Stephen 776
perpetually tired
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Delete this post. Posted by accident
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Discussion What was that weird thing with Micheal Pachter and Nintendo all about?
- Thread starter Kreese
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Huh. I wasn't aware Nintendo funded EA building an engine to port FIFA. I must have missed all the sarcastic "Unprecedented Partnership: This time for real!" headlines. Curious little nugget. I think I remember you arguing in another thread about whether Iwata's consolidation of power was a self-inflicted wound or a necessary first step to course-correct, so japanese third party strategy extending outwards to the west fits into that context. I guess I'll remain forever curious if Iwata would have followed the same trajectory.
His argument against relying only on third-party money-hats was that the practice is financially unsustainable for Nintendo. And seeing how businessmen like Kimishima and Furukawa haven't changed Nintendo's approach leads me to think Iwata had a point and wasn't making an excuse to cover what was at its core a philosophical disagreement.
Scripta Manent
Rattata
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Shadow
Openly likes cuddles
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Wii U had some decent first party support when it launched (because of Wii's success) but that lasted just for the launch phase and then it was dropped like a bad habit. The wedge between Nintendo and third parties was stronger than ever.
Switch started with nothing, became the de facto for indies and now third party support is ramping up all around the board.
All in all, the Switch has done an excellent job refostering relations around the table because every remaster or remake coming to Switch from a franchise it never had before from Western AAA is an inroad to future titles. Capcom is making the big bucks on Switch, and the scene is starting to blow up.
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Pachter is basically just a console warrior but with an air of "legitimacy". Complete with saying Nintendo would be more successful if they went third party
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Emily
Guest
Are you basing this entirely on Wii U having one Call of Duty game? IMO, there's more to western support than Call of Duty.
You would never see South Park (Ubisoft), Doom (Bethesda), Crysis 3 (Crytek) and Diablo 3 (Blizzard) on Wii U.
In 2012, I spoke to someone who worked at Volition. They badly wanted to bring the Saints Row games to Wii U, but porting it would've been such a hassle. So the Wii U dev kits just sat there and collected dust in their offices.
I still remember when Nintendo showed off Metro Last Light for Wii U in that E3 2011 sizzle reel. After Wii U launched, Metro Last Light's chief technical officer called the Wii U's CPU "horrible" and "slow" in an interview. It was so brutal to see a new gaming console getting raked over the coals like that.
Fast forward to today: Saints Row and Metro Last Light are now both on Switch.
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Switch is doing so much better with third parties than the unhealthy Wii U it sounds a bit like trolling to suggest otherwise.
Wii U got two day and date CODs, two Assassin's Creed, Arkham Origins Day 1, Watch Dogs(late), Spliter Cell, Zombi U as a launch exclusive.
It had a lot more than COD.
You can find lots of examples of devs raking the Switch over the coals too, someone actually just made a thread about what a Respawn dev said in 2017.
EDIT: Even the issue with the Saints Row and Metro comparisons is that those games were contemporary when the Wii U was the on the market. The equivalent products today aren't being released on Switch either.
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It got things early in its life because Wii was a success and then it got nothing after the games (which were generally mediocre ports) didn't perform. It completely destroyed third party relations.
Switch is rebuilding them in a big way.
There is no other way to frame it.
That's what happens when one platform sells double the lifetime sales of another in a single year.
That's irrelevant to my point though. The Switch isn't included in those big multiplatform games from third party publishers at all(except MK11?) whereas Wii U was at least to some extent.
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Emily
Guest
RE: Day and Date
To be fair, Switch is the first time ever that Nintendo launched a new system during the middle of a console generation. So that threw third party publishers completely off with their development cycles.
That literally has never happened before. Every previous Nintendo system has launched during the beginning of a generation. Wii launched the same year as PS3. GameCube launched same year as Xbox. Wii U launched one year before PS4 and Xbox One.
In the first 2-3 years of its life, Switch was busy playing "catch up" with PS4's library. Nintendo was actively trying to get most of the older PS4 games that Wii U missed out on: Skyrim, Doom, South Park, The Witcher 3, Overwatch, Life is Strange, LA Noire.
To be honest that sounds like a case of having the wrong priorities because they've ended up missing on several years of games again, and they'll continue to do nothing but play catch up. Life is Strange is only coming to Switch around its fifth birthday.
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Switch got/is getting a lot more third party games than Wii U so it's difficult not to look a the lazy early offerings on the Wii U as anything other than vastly inferior.
