Topic: When will we see Shuntaro Furukawa's influence take hold at Nintendo?

@BougieBeetle Nintendo's problems with third parties differ with the Iwata and Yamauchi eras. Yamauchi was hard on, and often antagonistic to third parties, especially during the N64 and GCN era where he declared them all useless as they fled to Sony. He even went as far as to tell Square to never come back once they jumped ship to the PlayStation.

Iwata's Nintendo was far more proactive in trying to encourage third party support, making systems easy to develop for, and simple enough to allow for lower development costs for smaller studios. And Nintendo during this era would often push for exclusives and deals like the Capcom 5, and Ubisoft's exclusives, they were even more open to licensing characters out to companies like EA and Activision as well.

The problems Nintendo faced were more due to circumstance than a hostile corporate attitude. The Wii fairly or not, was pegged as a "Casual" system pretty early in its life, and that scared some studios from putting "Core" games on it. Many, instead used it's massive popularity and software sales to peddle low-quality shovel-ware to fund the AAA action game of their dreams on other consoles. It's partially why there were so many AAA games last generation. And the Wii U was not only an over-designed mess with miscommunications between NCL and NoA regarding third party relations, it also was a commercial bomb, which caused everyone on board with the system originally, to distance itself from it once its commercial realities became clear.

Switch-era Nintendo is a more refined version of their third party strategy under Iwata. They finally found a concept that's a commercial hit, easy to develop for, and doesn't have some idiotic stigma attached to it like the Wii. Nintendo doubled down on supporting indie developers, and put an even greater focus on deals and partnerships, including Mario & Rabbids, securing games like Fortnite and Rocket League, even encouraging third parties to release their Switch games as soon as possible for launch to prove that there was an audience for them on Switch.

@Heavyarms55 That's interesting! It's cool to hear the perspective of someone who lives there. I was only there briefly, and it was years and years ago.

@TheMisterManGuy Well the Squaresoft story is different depending on who you ask. Notably Mr. Sakaguchi says that Mr. Yamauchi was warm when they parted ways and had no hard feelings. But who knows? I'm inclined to think that Mr. Yamauchi, in his usual imperious style, didn't care very much whether Square came or went, regardless of what he said to Mr. Sakaguchi. For better or worse, the chairman always trusted his engineers and in-house developers way more than he trusted outsiders.

I think you're right about Mr. Iwata being more focused on third party support. I recall RE4 being a really big timed exclusive for the Gamecube, that was pretty early in his tenure. The rest of the Capcom 5 were nice to see, not big hits like RE4 of course.

The Wii was sort of plagued by its own hardware. Everything was limited by the Wiimote, and there was a perception that motion controls needed to be integrated into every release somehow. Not to mention the fact that it lagged behind its competitors in terms of graphics and power. I think that kept the heavy hitters away. I think you're right about the WiiU, I recall Rayman Legends being announced as an exclusive, until UbiSoft saw how badly the WiiU was performing and delayed it to go multiplat.

Switch has really had to work hard to get that third party support back after all that. I remember companies like Bethesda being really cagey at first, even after that Skyrim footage was shown.

Interesting, regardless I agree, it often felt like Yamauchi the that third parties weren't that important, and they would come simply because they were Nintendo. Eventually getting salty about it once that arrogant attitude stopped working after Sony came in and flipped the script on third party relations.

I think you're right about Mr. Iwata being more focused on third party support. I recall RE4 being a really big timed exclusive for the Gamecube, that was pretty early in his tenure. The rest of the Capcom 5 were nice to see, not big hits like RE4 of course.

Iwata was far less antagonistic towards third parties than Yamauchi was. He was able to repair Nintendo's relationship with Square and all the other Japanese third parties, and made earnest attempts to try and make Nintendo platforms attractive to them, even if the cards weren't always in his favor.

The Wii was sort of plagued by its own hardware. Everything was limited by the Wiimote, and there was a perception that motion controls needed to be integrated into every release somehow. Not to mention the fact that it lagged behind its competitors in terms of graphics and power. I think that kept the heavy hitters away. I think you're right about the WiiU, I recall Rayman Legends being announced as an exclusive, until UbiSoft saw how badly the WiiU was performing and delayed it to go multiplat.

The hardware was partially the reason the Wii suffered, but a lot of it was also the "go big or go home" attitude of many publishers at the time. Remember, the 7th generation was a blood bath for game developers, many smaller and independent studios crumbled under the weight of expensive development standards on the HD consoles, and publishers bought these companies up, only to shut them down once they were no longer useful. Publishers reacted by trying to chase the latest fads and trends in gaming at the time. The Wii and DS provided developers with and easy out to make lower budget, but still innovative and quality games. And while some Wii developers took that opportunity, many didn't take Nintendo's offer seriously.

Switch has really had to work hard to get that third party support back after all that. I remember companies like Bethesda being really cagey at first, even after that Skyrim footage was shown.

It did, but I also think the Switch benefits from the changed gaming climate today as well. AAA development costs are even more expensive now, and those mid-sized independent studios are starting to make a comeback because of it. The Switch provides a home for games that don't require the most cutting edge visuals or highest budgets to be successful, and I think that roles will only increases as we get to next gen.

@TheMisterManGuy I think you've got the right of it, dude. Always fun to analyze the history of the big N with a fellow enthusiast. It's interesting to think about all the changes they've gone through, but how the values Mr. Yamauchi instilled (along with Mr. Yokoi, and Mr. Miyamoto of course, but especially Mr. Yokoi) still resonate.