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[NandoGip]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-secret-developers-wii-u-the-inside-story

The Secret Developers is Digital Foundry's occasional series where game-makers come forward to talk with us - and you - about topics they are passionate about, or in the case of this article, to give you the inside story behind a particular hot topic. As the future of the Wii U looks uncertain in the face of the successful launches for both Xbox One and PlayStation 4, this "warts and all" tale from a respected third-party creator gives you some idea of how Nintendo handled the transition to the high-definition gaming era, and the challenges developers faced in bringing their games to the Wii U platform.

It started off in the usual way with a look back on how successful the Wii had been and what their intentions were for the new hardware. They wanted a console that was the same size as the Wii and wouldn't make much noise, so "mum wouldn't mind having it in the living room". It was during this statement that quiet alarm bells started to ring in my brain, but I ignored them and continued watching the presentation. The pitch then moved on to the usual "we need your help to ensure that the Wii U is a success and you can help us (Nintendo) along the way". These words ended up having more significance than either we, or the presenters, could have envisaged.

I wanted to bring this up to give insight on Nintendos perspective on how they developed and rolled out the Wii U. This is coming from a developers experience and he tries to be neutral through out it.

What do you guys think? Maybe Nintendo has the same mentality this go around? What lessons do you think they've learned?

 

[GhostTrick]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-secret-developers-wii-u-the-inside-story





I wanted to bring this up to give insight on Nintendos perspective on how they developed and rolled out the Wii U. This is coming from a developers experience and he tries to be neutral through out it.

What do you guys think? Maybe Nintendo has the same mentality this go around? What lessons do you think they've learned?

The only lesson I have seen them learning this time is in term of hardware. Despite the excentric price, Switch is a powerful device. Yes it is. It's a powerful mobile hardware and a rather recent one as that, that isn't exotic either which leaves them a margin for price drops. The problem is that Nintnedo position it as a home console.

As for the rest, they learned nothing. Their 3rd party support is worse than Wii U on some points, slightly better on others. But still far from 3DS 3rd party support which at reveal, was amazing.

The price point as I said is too high. In term of hardware, accessories, and software.
To me, Switch is basically "What if Nintendo launched a handheld with the same Wii U mistakes ?"

 

[Busaiku]

But still far from 3DS 3rd party support which at reveal, was amazing.

How so?
This was the initial reveal.
It's pretty similar in some regards, but I'd say Switch is much stronger overall (though still pathetic).
We didn't get a bunch of names with no substance (we did get some), but we did get more substantive for some cases, like Shin Megami Tensei (if only ever so slightly).
Stuff like Monster Hunter wasn't announced until after the system came out.

 

[DNAbro]

Yikes, never read this before. The back and forth between the dev and Nintendo of Japan seems to so inefficient. I assume both Sony and Microsoft don't have this issue.

 

[Hermii]

I don't know how this is relevant to the Switch. Also I'm sure they could have put out a similar article for others systems launch games as well.

 

[NandoGip]

The most interesting thing to me in the article was when the developer mentioned how Nintendo looks at online play. So many of the features that Nintendo ignored weren't some grand market strategy, they literally didn't know what they were doing.