Interesting article. He laments the rise of "controlled platforms" generally, but highlights some specific problems with Nintendo lately.
Jon Hare was designer of Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder, and currently head development at Nikitova Games.
Nintendo 'faces a moral dilemma' over developer relations
This could be a problem on all platforms, his experience may simply be restricted to Nintendo, but it's interesting to see a developer come out and talk about it so openly.
Jon Hare was designer of Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder, and currently head development at Nikitova Games.
Nintendo 'faces a moral dilemma' over developer relations
"Good for Nintendo, they have always been the best developer in the world in any case. It is just a shame that this tme they had to put so many other publishers and developers noses out of joint in order to ensure that their titles received such high priority on their hardware formats," said Hare.
Hare cites the 2007 Q3/Q4 delay in manufacturing of third party product, and says the approval process' "feeding back Lotcheck failures in drops and drabs at such a crucial time of the year is unacceptable" he points out that format-holder approval processes at Nintendo (and for that matter Sony and also Microsoft) have a negative impact on product quality.
"Companies such as Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft should feel lucky that at present no international law forces them to open up their platforms as free technical platforms such as VHS, DVD or Stereo. Personally I feel it is no coincidence that the quality of on sequlled, non licensed original software has gone down ever since controlled platforms became the norm in the mid '90s."
Either way if it [Nintendo] does not improve on what happened at the end of this year in regard to working with smaller third parties it may find that support for it's platforms will start to thin out again from the smaller developers and publishers.
This could be a problem on all platforms, his experience may simply be restricted to Nintendo, but it's interesting to see a developer come out and talk about it so openly.