charlequin said:That's ridiculous. A platform-holder is engaged in a mutually-beneficial business partnership with third party publishers. Their legal responsibility to their shareholders is to maximize the profitability of that arrangement (which is quite literally impossible with as narrowly delineated a "job" as you suggest here) and their non-legal but still manifest and obvious responsibility to their partners in this arrangement is to work as hard as possible to maximize the mutual benefit of all involved parties, not to shrug their shoulders and say "not my problem."*
What I am saying that the main part of that partnership for the platform holder is to make sure the platform sells. The main part of the third party publisher is to make sure the software sells. The only reason money has to be poured into software support now is that the other two platform holders do it.
Nintendo maximized their profits early in the life of the Wii without pouring money into third party support. You can also look at the DS as an example of Nintendo not having to pour money into support.
How beneficial is it to Sony shareholders that they keep pouring money into getting software support for the PSP? A lot of money that goes into getting that support may not be made back when you look at the software sales of the PSP. Even more when you look at the failing hardware sales. Sure the hardware sales at a profit but as I said hardware sales are pretty low too.
What Nintendo is "taking a risk on" is third party publishing as a whole. Nintendo allows it, but at the moment they are receiving an extraordinarily poor return on the money they invest into it because they are accepting essentially zero risk on the entire field of "third-party publishing" and excluding all risk also excludes all worthwhile investment opportunities. This is manifestly unacceptable as a business practice for a company as successful and cash-rich as Nintendo.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft and Sony don't have to pay for every good to great title that their hardware gets. Nintendo mainly failed by not making it clear to third parties they were entering the generation and getting dev kits out as soon as Sony and Microsoft did. That hurt support from the start. Third parties failed by throwing tons of crap at the system to make a quick buck. Nintendo paying for support may not have increased the quality of the software. We have seen many times where that was not the case.
Publishers "expect" incentives because they themselves are consumers in an open market, choosing which competing platform(s) to "buy" their way into releasing on, and that market is sufficiently competitive that courting of this type is the cost said market will bear. Nintendo doesn't just get to choose to be immune to market realities.
Publishers that have high selling software or have proven talent should expect incentives. Every publisher should not expect incentives. You put your titles on the platform that works best for you. In the current marketplace it is best for most publishers to put their software on all platforms so the need for incentives is even less.
Because they took on very little actual financial risk on either. By selling hardware at a profit on day one and offering a selection of guaranteed first-party sellers, both platforms would have produced an overall profit for Nintendo even if the Wii had performed like the Gamecube and the DS had been trounced by the PSP.
This is an admirable strategy for a company like Nintendo to take on core business elements like console releases: since their only business is gaming, they can't rely on other lines of business to prop up a loss-generating failure like Microsoft and Sony can -- but much like investments a balanced portfolio, this needs to be offset by riskier (and higher-reward) expenditures elsewhere: investments that have potential to lose money but also the potential to produce significant success if chosen well. It's the unwillingness to even consider investments like this that seems unique to Nintendo and which is by far the single biggest obstacle to them taking their successes to the next level.
Launching hardware that is totally different than any main platform holder ( maybe ever) is a financial risk even if it is sold at a profit. Are you trying to say that Nintendo would not have lost money from the R&D of the hardware, software development , and the marketing if the Wii and DS failed? If touchscreen and motion controls were totally rejected Nintendo would have lost in their risk. Being a hardware developer the Wii and DS were the biggest risk they could take.
I do agree with you that Nintendo has to offer incentives to third parties to stay competitive so it is their job.