Topic: Thrid Party Support for Nintendo 2014

I think we have to accept that Watch Dogs is going to tank on the Wii U. I also don't think we'll see another Assassins Creed given how 4 sold and I wouldn't put it past Activision to skip the next Call of Duty for the Wii U too. The last two didn't exactly set the sales charts on fire compared to the other platforms.

Having Activision support a Wii U version of the Amazing Spider-Man 2 is somewhat reassuring, I'm more worried about Ubisoft, despite Watch Dogs and Child of Light, a number of their more recently revealed titles are skipping the Wii U.

With Watch Dogs, I think Ubi was like, "what the hell, we have been working on Wii U version for some time, and after the whole Rayman Legends fiasco, we can throw them a bone with our big AAA title." Child of Light, they picked it because they think it fits in with the Nintendo demographic (which it does), mostly everything else, skip.

Hopefully Nintendo has been throwing some money around behind the scenes, if not then the Wii U could truly become a 1st party and indie box after that Ubisoft support dries up

I'd think the reverse was true. Ubisoft has been fairly consistently supporting the Wii U and Wii U owners have been pretty kind in return. You see people listing their favourite Wii U games and it's about half Ubisoft and half Nintendo. The obvious example would be Rayman Legends which, despite the controversy, sold about a third of its copies on Wii U. Plus they've continued to push out Assassin's Creed and given the attach rate and the quality of their ports you'd assume they'd keep doing so.

Activision though. Firstly nobody who owns a Wii U really seems to care about CoD looking at the attach rate. Then there's the fact that Activision have made it clear to all Wii U owners that their version will be the inferior one.

I do hope both that Ubisoft is playing the long term game with Nintendo here and that that plan actually succeeds. I mean it worked for Sonic and it's working for MonHun, so it's clearly possible.

People are seriously deluded if they think Wii U will get MORE PS4/XBone ports than it did PS3/360. Games just don't sell enough to make it worth it. Unfortunately, for a 'first party and indie box', it has a pretty poor indie line up. Indie games have exploded in the last 2 years but almost none of the highly praised ones are on Wii U. No Brothers, Rogue Legacy, Spelunky, Hotline Miami, Fez or Mark of the Ninja.

If sales go up, third parties will return. It's always been this way. Third parties did not put games on the NES and SNES because they liked Nintendo, they did it because it was the best place to make money. Likewise they didn't drop Nintendo because if Playstation money hats, they did it because that was a better place to make money. Nintendo screwed up by making it time consuming to port PS360 games, but even if it was easy, third party support was always going to dry up once the industry moved onto making games ground up for PS4 and One and dropped the 7th gen versions.

I think it will get more PS4/XBOne "ports" than PS3/360 ports purely because of the time factor. With the rate that the PS4 in particular is selling I don't see the PS3/360 being the main focus in a couple of years. It'll drag on longer than usual but I don't see the tail being that big. And the Wii U isn't disappearing before that happens.

So the multiplatforms it does get from about 2015 on will be ported "down" from the XBOne, PS4 and PC.

As people keep mentioning the sales of COD and AC this is what they sold on the Wii U.

http://www.vgchartz.com/platform/47/wii-u/

Assassin's Creed III 0.23M
Call of Duty: Black Ops II 0.23M
Call of Duty: Ghosts 0.12M
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag 0.12M

Personally I'm more fussed about the Batman and Lego games.

to be a bit fair, the success of indie gaming tends to be a bit unexpected. If you had told me at the beginning of 2012 that a 2d stealth game and a Telltale Zombie adventure game would be 2 of the hightest rated games of the year, I doubt anyone would believe you. It could use some more of certain indie devs (like Team Meat or ThatGameCompany for example), and there's not been much since Runner 2, but outside of that, there is a good chunk of intriguing titles. I mean last I checked it was around 20 games that looked like stuff I'd want to buy, and that was like 4 months ago or something. I mean, Shovel Knight and Mighty No. 9 are already big deals by indie standards, and there's been at least some hype for anything old Rareware guys are working on, along with the inevitably will be confirmed A Hat in Time or the Oddworld remake. And Trine 2 and Little Inferno clearly did really well so those teams are probably here to stay.

I do agree they should be doing more to get some of them though. Or at least they should be doing more to promote Scram Kitty, as it's actually an exclusive but you probably don't know it exists.

3rd parties are basically ignoring Wii U, so I doubt it'll see much support this year or any other year for that matter.

I'm not sure that analogy works exactly. We've been given every reason to believe Apple will continue to bring out iPhones and no reason to believe third parties are suddenly going to start supporting the Wii U. I can't just say Nintendo are going to start supplying £50 notes with their Wii U's next year and then say that's not being hopeful like the iPhone neither has been announced but we have MUCH more reason to believe in one over the other, see why it doesn't work?

I'll be surprised if Wii U gets this year's Assassin's Creed. The fact that the Wii U version of AC4 bombed and that Wii U didn't get Liberation HD certainly don't bode well.

Darn shame. Wii U CAN run these games, but it just simply isn't a sound investment.

It was actually somewhere more around $2 million. That's why these 7th gen ports not selling all that well, wasn't really a loss. The only game that its company expected to sell, was ZombiU, because it was a new game, and the same goes for Rayman Legends.

