i responded and you pretended like we had a preexisting argument going and accused me of backtracking, then you told me that you didn't want anyone answering the question other than the guy you made the question out to
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Iwata on third parties, hundreds of inquiries since GDC about Nintendo Web Framework
- Thread starter Hobby
- Start date
i responded and you pretended like we had a preexisting argument going and accused me of backtracking, then you told me that you didn't want anyone answering the question other than the guy you made the question out to
cartman414
Member
Let's say in practical terms, playing a very high end, sophisticated 3D game which would cause the Xbox 360 to chug at 1080 p, AA, rock solid 30 fps with improved textures, effects and significantly greater environmental detail.
Quinton McLeod
Banned
Yep. 3rd parties like better hardware so much that they're willing to go bankrupt for it. So far, they have shown this beautifully and continue to show this.
shinra-bansho
Member
PS360 level hardware bankrupted so many third parties. Nintendo will save us all from ourselves with PS360 level hardware.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
Try harder.
They go bankrupt not because of the hardware but their poor budgeting and stupid expectations. Small companies like GUST, NIS, Falcom manage to make profits and grow even though their games sell around 100k. Its because they budget their titles accordingly. Look at Heavy Rain, only costing 16million yet raking in 100million.
Not to mention isn't Nintendo using similar hardware to the 360/ps3 with the WiiU? Guess third parties are going to go bankrupt if they decide to develop for the WiiU.
Quinton McLeod
Banned
So says Shinra-Bansho.
The point being that during the last generation, Ubisoft had been making buku bucks off the Wii. Other 3rd parties didn't care. Suda51's most successful mature-rated game in the history of his entire studio sold on the Wii (with the sequel selling even better!) and 3rd parties still ignored it. Every single Resident Evil game on the system sold like hot cakes, and yet-and-still, 3rd parties ignored the Wii.
Here we are now, with the Wii U. Over 120 third party developers disappeared over the battleground known as the last generation. The new generation is now here with predictions of even more money-bleeding found in the last generation; the same generation which money-bleeding caused so many 3rd parties to die or get eaten up by bigger fish... And 3rd parties are ignoring Nintendo _again_. Even after so many going belly-up last gen, they are still doing the same things now that they were doing last-gen that killed them. The 3DS isn't any different. The 3DS barely has any western 3rd party support.
What do you do when you find a bunch idiots following each other off the edge of a cliff? The answer is you turn around and find some smarter people who know better. In this case, Indie developers.
shinra-bansho
Member
Developers go bankrupt due to unrealistic expectations and poor management of resources and budgets. This goes for everything from an indie through to a major publishing houses.
Better hardware facilitates improvement in visual fidelity, physics, AI, etc. it does not necessitate it. If the hardware itself was at fault then I assume you expect a lot of Wii U developers to go bankrupt as well.
Ubisoft made a lot of money on the Wii with Just Dance. They aren't making a lot of money now on the Wii U, even with the best selling third party game on the system with it's couple hundred thousand in global sales.
Suda51 seemingly ignored his success on the Wii too, considering his subsequent games have been on every other platform. Funny that. It's probably because contrary to your assertion NMH2 didn't sell spectacularly.
Indie developers seem pretty happy with the PS4 and despite relations seemingly souring with Microsoft, they'll likely continue to be interested in working on the next XBOX platform. Expecting this indie revolution, in lieu of third party publisher support, to revive the platform is bizarre wishful thinking.
But you're right, third party publishers should all be releasing their 50+ games!!! on the Wii U, so they can lose money on it alongside Nintendo. I'm sure Criterion is feeling really good about their 5K sales for NFS in the US.
Better hardware facilitates improvement in visual fidelity, physics, AI, etc. it does not necessitate it. If the hardware itself was at fault then I assume you expect a lot of Wii U developers to go bankrupt as well.
Ubisoft made a lot of money on the Wii with Just Dance. They aren't making a lot of money now on the Wii U, even with the best selling third party game on the system with it's couple hundred thousand in global sales.
