rosjos44 said:Then why do people pre order games? If people can wait months (or even years) or a game release I am sure those users can wait 3 weeks to get a copy if they want the game.
Zefah said:What? Where does it sound like that? I read through the original and I can't see where you got that impression.
7Th said:People that say that number 2 is "not so bad" clearly don't understand how big the used games market is in Japan.
Wait, you're given concrete reasons for why third parties are reluctant to work with Nintendo and you still chalk it up to this they-just-hate-them-for-no-reason conspiracy theory rubbish?Nuclear Muffin said:Because Nintendo can't outspend Sony and Microsoft. They don't want to have to rely on moneyhatting games (and rightfully they shouldn't have to as market leader)
But that is also only a small part of 3rd party developer's reluctance to support Nintendo. There is a long standing hatred that dates all the way back to the NES/SNES era (and western devs hate them even more since they stand for everything that is the opposite of what they are interested in)
Personal grudges are very hard to kill. And most 3rd party devs' visions of the future of the industry are aligned with Microsoft and Sony's visions. To them, Nintendo can be seen as a mortal enemy.
:lolOuterWorldVoice said:I had to double check the date of the OP to be sure this wasn't 1990.
duckroll said:For big titles which have a huge marketing campaign and sell hundreds of thousands, this is less of a problem. We're talking about niche games from smaller publishers here. If they ship 30-40k of a title, not knowing if it will be a hit, and the word of mouth is REALLY good, then immediately shipping more copies would result in sales moving very briskly. If on the other hand they cannot reship, even though there is good buzz and there are many people interested in buying the game at that moment, if they cannot find it in stores they'll lose interest very quickly. It's not a game they've been looking forward to, only something they heard about from a friend or whatever. With 10 games a week being released in Japan, and used game sales making up a big segment of the market, not being able to reship for 3 weeks = doom.
Wait, you're given concrete reasons for why third parties are reluctant to work with Nintendo and you still chalk it up to this they-just-hate-them-for-no-reason conspiracy theory rubbish?
Amir0x said:This excuse might have worked before, but Nintendo is filthily wealthy, and can easily throw weight behind any developer they choose. And yes, they could even outspend Sony or Microsoft if they wanted to. It's not necessarily about how much a company could hypothetically spend, but how much they ACTUALLY would spend.
OuterWorldVoice said:I had to double check the date of the OP to be sure this wasn't 1990.
Willy105 said:Ironically, the system that saved the industry from shovelware in the 80's isn't so hot now.
duckroll said:These costs and manufacturing issues actually explain a lot of shortages and undershipping of initial shipments on the DS for smaller and lower budget Japanese games. Infinite Space, EO1, and SMT Strange Journey come to mind.
jay said:What do you base the assertion that Nintendo could outspend Microsoft on? Besides making it up, I mean.
rosjos44 said:Then why do people pre order games? If people can wait months (or even years) for a game release I am sure those users can wait 3 weeks to get a copy if they want the game.
Opiate said:Ugh, the deflections in this discussion are rather repulsive. These are publisher unfriendly business practices.
Let's discuss those, and not boogeymen, vague accusations of irrational, seething hatred that third parties hold in their cold, irrational hearts. I'm not even saying that third parties can't be irrational: I would argue that they often are. But we've had approximately one thousand discussions about that topic. Can we at least have one about these real, substantive claims, rather than nebulous accusations?
Opiate said:Ugh, the deflections in this discussion are rather repulsive. These are publisher unfriendly business practices.
Let's discuss those, and not boogeymen, vague accusations of irrational, seething hatred that third parties hold in their cold, irrational hearts. I'm not even saying that third parties can't be irrational: I would argue that they often are. But we've had approximately one thousand discussions about that topic. Can we at least have one about these real, substantive claims, rather than nebulous accusations?
Amir0x said:It never fails to amaze me how bad your reading comprehension is every time you respond to me. It's like seriously comically awful. Like, almost self-parody bad. Like, sometimes I'm assuming you're doing it on purpose bad.
We know that if Microsoft threw the accumulated weight of all its industry behind it, it could outspend Nintendo - but they'll never do that. Indeed, they have put very real restrictions and limits of what they will spend and what they won't (exact numbers being elusive, but we've seen serious restructuring going on at Microsoft recently and a statement that they refuse to keep losing money in the game industry). Same with Sony.
