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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."
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.
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.
Nintendo seems to like to keep their first party games... well, first party.
I wouldn't necessarily say that. Star Fox Adventures was developed by Rare, and wasn't even originally a Star Fox game. Nintendo saw it and thought Star Fox would fit, so they had Rare use the license. Rare also has done most Donkey Kong games since the mid 90's. Namco recently did Donkey Konga.
Sega did the most recent F-Zero game.
Capcom made 2 new Zelda games for GameBoy Color, and did the remake of A Link to the Past for GBA.
I think the split (and the reason Silicon Knights never had a chance to do a Zelda game) was due to the philosophy differences between Silicon Knights. Nintendo makes gameplay the top priority, and molds the rest around it. Silicon Knights makes the story the top priority, and seems to leave the gameplay practically as an afterthought. Silicon Knights making a Zelda game would've resulted in a realistic (but not that impressive) looking game full of blood and dark colors, but completely missing any interesting gameplay.