Suda51 seemingly ignored his success on the Wii too, considering his subsequent games have been on every other platform. Funny that. It's probably because contrary to your assertion NMH2 didn't sell spectacularly.
Indie developers seem pretty happy with the PS4 and despite relations seemingly souring with Microsoft, they'll likely continue to be interested in working on the next XBOX platform. Expecting this indie revolution, in lieu of third party publisher support, to revive the platform is bizarre wishful thinking.
But you're right, third party publishers should all be releasing their 50+ games!!! on the Wii U, so they can lose money on it alongside Nintendo. I'm sure Criterion is feeling really good about their 5K sales for NFS in the US.
nintendo deserves most of the blame for the wii u's current state, mostly on the marketing and messaging side, but when you're releasing a game six months after it had released on other consoles during a dry part of the year at twice the price as other versions, i think that falls into 'unrealistic expectations and poor management of resources and budgets.' the same thing is true of mass effect 3 vs mass effect trilogy.
the same game at launch might have been noted for being one of the obviously superior titles.
some games have found some relative success on the wii u so far. it already has the makings of being a family console if nintendo can find that market this year. sonic all-star transformed sold best on wii u, and so did epic mickey 2 among non-wii consoles. third parties might be able to find some of the wii userbase on there with titles like just dance and that sort too.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
Ubisoft made bucks from the casual audience on the Wii. You know the audience that is not on the WiiU.
Get your facts right. Suda 51's most successful game was Lollipop Chainsaw which was on 360/ps3 no wonder third parties went there.
I am pretty sure Resident Evil 5 and 6 on the 360/ps3 outsold all Resident Evil spin offs on the Wii combined.
Theres a reason third parties ignored Wii. They already had an audience on the 360/ps3 and the audience on the Wii was not big enough for them to use resources and try a downport on it. Only massive franchises like COD and FIFA can get away with it as they have mainstream appeal.
Yes third parties are dying because they are ignoring Nintendo looooool. Their games don't even sell on the console and the console is selling like shit so why would they support it.
Again get this through your head. Third parties died due to their own mismanagement not due to the power of next generation. Western third parties don't support handhelds as much because consoles sell better here. In Japan handhelds sell better so they support them a lot. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out.
Yeah, Indie developers are going to save the WiiU. As much as you may hate it, games like COD, FIFA, BF, GTA sell more software and consoles than any indie game. Good luck with that.
darkistheway
Member
I wonder if the point is that the jump to PS360 level hardware was the 'bankrupting force' for some developers. Given another jump (although I am one of the people who think next gen a la PS4 is not really a jump) wouldn't some developers be ill-equipped to make the transition.
If our expectation of next-gen software is Uncharted Uprezzed then developers should have no problem but if ambitions match hardware then we can expect games to begin to cost more money. I know some have stated that next-gen won't cost that much more but the middle tier of software houses is almost completely gutted and certainly those that are left are not about to start producing games as ambitious/complex as Watch_dogs (seems to be).
Those middle tier developers (my favorite) are probably going to produce games that look on par with the current gen. Maybe the hardware increase will make it easier to leave art assets at full resolution, maybe physics won't cause as much slowdown but they certainly won't be pushing the hardware the way the big dogs will.
Given this, it is perhaps an opportunity for the Wii U to court those developers. Nintendo can sell the Wii U as the 'reasonable, moderate' approach to next-gen. Bayonetta 2 seems to be an example of this.
Mihael Mello Keehl
Banned
Counter it? Its a yes or no question. Btw my answer is no but I dont understand why people are limited to yes or no only shouldnt they explain how they reached the "No" answer?
edit: Nevermind, reading that thread some people gave really good responses but ypu just shrugged the answers off because they actually counter the statement. Straight up disrespectful.
this is a very recent thing. the gba sold 45m in the us and 15m in japan. the ds sold 50+m in the us and 33m in japan. the ds and gba were kinda ignored by western third-parties as well. people didn't notice because that had been the way things always had worked. the types of western third-parties who made games on handhelds were the ones who made console games. the xbox and xbox 360 opened up the console realm to pc developers, which is really when things changed. their presence in the console market grew in a big way, and they never made anything for handhelds because they didn't have any experience with that sort of thing before. the older console western developers then either died out, adapted, or simply bought out pc developers (activision, ea).