Pandora
Goddess of Calamity
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would wholly disagree with this, what are they gonna do in terms of other priorities? make companies make certain games day and date even if it runs badly, costs them money and makes the game take longer to release? Clearly being a "late port" in the wider mainstream doesn't have that much impact on the perception of these games and in this case given switch's unique selling points are still more appealing than say day and date releases of certain titles on what was just a straight up inferior home console to anything else on the market at the time.
fiendcode
Like Like
One interesting thing I find in Nintendo's western deals is that outside FIFA and NBA2K they didn't really go for any of the western games that failed to help Wii U upfront (COD, AssCreed, Arkham, Mass Effect, Madden, Epic Mickey, etc). I wonder if that was a conscious move?
Guaraná
Paratroopa
I agree with @Oregano to some point.
Yes, the Switch has a lot of cool support from 3rd parties, but I don't see it being so much better than what Wii U had. The difference now is that the number of indies and AA games is much bigger and Switch usually gets everything in those segments, but the AAA material is very small.
And to tell the truth, that will only change if the next hardware is closer to at least XSS. One thing that can help now is that games are much more scalable, which also has a limit.
So the fact is: AAA games will keep missing Nintendo consoles unless it's hardware gets a little closer to the industry AAA standard: Xbox and Playstation.
Yes, the Switch has a lot of cool support from 3rd parties, but I don't see it being so much better than what Wii U had. The difference now is that the number of indies and AA games is much bigger and Switch usually gets everything in those segments, but the AAA material is very small.
And to tell the truth, that will only change if the next hardware is closer to at least XSS. One thing that can help now is that games are much more scalable, which also has a limit.
So the fact is: AAA games will keep missing Nintendo consoles unless it's hardware gets a little closer to the industry AAA standard: Xbox and Playstation.
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We're talking about Switch's 4 thousand plus games vs Wii U's 7 hundred and something.
It buries the Wii U in ports and remasters alone.
You'd have to be extremely reductive to put the Wii U on top in any way.
Relatively current and half assed AAA Western ports at Wii U's launch? Okay.
It's behind in every other category by a significant margin.
Dekuman
Kremling
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I think it came from a place of frustration, he seemed genuinely offended Iwata didn't take his Wii HD suggestion seriously around 2010. In hindsight, that would have been the best time to launch the Wii U instead of in 2012
After the Wii era , he became very negative towards Nintendo and was right about that negativity from a certain point of view. But it did come off as in poor taste later on after Iwata's passing and he was still betting against the company and held a personal grudge again him.
He was negative during the Wii era too. People don't remember that because he played the nice guy routine during Keighley's show at the time, but his takes were as dumb back then as they are now.
The Wii HD wasn't a "suggestion" to him, he genuinely thought that Nintendo's business would crash and burn unless they released a Wii HD as a mid-gen refresh. The Wii's infamous 3.81 million month in the US happened not long after he said that.
Miraj
Moblin
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I feel the same way. The Switch has definitely benefited greatly from digital indie and e-shop release. But the actual number of big, cross-platform newer titles with PS and Xbox? Not much better than Wii U's. Ports and remasters (Crysis, LA Noir, etc.) make up a notable number of retail titles, yet seem to be promoted as strong third party support, meanwhile they're blips for PS/Xbox, which get a lot of brand new bigger titles to pad out their release schedules. Heck, Bethesda went out of its way to make specialized ports of their Doom and Wolfenstein titles for Switch, and now they're bought by Microsoft and we likely won't see that special consideration happen anymore.
The Switch isn't getting the latest COD, Battlefield, Resident Evil, etc. It is getting some newer AAA titles, but they're mostly cloud-based. Whether people like it or not, AAA level games are indicative of strong third party support. It's not all there is to third party, obviously, but it's important for a big chunk of the mainstream gaming audience in a way that remasters or indies aren't.
Switch's hybrid nature meaning it takes on the handheld output of third parties also helps it a lot. That's something Wii U understandably didn't have. However, the 3DS had the benefit of not needing HD-level games, and Switch does (or tries to, lol). I'd be curious what the retail/physical third party Japanese game release count is for Switch compared to 3DS at what was this point in the latter's life cycle, especially when a number of franchises didn't continue onto the new hardware (like Etrian Odyssey for instance, which got its latest entry on 3DS in 2019).
Overall the Switch is healthy and selling like gangbusters and has thousands of third party titles on it, but the system lacks the power to run the blockbuster third party games that other platforms tend to make their big sales drivers.
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I think the thing with 3rd-party support on Wii U is that it was almost all incredibly front-loaded to the first 2 years. What ended up being released was sunk costs in development, but it was clear there was very little investment in software for that platform after the initial round of planned titles dried up. And... well, that's just not happened this time, so it hits different.
