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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?
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.
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.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
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.
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.
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.
--Moo.
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.
Graham
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.