Mithos
Member
Don't forget the almost 2? year old game Deus EX Human Revolution ;P
But hey at least Straight Right is getting accustom to the Wii U hardware, maybe they will be allowed to do a game where they don't get screwed over by 1. fighting a trilogy for the same price 2. making two year old games.
shinra-bansho
Member
I don't really disagree. I think Disney will do well with Planes and Infinity, and Skylanders Swap Force will do well for Activision. Scribblenauts Unlimited is also a qualified success for Warner.
But being at launch didn't really help Assassin's Creed III, COD et al. And I don't buy the argument that being a week or so late etc. meant that these games were doomed to poor sales. These are titles that continue to sell, and really then what exactly is an apt comparison to make?
However, the idea that third parties are leaving all this money on the table, you'll all see, look how dumb they are, they're all going to go bankrupt - is complete nonsense.
A Wii U Tomb Raider SKU, for example, wouldn't have netted S-E the extra sales to hit their dumb targets. And would have probably ended up a negative ROI. I have no idea why they've chosen to port Deus Ex, it's going to sell like crap too, but presumably it's a cheap enough "test" of the market.
The striving for better, bigger, more is really a product of the marketplace. The market is becoming go big or go home.
With regard to the Wii U, I wrote this earlier as to why I don't really see that happening:
Publishers look at software and hardware trends; they see that the industry (even excluding the Wii) already peaked years ago and see a progressive decline occurring. They assume, rightly or wrongly, that this is due to the onset of a sort of generational fatigue. Consequently, they assume that new, more powerful hardware will allow them to further push visuals, spectacle, scope etc. of their games beyond the limitations of current generation hardware, and this will reignite the market for their software.
I don't think the Wii U fits with this notion.
Refreshment.01
Member
It was an important part of your post since you were doing a cost stimate of the console based on the Upad BOM.
Regarding indie development. WHile a nice initiative, more games and indie ones are always good but this won't serve NIntendo as a key diferentiator since indies are everywhere. Comparisons to PC don't work since we talk about the platform with the biggest user base in the world. Adding the fact that most indie games are designed to tun on almost everyting and users already has such devices laying around in the house. For this reasons i think is clear indie games will not a hughe incentive to buy a Wii U.
Moving on....
Thanks. Then yes, Wii U is not a lot more powerful than 360/PS3 by that definition.
i know it's propably fake but i'll put it for fun
http://www.p4rgaming.com/satoru-iwa...ing-when-nintendo-will-make-smartphone-games/
http://www.p4rgaming.com/satoru-iwa...ing-when-nintendo-will-make-smartphone-games/
Mihael Mello Keehl
Banned
LOL!
I think that something Nintendo refuses to realize, or just does not wish to do, is build hardware for developer tastes. Since the N64 they've made incredibly selfish design decisions which has alienated them from third parties. Their machines are now associated very strongly with only their games. The demographics do not align with what most major developers are targeting. Perhaps Nintendo will make them regret that soon.
i think being late really does hurt the chances for those games. when they're being advertised, all you see are ps3 and xbox 360 boxes. you can't build a fanbase if they don't know certain things exist. that's more of nintendo's fault- i mean if the system's launch was going to be fucking awful anyway, they could have made it a late october launch and snapped up asscreed and call of duty as they were coming out.
i think the wii was money left on the table for a lot of developers. aside from xseed, not even the smaller companies gave it a shot. the wii u is primarily a failure from nintendo, and you can't blame third parties for being wary of the thing (however, they were wary of the thing back in early 2012 according to someone in the know i know, which was before nintendo fucked up the launch massively).
yeah i don't get deus ex. my only guess is that the wii u was originally scheduled for a late 2011 launch. square enix decided to make something that wouldn't be too far behind. then the system had two delays and arrived in late 2012 instead. work on deus ex was probably scrapped until work on bigger projects wrapped and they could just push it out. tomb raider wouldn't have netted square enix the sales they needed- that's true, but it could have helped build a fanbase for games like that in the future. it's the old argument regarding the wii and how there was an opportunity missed to satisfy the hardcore fanbase on the system.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
While I do agree on what you said, you have to remember that developers do like their visions restricted by tech. Furthermore, the ps2 already had a massive userbase during such a time and ps3/360 userbase was also sufficiently large during the DS era.
