On Stemming Nintendo's Exclusive Game Drought

Thanks to Nintendojo for its editorial discussing ways to help Nintendo increase the amount of GameCube-only titles it releases. The writer notes that "...it is all too apparent that Nintendo's exclusive games lineup is very thin at the moment", and suggests one of many possible solutions: "Nintendo must figure out a way to increase the [development] capacity of Retro Studios and/or Silicon Knights. These companies must have as much depth [in amount of releases] as Rare had at the latter part of its life." How would you like to see Nintendo partnering to release more high-quality GameCube-only games?

Comments

I dont believe in Exclusive Titles

[Bruha]

Exclusivity = I dont buy them unless it's for the one I own.. I'm not going to bounce around and buy 3 or 4 consoles just to play the latest and greatest games out there. I bought a Xbox and it ticks me off that the Kirby game is Nintendo only. All it serves to do is decrease the games sales potential.

I would however appreciate limited exclusivity where the game would be ported after a fixed amount of time.

Re:I dont believe in Exclusive Titles

[Gr33nNight]

Decrease game sales potential, and increases console sales potential. If you want to play Nintendo created games, you *must* buy a GameCube, and thats Nintendos ace in the hole.

Re:I dont believe in Exclusive Titles

[Snowmit]

Exclusivity = I dont buy them unless it's for the one I own.

I take it from this comment that you somehow think that there are people do do buy games for systems the don't own? Of course you don't buy it if you can't play it.

The thing is that exclusives sell consoles. When I picked my console for this generation, I picked a Game Cube first because I wanted the exclusives on the Game Cube more than the exclusives on the other two systems. Every great exclusive that Nintendo puts out or that it gets company C to put out means Y more people buy a Game Cube. Then, once they have a Game Cube, they buy Z number of games, each of which gives Nintendo cash.

Re:I dont believe in Exclusive Titles

[PainKilleR-CE]

If you bought an Xbox with hopes to play games like Kirby's Air Ride, then you are a marketer's worst nightmare.

Especially because Kirby is owned by Nintendo, the games are made by Nintendo, so every marketer would hope that someone wanting the game would know, because of their marketing efforts, that it's a Nintendo game. As a Nintendo game, like every other Nintendo game since the NES was released, it's on a Nintendo console.

XBox owners only have a reason to complain about exclusive titles because there's a much lower percentage of exclusive titles than either of the other systems. This is exactly why the XBox was the third of the current-generation consoles I purchased (it simply didn't have enough titles I couldn't play on my PS2; the first was the DreamCast). I bought my first Cube because $150 wasn't bad and I wanted to play a half dozen or so games that had already been released (interestingly, the half dozen mark seems to be where I buy most consoles, but at $150 I really don't care as long as it has something really good). I bought the second Cube at the $99 mark w/ Zelda bundle because it allowed me to put it in the bedroom, where my gf can play Animal Crossing without tying up the TV with the rest of the consoles attached to it.

Do you remember Rare's output?

[dancingmad]

I read this article on Nintendojo yesterday and while I respect the dojo, they seem to forget Rare's output at the later half its life. They had very few good games after the Nintendo 64's cult hit Goldeneye. None of their games could equal Donkey Kong Country or Goldeneye in terms of brilliance or success. I'd rather have Retro working on making Metroid Prime 2 as good as Prime 1, instead of Prime 2 plus Samus Party 3, Metroid Kart, and Ridley's Hide and Seek or Kraid's Bad Scales Day.

Re:Do you remember Rare's output?

[PainKilleR-CE]

Nobody's claiming that Rare made *good* games during their last years with Nintendo, they just pumped them out at a respectable rate compared to that of, say, Silicon Knights (the only game they've published in the last several years is Eternal Darkness). The trick is to keep them coming that fast, and have them be good, too.

And the point is that unless you severely inflate the size of the company and maintain seperate development studios within the company (ie like Nintendo's several development divisions), you get crap when you increase the output. It's very easy to make games quickly when quality is less important.

In any case, regardless of what Nintendo does right now, any game that goes into development today isn't likely to be on a shelf before the middle of next year, unless it's crap. Almost everything Nintendo could possibly do to help the Cube that involves game development has to have already been done. Anything else involving game development will probably be focused on the next console.

Where does the "DS" fit in?

[Babbster]

I have to wonder if Nintendo is too busy supporting the Gameboy Advance (understandably with its monstrous installed base) and the upcoming "DS" system. Nintendo has said that the DS system will be an addition to their line as opposed to a GBA replacement. That means that Nintendo will be supporting [at least] three different consoles. This seems like an odd choice to me given the dearth of interesting Gamecube titles alluded to in this story, and it can only suck even more resources away from the Gamecube and, presumably, its eventual successor.

Possible Solution

[Black Mage Balthazar]

Well maybe more companies could do what Namco did with Soul Calibur II. You basically get the same game, but each console got its own character.

Gamecube: Link
XBOX: Spawn
PS2: Heihachi

That way, the game sells well in all three markets, and each console owner can brag to the other about the exclusive content that they got.