Nintendo is a games only company, and they are factually filthily wealthy - they can absolutely outspend the caps Sony and Microsoft themselves put on, if they had themselves the desire enough to get certain support. Sony and Microsoft have proven throughout this entire generation they're willing to pay for "certain" exclusives, but not others... or are merely content to just get exclusive content, not games.
So, for reading comprehension succinctness, let me paraphrase: it's not about what you can spend, it's about what you're WILLING to spend. Nintendo could easily throw $50 million or $100 million to buy this property or that - EA regularly pays out an insane amount of money to keep its licenses, and Nintendo is bigger than EA. Much bigger.
But are they willing? The same standard applies to them as it does Sony and Microsoft, in that it's not about what they can spend, it's about what they're willing to. But Nintendo doesn't even bother to be in contention most of the time. Mostly because they're embarrassingly incompetent at courting third party support, but also because they're cheap fucks and their actions say they don't need third party support. Which may be true, but it's bad for Wii only gamers who cry about it every waking hour.
duckroll said:For big titles which have a huge marketing campaign and sell hundreds of thousands, this is less of a problem. We're talking about niche games from smaller publishers here. If they ship 30-40k of a title, not knowing if it will be a hit, and the word of mouth is REALLY good, then immediately shipping more copies would result in sales moving very briskly. If on the other hand they cannot reship, even though there is good buzz and there are many people interested in buying the game at that moment, if they cannot find it in stores they'll lose interest very quickly. It's not a game they've been looking forward to, only something they heard about from a friend or whatever. With 10 games a week being released in Japan, and used game sales making up a big segment of the market, not being able to reship for 3 weeks = doom.
jay said:So in other words you have no facts to back up your claims. I knew that already but thanks for typing it out.
I'm pretty sure the OP contains the reasons for their 'distrust.'Nuclear Muffin said:Thank you for (not) reading my earlier comment. This is just a few of many reasons, but ultimately is a smaller point than their long standing distrust which is ultimately the root of their poor relations with Japanese devs.
Amir0x said:It never fails to amaze me how bad your reading comprehension is every time you respond to me. It's like seriously comically awful. Like, almost self-parody bad. Like, sometimes I'm assuming you're doing it on purpose bad.
We know that if Microsoft threw the accumulated weight of all its industry behind it, it could outspend Nintendo - but they'll never do that. Indeed, they have put very real restrictions and limits of what they will spend and what they won't (exact numbers being elusive, but we've seen serious restructuring going on at Microsoft recently and a statement that they refuse to keep losing money in the game industry). Same with Sony.
Nintendo is a games only company, and they are factually filthily wealthy - they can absolutely outspend the caps Sony and Microsoft themselves put on, if they had themselves the desire enough to get certain support. Sony and Microsoft have proven throughout this entire generation they're willing to pay for "certain" exclusives, but not others... or are merely content to just get exclusive content, not games.
So, for reading comprehension succinctness, let me paraphrase: it's not about what you can spend, it's about what you're WILLING to spend. Nintendo could easily throw $50 million or $100 million to buy this property or that - EA regularly pays out an insane amount of money to keep its licenses, and Nintendo is bigger than EA. Much bigger.
But are they willing? The same standard applies to them as it does Sony and Microsoft, in that it's not about what they can spend, it's about what they're willing to. But Nintendo doesn't even bother to be in contention most of the time. Mostly because they're embarrassingly incompetent at courting third party support, but also because they're cheap fucks and their actions say they don't need third party support. Which may be true, but it's bad for Wii only gamers who cry about it every waking hour.
Opiate said:They absolutely must start spending, and third party relations are the clear place to focus that spending on. In my opinion.
Almost certainly. I don't think this stuff is Nintendo-specific in many ways so much as it's policy based around the particulars of how third parties are asked to store their games; it's actually possible that some more direct competition between Sony and Nintendo on the cartridge front might lead to some productive and competitive resultant shifts in policy. I don't really know enough about the specifics of all that within the SNES/Genesis era, but it could be a useful comparison with regard to the discussion of cartridge production policies even if the overall context is wildly different.Vic said:I wonder if a PSP2 which might use flash memory will operate under almost similar conditions.
Opiate said:This argument does not stand to reason, I believe. Sony lost 5 billion dollars subsidizing the PS3 and it produced no clear, meaningful change in direction. I'm not entirely sure Nintendo could do that without being torn apart by shareholders. Their overall revenue streams are too small, comparatively.
