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Nintendo Promises 3rd Party Support
Eurogamer reports on claims by George Harrison (NoA's Senior VP for Marketing) that the Revolution will feature extensive third-party support in the coming years. From the article: "'One of the lessons we tried to learn from GameCube was that we kept things too close. And so as we got ready to launch, we had some of our own great games but third parties were kind of behind the eight ball in terms of being able to have games ready,' Harrison stated. In terms of early support for the Revolution, which launches this year alongside Sony's PS3, third party software ought to be available in abundance, Harrison confirming 'We've got more than 1,000 developer kits including the controller kits, out, so there should be plenty there.'"
I'm really teeter-tottering on this. Nintendo has stated with EVERY console they've made in the last 10 years that it'll have extensive 3rd party support. I'm a raving Nintendo fanboy who believes everything Nintendo tells me, but I'm shaking my head reading this. "Prove it."
That said, there are some encouraging things in their favor:
1.) Development systems are very cheap.
2.) By most accounts, this hardware isn't all that different from the GC hardware, transitioning to it should be easy.
3.) We still do not have all of the details about the wi-fi service. Maybe they'll allow developers to release games exclusively for it?
4.) MS and Sony have standards in place about things such as HD support for their games. This means more asset creation which means more money to develop the game. The Rev, being somewhat inferior in terms of technology, has a much lower barrier to entry.
5.) The Nintendo DS is very popular, largely in part due to the attention paid to the interface and wifi connection. Perhaps more developers will see the Rev as less of a gamble.
So.. I'm undecided. Nintendo has promised this many before and hasn't delivered. Nintendo has also, however, changed their habits before. At least they recognize mistakes were made. So.. well I just don't know.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
When I was a lead tester at Atari, I became the Nintendo guru (did 9 titles out of 10 for GameCube or AGB). Third party support didn't exist back then, the documentation was seriously lacking, testing multiplayer over the link took twice as long as testing the single player, and we were forced to beta test wireless link hardware for the AGB because their APIs were so poorly documented that their own support programmers got confused. Nintendo didn't care about 3rd party support until the new product announcements started leaving GameCube and AGB off as supported platforms. By then, it was too late for this pain in the ass.
The fact is, since the NES, i have always been a once console person. Up until this generation with the GCN, I have been perfectly content with only having an nes, snes, n64, etc. and just missing all the Sony, Sega, and Microsoft exclusives, because i could always have a good library of fun interesting games for my system.
However I have to say that I finally cracked and bought a PS2. Don't get me wrong, there are some great GCN games out there that i absolutely love, it just really seems that for every great GCN game coming out, there are at least 5 coming out for the PS2, and when I hadn't had a decent game to play in a while, and guitar hero came out, it finally just pushed me over the edge.
As for the article, this isn't a new thing... nintendo promised more third party support on the GCN, and while it definitly seemed to have more than the N64, as i said earlier, compared to the PS2 it's lacking. Honestly, the only way i can think of to really get more third party support is to pick up a much bigger share of the console race, and the way nintendo operates (catering to niche markets, being happy with non-HD, etc.) It just doesn't seem like that's going to happen any time soon.
If there's anything more important than my ego around, i want it caught and shot now.