@skywake are there any examples of Nintendo using a port to test the water on restarting a franchise? I can't think of any, but I imagine if Advance Wars sells well they may be encouraged to make a new game for the series.
@MarioBrickLayer
There are a couple of examples kinda like that. Star Fox 64 3D on the 3DS was a bit of a testing of the waters for Star Fox, they wouldn't have started dev on StarFox Zero until after the 3DS title was released. There were also the ports of Pikmin 1 & 2 to the Wii which we now know were released when Pikmin 3 was very early in development. Also, not a port but I got the feeling at the time that the plane sections in Wii Sports Resort were a bit of a test for Pilotwings. Which it kinda was given that Pilotwings became a launch title for 3DS with Wuhu Island as its setting.
I think the problem with this idea of a port "testing the waters" is that development takes time. By the time you've had enough development time to release the new title after the port? You're 3-5 years down the road, which has always meant you're on a new platform. And if you're much closer than that it's either a small title or you had started development before the port released making it less of a "test" and more of a "hype the user base". I think Skyward Sword is a "hype the user base" title, I wouldn't be surprised if a Metroid Prime Trilogy is used in the same way.
@GrailUK Will they? We know at least some of the code for said games has been lost (Prime Trilogy in particular has been confirmed.) Obviously some still exists (Wind Waker HD was built on Wind Waker's code base, same with Twilight Princess), but I'm not sure. Plus... quite frankly, NIntendo doesn't have a library of games to port from the Wii. We've already gotten Xenoblade Chronicles, Mario Galaxy, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword.
Looking at what remains and isn't heavily unlikely to come as a remaster (a la Wii Sports, Mario Kart Wii, Warioware Smooth Moves, Smash Brawl, Big Brain Academy, City Folk, Wii Fit or any other Wii series etc), There's...
Super Paper Mario - Nope, Nintendo will never acknowledge old Paper Mario games again
Excite Truck - Highly unlikely to be ported given the lack of interest the first time around
Pokemon Battle Revolution - Hated by Pokemon fans, one of the worst selling spinoffs
Prime Trilogy - Discussed heavily already
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - Possible, but probably as a double pack with the GCN title
Battalion Wars 1+2: Big maybe if the Advance Wars remake succeeds... but even then, it's more likely we'd see DS / DoR
Endless Ocean 1+2: ...I really don't see these coming back? Arika's still heavily in co-development with Nintendo so it's not impossible though
Punch-Out!!!: Possible, can't rule this one out actually. As NLG is forming (a) new team(s?), having a new team work on bringing back an old title as a first go isn't out of the question.
Sin & Punishment: Star Successor: I'd love this but... unlikely.
Trace Memory / Another Code: With Cintiq dissolved it's unlikely that the code base for this is still accessible to Nintendo
Metroid: Other M - I doubt Nintendo has any wish to revisit this. They seem to have understood how the fanbase felt about it, and it'd need a LOT of work to fix it's flaws.
Kirby's Return to Dream Land and Epic Yarn: Highly likely
DKC Returns: Highly Likely
Last Story: Mistwalker is dead, so who knows where the source code is
Pandora's Tower: Can't rule it out but... seems unlikely.
Unfortunately, the Wii software library just isn't good for ports like the Wii U one was. While there's a few more ports we might receive out there (DKC Returns, Kirby, Punch-Out!!! and Fire Emblem are the standouts, with Sin & Punishment, Pandora's Tower and Endless Ocean as unlikely), there's not the huge library of titles that would still work with just a fresh coat of paint. Quite a lot of the Wii era titles were heavily aimed at casuals to the point of pissing off the kind of fans that make up the Switch's fanbase.
@VoidofLight FYI, Dread was never confirmed in a game. Prime 3 did use the word dread, but the developer's went on the record stating it had nothing to do with the rumored title, and was to do with a piece of Prime lore they'd been hinting at. Based on what we later heard regarding Dread's development time windows, this appears to be the truth. And besides that, Prime 3 came out years after the Dread leak had occurred, I don't think that harms the credibility of the original leaks in any way.
@skywake The Switch already far exceeded its quota of overpriced rehashes. If it's going to have the longest lifespan of any Nintendo console, then it should have the greatest number of first-party exclusives (adding together both the home console and portable lines, since it's supposed to replace both of them). Especially if some of those rehashes take just as much effort to make as a brand new game would.
@VoidofLight FYI, Dread was never confirmed in a game. Prime 3 did use the word dread, but the developer's went on the record stating it had nothing to do with the rumored title, and was to do with a piece of Prime lore they'd been hinting at. Based on what we later heard regarding Dread's development time windows, this appears to be the truth. And besides that, Prime 3 came out years after the Dread leak had occurred, I don't think that harms the credibility of the original leaks in any way.
Didn't Nintendolife do a story on something like that once?
@Euler you make a valid point, but there are 10s of millions of Switch owners who haven't played these games. I have owned previous consoles but didn't get a WiiU, so i'm happy with the ports and own many of them. But I understand there are core fans out there who feel hard done by.
@skywake I suppose you overlap to a degree, if you had the concept and story, art etc done before you released the port you could half that timeline.
I would hope they are planning out some of these franchises over multiple years, they could start work on a battalion wars port and a new game in parallel.
@VoidofLight ...No they didn't? Metroid Dread was leaked in 2005 after it journalists were shown the initial demo privately at E3. The Prime 3 reference came years later in 2007. And then after that, a second prototype of the game was shown to journalists in 2009 which was again leaked. Based on the statements in the development video (that work was started, canned, restarted, canned again, and then this version occurred) this appears to be the truth.
Like, I understand not liking leaks, but don't try to rewrite history. The Dread rumors predated Prime 3, that's why people flipped when that game was released.
EDIT: Also, I believe the initial Dread leaked also correctly leaked the rest of E3 2005, which was probably... Path of Radiance and Pokemon XD at least... not sure what else was that year at this point.
@MarioBrickLayer They’re virtually out of Wii U games to rehash, the next ones will be from other systems. And this could be dealt with through backward compatibility and a proper virtual console (either of which would be just a few lines of code at this point).
Prime Trilogy could just be another Star Fox Grand Prix situation, where everyone agrees it's real, when it never was, and never was planned to be real. It was a fake leak made up by someone, which everyone bought into, including insiders.
The main difference is that Prime Trilogy just seems inherently quite likely. It's been ages since we had a Prime game, so it makes good sense they'd want to refamiliarise people with the original trilogy.
Those are also 3 of the most highly regarded games Nintendo have ever made, which have aged incredibly well, so a simple HD up-res would work well. It's just a natural choice for a modern remaster/HD port.
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