Most importantly, I believe that a primary reason that Sony/MS are unwilling to keep losing money is that -- thanks to Nintendo -- it is blindingly apparent to even the most casual shareholder that huge money can be made in the industry, it's just that Sony/MS haven't done it. If Nintendo were in the trenches losing money right along with them, it would be far easier to justify to shareholders continued subsidization if it meant outspending, and ultimately killing, Nintendo, whose resources are indeed still significantly less vast than either Sony or Microsoft's.
These policies are almost certainly a consequence of Nintendo's reticence to enter a spending war with their larger competitors. Such reticence clearly pervades their entire business philosophy. However, as Nintendo's revenue streams grow and they maintain high profitability, it becomes an increasingly poor decision to remain this conservative in all aspects of their business. They absolutely must start spending, and third party relations are the clear place to focus that spending on. In my opinion.
Most of this issues would really only affect small publishers. Hardly the companies nintards are asking games from.Amir0x said:Why shouldn't Nintendo help them the way Sony and Microsoft does?
Wait, scratch that... let Sony and Microsoft keep getting all the games that all the Nintendo fanboys keep whining they don't get.
Amir0x said:5 billion dollars? We're talking about the cost of buying a few individual properties, which at this point they could certainly stand to do a little investing.
I'm not saying they could outspend them on every occassion, because it's a case-by-case basis. Who wants this more, who wants that more? Which property would better fit our portfolio? But they absolutely could extend their arms and purchase a little developer support with marketing partnerships or simple brand exclusives. And yes, they could even outspend Sony or Microsoft, since as I said, they have their own limits. Sony and Microsoft don't even want to try to outspend the other two, as we see there are so few exclusives this gen altogether. Clearly, it's not out of the question for Nintendo to pick a few low hanging apples. I doubt Nintendo could outspend Sony or Microsoft for Grand Theft Auto or something like that, of course. For any property those two deem as a necessity.
What about the 3rd party devs that want to create something unique on the Wii because of the motion controls and the unique install base? You're missing out on all sorts of games there. Games that could potentially be awesome and sell millions...KamenSenshi said:I don't mind if they miss out on fps 233561001. I normally get all the consoles so its not an issue for me but this thing with companies placing the blame and responsibility where needs to stop. Nintendo doesn't like losing money while the other two are fine with it apparently. After all this time the 3rd parties should know this.
What Im saying is, it is not a good thing to be in the habit of always paying for others games one easy our another. Sony was known for gta and tomb raider, now on everything. Sure variety is nice, but at what price, why does the market lesser have to hand out services to try and get games.
potential. There are other outlets. This is why we have Wiiware and other digital distribution systems.mr_nothin said:What about the 3rd party devs that want to create something unique on the Wii because of the motion controls and the unique install base? You're missing out on all sorts of games there. Games that could potentially be awesome and sell millions...
Opiate said:These issues may seem small, but they are the types of issues that tend to snowball over time. That is, the Playstation version (as an example) of a game might be slightly easier to produce, so they decide to produce that. That game does well. This, in turn, encourages other producers to follow suit, as there is now proven success. This extrapolates even further over time.
KamenSenshi said:No no, Im just saying I want Nintendo to continue to be careful if they are going to go down that path of paying for games.
Opiate said:These are publisher unfriendly business practices.
rosjos44 said:3 weeks does not = doom.
How much does 5th cell spend? Btw they made a success with independent resources.
Opiate said:However, as Nintendo's revenue streams grow and they maintain high profitability, it becomes an increasingly poor decision to remain this conservative in all aspects of their business. They absolutely must start spending, and third party relations are the clear place to focus that spending on. In my opinion.
DeaconKnowledge said:Rockstar didn't touch the Wii, say, for a Grand Theft Auto title because they had to pay the manufacturing costs up front? Right.
Somnid said:In the 3DS context I would imagine more smaller devs will be referred to 3DSWare. Should solve a few of these problems.
mr_nothin said:What about the 3rd party devs that want to create something unique on the Wii because of the motion controls and the unique install base? You're missing out on all sorts of games there. Games that could potentially be awesome and sell millions...
Bebpo said:Now Strange Journey makes sense.
Poor Atlus I wonder why they didn't bail on the DS after EO and that.
charlequin said:ghettoization != solving problems
Man God said:Hell that's the reason why Square and Capcom started to get out of the SNES's business pretty early and why Capcom largely stayed off of the N64.
Rockstar didn't touch the Wii because supporting the Wii is incompatible with their broad platform strategy, but that just means Rockstar was never there as a "get." Small publishers are a legitimate area of growth for Nintendo in the third-party arena in a way that R* are not.