But I think the big win was that, aside from perhaps the beginning of the Switch's life like the FIFA example, none of the 3rd-party games seem to have been announced and released due to cajoling or arm-twisting, and it's games that people give a shit about, no less.
Guaraná
Paratroopa
That's a good point. Wii U's support happened because of Wii's success. But Switch's support happened in spite of Wii U's fail.
Let's just hope Nintendo can enjoy good and solid sales for 2 generations in a row so 3rd party support can get to better levels on every front. Although I believe that the main reason for the lack of AAA support today, won't change unless the Switch 2 hardware gets closer to XSS.
JazzPotatoes
Koopa
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Anyone arguing that third party support was better on Wii U is getting the side eye from me.
Even if the conversation is just regarding ports: most of the Wii U's third party support was late ports of 360 and PS3 games, same as the Switch. The difference is that on Wii U, those ports offered little in the way of a unique selling point, and they dried up completely after the first year or two. It was Nintendo games and indies for the last few years of it's life. That was it.
I love my Wii U. I've just completed Zero Mission and Fusion on it. There is no version of reality where it had better third party support than the Switch. The Witcher 3 would never have happened on Wii U. Doom and Wolfenstein would never have happened on Wii U. Apex Legends and Control would never have happened on Wii U.
I mean, the Wii U got Project Treasure and Sonic Boom, I suppose...
Even if the conversation is just regarding ports: most of the Wii U's third party support was late ports of 360 and PS3 games, same as the Switch. The difference is that on Wii U, those ports offered little in the way of a unique selling point, and they dried up completely after the first year or two. It was Nintendo games and indies for the last few years of it's life. That was it.
I love my Wii U. I've just completed Zero Mission and Fusion on it. There is no version of reality where it had better third party support than the Switch. The Witcher 3 would never have happened on Wii U. Doom and Wolfenstein would never have happened on Wii U. Apex Legends and Control would never have happened on Wii U.
I mean, the Wii U got Project Treasure and Sonic Boom, I suppose...
The Switch's third party support is light years ahead of Wii U and no one said otherwise, it's just not because of the relative handful of AAA PS4/XBO games that were ported to Switch.
The fact that last year with the Switch was the first time a Nintendo platform has had more releases than PlayStation in Japan(even counting the DS/Wii years) says a lot more about the strength of the platform when it comes to third party support than say... the port of Dying Light that just came out.
The fact that last year with the Switch was the first time a Nintendo platform has had more releases than PlayStation in Japan(even counting the DS/Wii years) says a lot more about the strength of the platform when it comes to third party support than say... the port of Dying Light that just came out.
Guaraná
Paratroopa
I think both facts are good indicators.
Quantity is good because it shows how healthy the console is, and good releases like DL is also good because it shows that Switch is worth the effort.
Wii U was the worst Nintendo hardware since Virtual Boy and Switch is the best Nintendo hardware since Snes. But the Wii U had the luck to be released after Wii and had a lot of frontloaded support. The Switch didn't have the same privilege.
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Deleted member 594
Guest
Gonna be honest, I feel like you are kinda overestimating the importance of a lot of the Japanese games that come to Switch.
Nah, I think it's the opposite when talking about the wider picture.
How many of those big western games release a year?
How many of those mid-tier Japanese games release a year?
The Witcher 3 might be a relatively big seller on Switch, having sold 2m-ish copies on Switch, but there's dozens of smaller games selling hundreds of thousands of copies each year and that adds up.
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Switch has close to 7000 games IIRC. Nintendo's own slides mentioned that.
Well over 4000.
As a "video game analyst" (dont even know what he used to claim for that), speaking most about the stock market, his word carried weight cause, lets be honest, most investors dont know shit about video games, so they went by the word of people like him.
But when someone in that position sticks to the same prediction over, and over and over, and every time he fails, options are, he is criminally incompetent as his job, he has a bone to pick or put on thin foil hat he was in someone's pocket to drive that the stock price of Nintendo
But when someone in that position sticks to the same prediction over, and over and over, and every time he fails, options are, he is criminally incompetent as his job, he has a bone to pick or put on thin foil hat he was in someone's pocket to drive that the stock price of Nintendo
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Deleted member 645
Guest
I personally don’t like him and would be fine never hearing his name again. It wasn’t that he riled up the fans. What got me was all the fans from other system taking his word as gospel. Making it seem like he knew exactly what he was speaking about. I just wish his “analysis” of Nintendo never got traction.
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I was looking at old data my bad.
So that's perfect, that works out to Switch having 10x more software than Wii U. Amazing.
