Nintendo had to make several sacrifices to strike out into the casual market with the Wii, and its decision to leave HD visuals and processing power behind meant third-party support took a major hit on the machine. These past five years have been marked by incredible third-party million-sellers like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed, but whereas the last generation would have seen those titles go multi-platform and ship across the PS2, Xbox and GameCube, this gen has seen the horse race pared down to two. Portal 2, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter IV these games arrive with PlayStation versions and Xbox versions, but no Nintendo edition in sight.
The Cafe needs to bring things back to being a three-horse race. Having multi-platform third-party titles come to Nintendo's console isn't always as valuable as having true exclusives from those same developers, but leveling the playing field has to be a good thing. Look at a brand like Call of Duty alone, as big as it's gotten if the 2012 installment in that series ships for PS3, Xbox 360 and Project Cafe, it'll be a bellweather that Nintendo's making great strides getting back into the hardcore business.
The company will have to make sure that third-party developers can offer equivalent content on Cafe, as not wanting to water their projects down to work on Wii has kept several top-tier titles away from our shelves in this era. Powerwise, it seems this shouldn't be a problem the Cafe is expected to better the specs of both competitors when its inner workings are confirmed next week.
What's more, bringing major third-party projects back to a place of releasing across three consoles instead of two will reopen the potential for Nintendo to edge in unique, exclusive advantages Soul Calibur II's inclusion of Link as a playable fighter on the GameCube sent its sales well north of the PS2 and Xbox versions. Now, another Soul Calibur is in development. Let's hope a Nintendo version appears, and it's more enticing than the competitors' versions once again.