Why do you want yes or no questions? Rephrase that challenge to be opened and I will reply.
And then you have something we call Minecraft, which outsold most of these examples of yours, sans CoD.
And who knows, another Indie game like that might make it this big too, and if that one happened to be exploding on a Nintendo system, The choice of betting on Indies paid off.
Not saying this will happen, but to claim it's not possible is ridiculous.
overly simplistic. What bankrupted studios was throwing resources at studios who were trying to eke out every last drop of power from those system in an attempt to wow 14-25 y.o. male gamers with huge set pieces, gorey kill animations, and cinematic games. The last Tomb Raider being an example of this.
Great games are not allergic to great hardware.
the gba was on its way to outselling the ps2, if it didn't in the time it was out, and the ds sold as much as the ps3 and 360 combined until nintendo pulled the plug. they also required far fewer resources for game development if need be.
with the lone exception of michel ancel, i really hate the idea that developers have visions that can only be achieved through technology, when 99% of the time it just means 'i want voice acting and mocap'
I guess it is possible. More likely scenario: game gets released on Windows, where most indies start their dev careers, starts to explode and is moneyhated by MS for xbox, depriving everyother console player from playing it. Thats what happened with Minecraft.
Mithos
Member
People really expected these games to sell like they do on PS360/PC?
I'd say CoD is selling exactly like I thought it would, slow. I have no idea when BLOPS3 will show up but by then maybe BLOPS2 could have reached 1m sales (that's how slow I expected it to sell from day -1).
darkistheway
Member
The problem with your analysis is that it presupposes that companies like FROM or Platinum Games (ie middle tier) can only continue to exist if they create a AAA title that can become a yearly cash cow.
Your analysis works for the big publishers but I think the market is extremely limited in how many COD, FIFA, Assassin Creed's can be allowed to exist simultaneously. Nintendo, right or wrong, seems to be aware of this limitation and have thus chosen to focus their efforts on filling the gaps that the big non-Nintendo franchises leave.
Now, they are currently unsuccessful in their execution. But, in my opinion, it is a more appropriate approach. They maintained themselves with the Gamecube, which in my opinion was the beginning of this 'new' Nintendo; succeeded wildly with the Wii; and have, thus far, struggled with the Wii U.
I would be really curious to know how they would be doing right now with a Wii HD. Same controls as the Wii but twice the power of a PS3... A lot of the criticisms people have would be just out the window. And they probably could have pulled off a $199 price point! But alas...
I do understand the 'necessity' of the Gamepad in Nintendo's point of view - they feel the need to always have a strong differentiation from their competitors. But the Gamepad desperately needs a Wii Sports equivalent.
Many developers evidently don't think they need massive performance either, that's why so many of them switched to mobile and PC in recent years. As I wrote a couple pages ago, what devs actually want most of all is creative freedom, and there is no creative freedom in AAA projects.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
As of April 2013 Minecraft has sold 20 million copies across all platforms.
GTA 4 as of 2012 has sold 25 million copies.
FIFA 13 sold 12 million in the last quarter and thats a yearly franchise.
As you can see those franchises are just as big if not even bigger than Minecraft. Not to mention the fact is Minecraft even coming to the WiiU:
So much for that Indie support.
It really dones't. The best games on ps2, ps3/360 would be nowhere near as great if they were on the handhelds of those times.
Quinton McLeod
Banned
1) You completely missed the point in your first sentence. I am talking about the development costs going from one generation to the next.
2) No, Suda 51's most successful game is still No More Heroes (after all, that series made him the most money). It sold the most on a single console than the Lollipop Chainsaw game on either the PS3 or the X360.
