary Kate & Ashley to this... oh, and it also impressed me how the model's feet conformed to the terrain. Well, I'd have to say that we don't see Kuju again, unless they're got a great concept under wraps that they can sell Nintendo on.

Everything sounds bad? Not at all! Nintendo actually does have one prominent very successful second-party story. NST. Although NST has been handed port after port, this Metroid Prime Hunters game could really be their break-out role. This studio has shown technical competency and the ability to integrate technology with game design imperatives, and with Metroid Prime Hunters as their first chance to really break lose creatively, NST is shaping up to be the model Nintendo 2nd party... hmmm.... the only second party that was actually created from scratch largely by Nintendo... (Retro was created with a collaborator who later left)

So..I AM saying that I can be critical about the second party games I've criticized in previous posts. BUT the point is NOT that these are bad games, but that the second parties who designed them and who have since split did not win Nintendo over either with these games.

Furthermore, this tendency of Nintendo to be dissatisfied with second parties and collaborators means that second parties has been a largely inadequate strategy for Nintendo to garner executive games. This is probably why in the cube era Nintendo went back to third parties and started farming out franchises to established third party companies like Capcom (Zelda) and to Sega (F-Zero). This strategy ALSO was not as successful as we all would've liked.

Thus, Nintendo developed the Rev to actually stand out so spectacularly from the other consoles in the hopes that perhaps if they couldn't compete with Sony and Nintendo for third parties on a head-to-head, money-hat based strategy, they needed something else to hopefully bring in third party exclusives.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Gamebasher]

I couldn´t have said it better myself!

Your reply is probably one of the best such replies I have ever seen in the ongoing discussion concerning Nintendo!

[KDR_11k]

NST is second party? I always thought they were an internal studio like EAD or HAL.

[Bill Aurion]

They are...

[Kairon]

Well, to be truthful it's hard to draw the line between seccond parties and internal studios. NST may be a second party (or is it an internal studio?), but it is also geographically located far away from Nintendo's main creative center. Retro is owned practically 100% by Nintendo, yet is it second party or internal studio?

Certainly the two differ from beauraucratic and organizational viewpoints, but generally we can divide Nintendo's development properties into two fields: Those under Miyamoto's direct influence (EAD) and those outside his direct legacy presence (HAL, Intelligent Design, NST, Retro, and smaller groups like GameFreaks, Marigul, etc.). The first cactegory contains most of Nintendo's legacy brands, save a few. The second category contains all of Nintendo's second parties, and even a few of their internal parties as well that have been re-branded as non-EAD entities.

Either way, it may be factually inaccurate to call NST a second party, but I do not think it is misleading in the context of this discussion.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[couchmonkey]

Technically speaking:  NST is an internal studio, and Retro was a second party that is now an internal studio (Nintendo bought up what it didn't already own sometime in the past few years).

But I accept Kairon's definition of a second party as one that's not directly under the influence of Nintendo for the purposes of this discussion.

I disagree with comments on second parties being underwhelming simply because I'm a Rare freak.  Nintendo probably did cut Rare loose at the right time given its performance on the Xbox, but at the same time, I believe its performance would have been different if the company had stuck with Nintendo: For starters, Conker never would have been made (at least not in the form it's in for Xbox) and DK Racing might not have been cancelled.  I also doubt that Kameo and Perfect Dark would have been held back for the purpose of launching the next-generation system.  All of these changes in Rare's strategy contributed to the game delays and I believe were initiated at least in part by the change from Nintendo to Microsoft.

I also feel second parties add some much-needed variety to Nintendo's lineup.  Nintendo still has no intention of making "Mature" games, and while I don't believe a game has to have blood and guts in it to be fun for adults, I like to have access to some games with a darker, more violent sensibility.