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Nintendo's Boss On Western Partnerships, Online
Matt writes "It seems Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has once again spoken out, in a talk to the Japan Economic Foundation, and GameCube Advanced has the highlights. Iwata downplays online gaming, citing the example of a PS2 golf sim which outsold its online counterpart [is this Minna No Golf Online, aka Hot Shots Golf Fore!, versus its prequel?] Also, Iwata speaks about Nintendo working with other non-Japanese companies (saying 'We are now holding negotiations with major Western game developers and will be able to conclude a deal by the end of the year if things go smoothly'), and about takeover speculation regarding Bandai [vague talk of 'a closer relationship'.] In addition, he warned again that the status quo in videogames is in jeopardy... 'We are facing a critical situation, in which the number of game players will decrease unless we change tack', Iwata said."
What planet are you from? Nintendo monopolized the game industry in the late 80s like Microsoft can't to this day. It took the combined efforts of Atari Corp. and Atari Games Corp/Tengen through the court system to get Nintendo to drop their licensing agreements that stated that if any 3rd party developer made a title on the NES, it could not be ported to any other competing system.
You don't quite have your facts straight on this. Nintendo had exclusivity deals with various third parties just as they (and Sony, and MS) do now. That has not, nor will it ever, change. What Atari sued Nintendo over was their "seal of quality" program, in which Nintendo would not legally allow third parties to develop software for their system without their permission. Atari basically did not want to pay Nintendo's licensing fees and thought this amounted to a monopolistic business practice. The reason for the program from Nintendo's view was obvious, though: it was a direct response to the American game crash of 1984, which was partly caused by a glut of unlicensed, poor quality games on the market. In fact, Atari lost that lawsuit, and Nintendo won the lawsuit they later filed against Tengen. Otherwise the entire video game industry would not exist as it does today - there would be no reason for any company to make game hardware.
Whether or not you agree with the policy, Atari is hardly the good guy you're making them out to be. Remember that it was Atari who first sued Activision for developing games for the 2600 - Atari didn't think third parties even had a right to exist, licensed or not. By the time of the NES, Atari was on the ropes and out of desperation formed Tengen so they could play both sides of the fence - develop for their own systems under the Atari name and for competitors as Tengen.
Remember also that Tengen illegally released their own version of Tetris for the NES, which was subsequently pulled from the market and damages awarded to Nintendo, who owned the copyright for home console systems.
That policy hurt not only the Atari 7800, but the Sega Master System and the NEC TurboGrafx16 (T16). During that era, the Japanese version of the T16 known as the PC Engine, was the dominant system because every title was available on it. NEC brought the system to America only to find out they couldn't release hardly any of the games it enjoyed in Japan to Stateside. The Sega Genesis did not have a large amount of support from 3rd party developers either; Tengen was one of the strongest (and prominent) because they had an axe to grind with "The Other" Beast of Redmond.
This is completely, completely wrong. First of all, the PC Engine was never the "dominant system". It was more popular than it was here, but it was always second to the Famicom/Super Famicom. Second, NEC's problems in this country were of their own making, not Nintendo's - there was nothing preventing them from releasing many of their most popular games here, they just chose not to. Same goes for Sega. It's true that many of the third party games released in Japan were never released here, but that's true now of the PS2 and GameCube as well - we're just not that big into dating sims, hentai games and other genres that are all the rage over there. It's got nothing to do with licensing. And it sure doesn't explain why NEC and Sega didn't bring some of their own most popular first party titles over here - it was simply ineptitude on the parts of these manufacturers.
And lastly, Tengen was never as big as you seem to think they were, and they were only in business for a short time before their legal issues shut them down (the licensing issue went back and forth in the courts for a while before Nintendo prevailed). Some of their games were quality games but they were always a second-tier publisher, similar to a company like THQ today (which Sega uses to release a lot of their games on other systems, similar to how Atari used Tengen).
I'm not saying N