Look at Sonic Racing, for example. That game only needed to sell around 40,000 copies at $40 on Wii U, and it ended up selling 3,000,000+ copies. CoD Black Ops II broke even at around 25,000 copies at $60.

There have been minimal to zero losses on Wii U's 3rd party titles. Looking at games like Sonic, there has been some success. Namco hasn't even said a thing about Tekken Tag 2's performance. They probably don't care either, because they're getting paid big time, to work on Smash Bros.

The only games that lost money from big companies, were the games that came out later, like Splintercell. I can understand getting ports on launch day, but it's been a year. I don't feel entitled to this stuff, but if these companies are going to do something, they need to do it right. People are counting on Nintendo AND 3rd parties to deliver a fun and exciting 8th generation. People's guess work isn't all that encouraging, either. EA knew that Mass Effect 3 wouldn't even sell on launch. They were giving Nintendo a quick title to add some appeal, that's how I know he's not lying about their partnership. So what if they didn't have games planned for 2013? Everybody's making it seem like "no plans for now", means "no plans ever".

They don't say stuff like that. It was all made up by people who blew things out of proportion. Things aren't that bad.

@Metaknight_3Raw
I understand that people have gotten used to a new iPhone every year, but it's still kind of the same thing, just not yearly. 3rd parties don't abandon a console company. Nintendo's bern around for a long time. They don't ride this stuff off, as nothing. There will always be those fools that say this or that(EA guy, EA guy 2, Bathesda guy), but what Peter Moore of EA said is what ultimately stands. It doesn't matter if one of the employees thinks Nintendo is "dead". That's guy's entitled to his opinion, but it doesn't effect any decisions. The EA COO, of all people would know what's going on behind closed doors with the business, and probably Nintendo's, as well.

Nintendo doesn't "die" after one year of loss and inactivity. That's why people assuming so are full of horse crap. Honestly, it's a pain in the teeth, when we keep discussing the same stuff every day. Things are fine, just leave it be.

Wii U :
The Amazing Spider Man 2
Watch_Dogs

That's all I know.

There's also Project CARS, Puyo Puyo Tetris, Lego Hobbit and Lego Movie too.

Will they?
What incentive do they have to invest in the Wii U? It obviously cost more to port games over and it would be pandering to a crowd that consistently claims they only want 1st party games and exclusives. A lot of publishers couldn't get people to buy games on the Wii despite its large install base, so I doubt that they're looking at the Wii U any differently.

I've tried to like a variety of 3rd party games, I really have. I liked Darksiders 2, Injustice and the Batman games, the lego franchise has been good, FIFA, and The Sonic games. But I was deeply let down by Assassin's Creed, Rayman, and Just bought today Need for Speed. I've seen gameplay of COD, Zombi U Splinter Cell, Deus Ex and Mass Effect, and they've left me somewhat cold. Controls, stability, level design, character 'floatiness', overpriced DLC, moral compass, They all add up to something I don't like.

The truth is Nintendo games have spoilt me, their games feel... like finished products. First off I wanted to support the Wii U by buying 3rd party games I haven't tried before, but I can't justify buying a game I know I won't even like a bit- which is what I'm thinking about Watchdogs. If this is the sort of thing that is the pinnacle of PS and Xbox type gaming, then I hold my hands up and say it isn't for me. And I'm guessing by 3rd party sales figures I'm not the only person who thinks that.

If Nintendo did go the way of the dodo (hopefully not), I would probably give up games consoles completely.

Not really the same at all. They won't abandon but they are not going to put games on the console until they are sure they can make a mighty profit and so at the moment third party support seems slim. To be honest it doesn't even matter what any of them say. Actions speak louder than words. You don't just go to sharing the stage at E3 to not bringing your biggest titles to the Wii U over nothing. Battlefield 4? Dragon Age Inquisition? FiFA? What happened to the so called unprecedented partnership. I don't care what Moore has said he has done nothing to support that with actions.

I think you are confusing issues here. Not getting major third party support doesn't mean Nintendo is going to die. That is ludicrous. It is possible to believe one and not believe the other. Wii got barely any third party support too and was still the highest selling console albeit it didn't have quite as good software sales.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure he said Nintendo was dead TO THEM not dead completely. If he did say that it would be stupid (the 3DS says hello). And saying Nintendo is dead to them is pretty spot on to be honest. Just like Nintendo is 'dead' to everyone but indies, Ubisoft and Activision. They show that with their actions of not bringing their games to Wii U. Are Nintendo dead in general though? No, of course not.

@Metaknight_3Raw
Like I always say, these businesses don't share every piece of information they have. If they did, we'd probably know EA's launch lin-up for the entire generation. I trust that EA is still a partner of Nintendo. They still have a license, they have their engine running on Wii U, Nintendo's been around for 30+ years, etc.

Apparentky, the COO of EA saying Nintendo isn't "dead", isn't enough? That's why I can't really take alot of replies seriously. That's why I'm saying that even though EA's actions show no support, we still will never know what goes on, behind the scenes, so it's not really ever worth drawing a conclusion, either way.

If you're positive, you're a "fanboy". If you're critical, you're a "hater". It's better not to assume, either way, and it ultimately doesn't matter, because it's not our decision. I've already given reasons why 3rd parties should or will be supporting Nintendo, and plenty of people have given reasons why 3rd parties shouldn't or won't support Nintendo. It's better to just leave it at that.