(btw Link is the best ;) )

Namco

[Ondo]

From the article:

"Namco is also another third party that Nintendo should try working with more. If Nintendo springs the cash, Namco could possibly give the Cube an exclusive Soul Calibur."

Or maybe they should do what they did with Sega on F-Zero GX, and get Namco to develop a game for an already established Nintendo brand. Like, for example, Star Fox. And, while there at it, they should announce it at E3. But not this year's E3, because they'll be talking about the DS. Do it at last year's E3. That'll get the fanboys excited.

Unless they totally forget about it, of course.

Re:Namco

[PyroMosh]

I realize that you couldn't have just Guessed that and that this is sarcasm, but still, I think most people don't know, here's the link to IGN's coverage of E3 last year where they revealed that Namco is developing Star Fox 2.

Re:It's sad because it's true.

[Ondo]

Which means that if I want to play a different fighting game, well, I can't.

While I get your point, I think that's a terrible example. The GameCube has Soul Calibur 2 and Super Smash Brothers Melee, probably the two most popular fighting games for any current console.

cube lineup

[Anonymous Coward]

Quality over quanity. The battlecry of the '64 lives on. i'm a longtime nintendo fan and i personally am not concerned. i would rather have a few excelent titles than a bunch of mediocre ones. Not all games for other systems are mediocre, but the few decent ones get lost in the glut of other games (esp. ps2) i would rather have a focused effort on titles than a shotgun effect with the attitude of "let's see what sticks"

Wha...?

[silentbobdp]

What on earth is going wrong here? Why does every Nintendo story bring thousands of impending doom messages? The facts are these: Gamecube is whomping on XBox in Japan, just overtook them over here, and Nintendo - the company - has lots and lots and lots of __cash__ the likes of which Sega et al have never even laid eyes on. As a platform company, they aren't going anywhere.

Re:It's sad because it's true.

[edwdig]

If I want to fight, I have SCII

There's also Super Smash Bros Melee, Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, Capcom vs SNK, and a few other lesser known games.

racing is Mario Kart:DD or F-Zero GX.

There's also Wave Race Blue Storm, Need for Speed Underground, Burnout, and at least a few others.

Team sports is NHL 2004, while extreme sports is Tony Hawk 4.

Granted Sega dropped their sports line from GameCube after the first year, but EA releases all their sports titles for it. Acclaim releases All Star Baseball. Midway has NFL Blitz and NHL Hitz for the extreme stuff. And there's Mario Golf and soon Mario Tennis if you want more party type sports games.

RPG is Zelda, etc.

Well, Zelda isn't an RPG. If you want RPGs, the Cube is a pretty bad choice as their are very few, although Namco has several coming out later this year. If you want Zelda type games, there's also Star Fox Adventures and Beyond Good and Evil for starters. Both of which are really cheap.

Nintendo's problem isn't so much a lack of games, but rather everyone just buys all the Nintendo first party games and ignores the 3rd party games. I've mostly just bought Nintendo's 1st and 2nd party games since the N64 days. Mainly because after getting the 1st and 2nd party must haves, I didn't have the time or money for many other games. So on Nintendo systems, 3rd parties get less attention and sales. Particuarlly the companies that just make crappy ports.

No need - it's not the barrier

[grahamwest]

Hobbyist programmers can make their game or more realistically a game prototype on PC or Mac and demonstrate that to potential publishers. It's not hard to move a game's technology from one platform to another for most cases. Making a sufficiently compelling and graphically appealing game is pretty hard these days no matter what platform you're on. I would say that supporting this platform or that platform is only 10% of the programming effort at most. If your game is good enough you'll get funding and access to hardware. If it's not you won't get the backing anyway.

Re:Hey Taco

[prockcore]

There have already been a few articles this year from reputable sources saying Nintendo isnt on solid ground and needs to watch its step.

I haven't seen any reputable sources say this.. but what I have seen is reputable sources say Nintendo has over 6 billion dollars in the bank and they aren't going anywhere.

Re:Lack of exclusives?

[TechniMyoko]

I think he meant lack of exclusives due to be release soon, in fact, im pretty sure he said it No need to get all hypersensitive and list EVERY game

Re:Open the platform

[Anonymous Coward]

CounterStrike.

The problem is 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

So many games would be great in 2D, and still look great by taking advantage of modern hardware. There is no need to return to 16 bit systems to get good games. Just a need to realise that not every game needs to be 3D.

Re:Lack of exclusives?

[DeadScreenSky]

The article is about exclusive games FROM NINTENDO. Roughly two thirds of your list is published by third parties.

And I am pretty sure the argument was for quality exclusives, too. (Your list has a lot of B-quality and niche titles.) And I can't believe you are counting games that were released on other domestic console systems not four years ago. I personally wouldn't count compilations of games I already have owned for 5+ years, either.

Re:Lack of exclusives?

[bjb]

Wasn't Resident Evil ported to (at least) the PlayStation? I never owned a PSone or PS2, but I could have sworn that I saw R.E. on a PSone a few years back.