3) They had an audience on the Wii as well. Resident Evil 5 barely sold more than a year-old Gamecube port. That's gotta tell you something. The point is that when there was ever a game for all 3 systems that were nearly identical to each other, the Wii version usually sold the most and most of the time. The audience was there.
1) They're dying because they're idiots. You don't ignore a company that owns 60% of the video game market. You don't sacrifice sales to satisfy an ego. The Wii was doing fantastic and 3rd parties still ignored it (or released crap on it). The Wii U is looking like the same deal - and yet these same 3rd parties will die out just like last generation. I'm saying it's smart for Nintendo to look toward indie devs because they appear to be the only ones working within their budgets.
2) Why are western 3rd parties supporting the Vita then? Please explain this logic to me. I agree with you on the mismanagement part. This is the point I was making. The whole "not due to the power of the next generation" bit is something _you_ made up.
3) I disagree. Minecraft sold much more than GTA. These big games can sell millions of copies, but it doesn't mean the 3rd party developer will get any of the money they spent making those games back until after several years. This goes back to my original point.
Edit: It hasn't and I've made the correction here, but it came pretty darn close. As for the other games, it has outsold them, but this speaks more about your assumptions that indie games don't sell then my minor mistake.
Mihael Mello Keehl
Banned
I dont think he was saying minecraft was coming to Wii U but saying something with a minecraft like effect could possibly hit Wii U.
And just because minecraft isnt coming to Wii U doesnt mean all indie support is down the drain. That was a very stupid analysis.
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/20...kely_to_appear_on_wii_u_as_any_other_platform
still unlikely, but equally unlikely.
ColdBlooder
Banned
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/m...ess-likely-than-any-other-platform.452912067/
Are you this uninformed on purpose?
The idea of a WiiHD is pretty interesting. I think the biggest reason they did not go down that path is that Sony and MS both have a boatload of patents with regard to imaging technology. And that a WiiHD without somekind of Kinect or Eye just wouldn't be very competitive along side Kinect2 and PS4 Eye.
Nintendo's thing is taking other people's technology and making a console, not developing their own.
Now, it is pretty obvious that the tablet controller has failed to win mindshare, and that the console cannot impress visually. So what is left is selling the box based on the strength of Nintendo's first party games.
Nintendo will limp along the next few years. I don't believe they will continue to lose money, but the halcyon days of Wii and Ds dumping buckets of money on shareholders are gone.
Way to miss the point as usual, and nice goalpostmoving.
You claimed Indies don't sell that well, Minecraft proves you dead dead wrong, it doesn't happen often, but Minecraft proves, theres a shot the next big thing COULD come from an Indie.
And Minecraft not coming to Wiiu is more due to the exclusivity with MS.
Quinton McLeod
Banned
How do you know this already? What data are you using to back up these claims?
So selfish to design and pay for their own hardware. Who do they think they are?
darkistheway
Member
Ease down, he is clearly expressing an opinion.
Umm do you know where you are? You don't actually back up your claims around these parts any longer. If people actually had to back up their claims these threads would be short as hell.
if they're going to call third-parties out as having regrets for not supporting them, they have to actually remove legitimate reasons why third-parties wouldn't support them. i think the gamecube era was mostly bullshit, but that was before this gen happened and developers started treating two consoles as one userbase.
Mihael Mello Keehl
Banned
The "NOW" data
Quinton McLeod
Banned
I just want to know so I can comprehend this warped logic in which he is using heavily.
A gaming company facing a humiliating failure with their latest console.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=55204348&postcount=252
& yeah, just my opinion, but not just pulled out of my ass.
Quinton McLeod
Banned
Wasn't the same said for the 3DS? Wow, history really does repeat itself.
It was pretty humiliating, coming out at $250 and flopping and all.
Nintendo has been dominant with every single one of their handhelds and the consensus that I recall was that the 3DS was overpriced. Not so simple with the Wii U. Let's see a 3DS like turn-around. Godspeed to them.