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Silicon Knights, Nintendo Cease Exclusivity Deal
Divine Shadow writes "IGN Cube is reporting that Silicon Knights (developer of Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes) is no longer an exclusive second-party developer for Nintendo. This is really surprising given that interviews with Nintendo and Denis Dyack (SK's leader) always seemed to suggest a bond and shared philosophy between the companies. Have to admit too, that this makes me less excited about Ninty's E3 lineup." Elsewhere in the article, Denis Dyack claims: "It's possible that we may do another game with Nintendo, actually. It just means that we've decided to break our exclusivity with Nintendo."
Well there goes any hope of Silicon Knights to produce that "mature" Zelda people were hoping for.
Dennis made a comment about how he'd like to make a mature zelda similar to how he said he wanted to make a Metal Gear game prior to the annoucement of MGS:TTS
the exclusive partnerships of console makers and game developers provide little benefit to the consumer, yet take away choice, and give monopolistic-like power to the console-maker (if you want the game, you have to go through him). It's no different than software that works only on one OS, or a web site that is only viewable on one browser or a song that is only playable in one media player.
I see this as a victory for the consumer and gamers worldwide!
Rare have made one game since they left Nintendo over 2 years ago. One. To boot, it wasn't even very good and didn't sell very well. How much cash did Nintendo get out of selling Rare? Like, $200 million. Who's the dumbass? Nintendo or Microsoft?
Left Field made terrible games anyway. How many great games have they made since the end of their relationship. None. So who's the chump again? Not Nintendo.
Silicon Knights have made two good games, but they haven't sold very well. Not really a wise investment to keep them exclusive, when the money could be better spent elsewhere. Looking at the track record, i'm willing to bet Nintendo won't be the chump on this one either.
"Mike Hawk" your anti-Nintendo trolling is getting old. Get a job.
Just so you all know, Silicon Knights was not a 2nd party to Nintendo, they simply had a comtract to develop a few games exclusively. Now the contract has ended and Nintendo is just letting SK have some freedom. This news really isn't that bad. Dennis Dyack has always expressed how much he loves working with Nintendo, I'm sure that they will continue to make games for them in the future. But of course the online gaming world is going to turn this into some kind of "Nintendo aer teh d00med!!!!!11"
First/Second party support has never been a problem for Nintendo. Third party has always been an issue, due to software houses not appreciating the "draconian" nature employed by Nintendo to prevent shoddy games from making it onto their system. (If more people took this stance, we might avoid travesties such as Enter the Matrix.)
I would hope this may signal an effort from Nintendo to garner better relationships with third party companies.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
I'm sorry, there's so many ways I dissagree with this that to begin I have to go back.
Yes, Exclusivity does hurt the hell out of the Industry. No one wants a return the 1988 when Ma-Nintendo controlled 90% of all things released in the United states. That was a bad thing.
However, no one wants to buy a game and have another version appear on another console marketted as better. As much as I hate it, everytime I'm in an EB or a Software ECT I hear the counter monkey berating people for buying a specific consoles version of a game becuase 'Console Z has a better processor' or some other tripe.
The industry needs console specific games. Without them there is no reason to buy any one specific console. I'd never support the PS2 if I could get GTA3 in a Gamecube, or Microsoft if i could get True Fantasy Live on the PS2.
The games will get better if everyone has fun, exclusive content, not if everyone else has it and yours trys to be better.
X
Nintendo completely bought out Retro Studios before Metroid Prime came out, so Retro isn't going anywhere.
Rare had become a money sink. They've released very little in the past few years, all of which has been significantly lower quality than their older stuff. The owners wanted to cash out, and asked Nintendo for a very large sum of money. There's a limit to how much money is worth sinking into a company, and Nintendo decided they'd be better off selling the company than buying it out. So they let Rare sell themselves to the highest bidder, and sold their own stock in the same deal.
Who knows what went on with Silicon Knights. Give it time and maybe we'll hear more. But they really weren't a good match together. Nintendo focuses on gameplay above all else, whereas Silicon Knights focuses on story above all else.
This won't hurt Nintendo this generation at all. Simply put, I highly doubt that Silicon Knights has much experience with either the PS2 or the Xbox, since they've been working exclusively with Nintendo for the last few years.
If SK makes any more games for this generation of consoles, it will be for Game Cube or be technically less polished ports of Eternal Darkness.
Long term though, I think this will hurt Nintendo. Silicon Knights made the type of games that Nintendo itself won't. More complicated, darker games with more attention paid to presentation (story and flash). This will just further reinforce peoples' view that Nintendo systems are for kids. I love playing Nintendo's games, but it does get boring not having something darker to play, and makes it that much harder to convince friends to play on a Nintendo console.
Silicon Knights had talent and were a good complement to Nintendo's usual style. Unless Nintendo manages something better with 3rd parties than it has (simply allowing Japanese companies to make Nintendo-published games isn't enough), things are only going to get worse. A good thing would be to seriously pursue Square-Enix to make games for their next system, even if only by telling them that they can't afford to allow Sony or Microsoft to go unopposed by Nintendo. After all, if Nintendo stops making consoles, then there'll be less competition amongst the hardware companies and they'll have to start competing with Nintendo games on PS4 or Xbox3. Not good for any 3rd party company.
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
Any company leaving your second party ring is bad for the image, but let's not forget that E3 is right around the corner, and there's gona be a spot open left by SK... ...Specifcly, i'm refering to that rumor a while ago about Zoonami becoming second party. No offense to Dennis, but if the choice came up, i'd much rather have Martin Hollis (Leader of Zoonami, Of Perfect Dark and Goldeneye fame)stick around to make exclusive games. His work really helped keep N64 going, and if I remember the dates right, he's been working on a Gamecube game since dev kits first shipped for it (4, 5 years ago!).
I think the thing with Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil is that most people either like one or the other, and they usually hate the one that they don't like. I can't think of anyone I know who likes both, but I know people who like ED and people who like RE.
I personally really, really can't stand the controls for RE, and even though the characters have a completely ridiculous number of polygons in their models, they felt really stiff to me in their animation and how they moved around. Of course, there are other people who think ED's graphics weren't detailed enough or didn't like the style, or who didn't like the targetting system, or thought the sanity effects were silly instead of scary, or a bunch of other stuff.
I guess the moral of the story is that it's a really huge pain in the ass to make a game that makes everyone happy, as I've learned working on a game with friends as a hobby. You come up with something that you think is the greatest thing ever, and half the people agree with you, and the other half think you're nuts for even suggesting it...