Oddworld Creator Lorne Lanning "Has No Faith" In Switch

The guy is spot on.

PS. That whole episode was pretty great by they way. It goes pretty dark at one point, but it's all good stuff and well worth watching the whole thing.

Why is it Nintendo's responsibility to market everyone else's ?

"The thinking has to change. The biggest problem I see at Nintendo is the thinking. Personally, I think it killed Iwata; that he couldn't move the organisation into a really successful arena. "

Woah. And just like that I lose respect for the guy. Seriously man, bad choice of words!

There's also the possibility and now correct me if I'm wrong here, but maybe, just maybe, your IP is less popular than many others and releasing it on a Nintendo console has little to do with Nintendo being awful? Kthnxbye.

"Nintendo don't promote my games for free, so they're a bad company"
"Nintendo want to prevent piracy, so they're a bad company"

@Admirau You're being a typical internet tool who just spouts off without thinking about what he's saying and why he's angry or what exactly he's angry about.

You have to take just a couple of seconds to think about things people say: He means that the stress of the job was a contributing factor to Iwata's ill-health. This doesn't mean he didn't have cancer and that it wasn't the cancer that ultimately killed him; it means that he believes the pressure of the specifics of his job at that particular time at Nintendo, particularly given the way Nintendo often seems to make things especially hard for itself, probably contributed to his death in the end.

That is not an unfair observation or comment to make--regardless of saying it about a dead dude or whatever.

Stress kills, and it certainly doesn't help if you're already ill and dying.

He's probably one of those conspiracy theorists that thinks Nintendo paid for all those good Zelda BoTW reviews...

@Alikan Same as above, but change the bit about dying of cancer to make sense in the context of your comment.

That comment regarding Iwata's death is in incredibly poor taste.

Won't be buying any games from them in future- with or without Nintendo's endorsements.

He might have changed is mind in the past months, but seems unlikely. Oh well, to each its own.

... but kindly leave Mister Iwata Rest in Peace, his legacy is more than assured.

@impurekind It's still realy low from him to make such claims without proof.

@impurekind We can all agree there were a lot of problems with Nintendo during their Wii U era. God knows I have pointed out a few and defended others.

And Lorne is correct in point out a few. But his poor choices of words is what makes me lose respect for him rather than what he says. I agree with some of his points and disagree with others. However unlike him I am not using a poor choice of words to get my point across.

It is poor choices of words that will be his undoing with this interview rather than what he says.

That's disgraceful; regardless of his opinion, there was no reason whatsoever to bring Iwata into it. Scumbag.

Blimey, you guys aren't wrong on the Iwata comment being in incredibly poor taste :/ What a thoughtless thing to say

Is everyone is here so naive, or whatever would be an appropriately descriptive word, that they can't see that almost everything Lorne said is basically right on the money?

And, it really matters not if he's a bit pissed at Nintendo (he's a human with human emotions and responses to things that actually happened); he's speaking the cold, harsh truth.

Well . . . I'm sure there are some sensible and informed people in here, ones who actually bothered to listen to the full talk too, who will recognise pure gold when it's laid before them.

The odds of the major third parties coming to Switch are slim to none--that's what the whole 40 min conversation is ultimately about/around--and, as an actual third party developer who knows more about this stuff than most people in here combined, Lorne's spelling out pretty clearly and bluntly exactly why this is the case.

Me, I recognise gold when I see it.

He loses a lot of credibility by not admitting sour grapes. His statement oozes contempt. He obviously feels wronged in a major way.

His statement isn't without some merit. However, the blame doesn't fall solely on Nintendo. I think it can be shared with the developer.

His last game was very late to the game on the Wii U. It had been on every other system. It's safe to say At the very least anyone who owned the Wii U most likely owned an Xbox or PlayStation as well.

While Nintendo could do a better job of promoting third parties on their own site, these developers need to commit to publishing something the is unique to the Nintendo system. Until that happens, he is correct in the fact third party support will be weak.

It seems the Switch already has a lot of third party support. Already it is performing better than Wii U. He shouldn't count the console out so early. It's as if he's ignoring the good progress and news that's already been announced.

@Admirau I think you need to learn to listen to what people actually say better. In no way did he "**** on a dead man". And I'm not defending someone who . . . because it never happened. But, I'm sure it's beyond pointless trying to convince you of anything other than what you've already told yourself to think and believe here.

Wow. It's not Nintendo's fault his games are awful, jeez.

I find it hard to believe third parties didn't make money from the Wii. The amount of shovelware produced, for many years from the the same publishers, surely confirms they made money, otherwise they'd stop releasing it? Look at Ubisoft with Just Dance, haven't they been releasing that on the Wii well after it went out of production? I'm sure they haven't done that for the fun of it

Yeah..... Not okay to say. Context doesn't seem to improve things by much, either. Rarely would I wish someone the worst, but here's to you, Lorne! Never buying anything associated with you again! Keep it classy!

@impurekind A salty opinion, isn't "cold harsh truth"

I didn't watch the video, but I'm not sure he was literally referring to Iwata's death. When I read it, I thought he was just saying that it really bothered Iwata. When someone says, "this work is killing me," they don't mean it literally, just that it's very difficult or troublesome.

@Nookingtons Yes--fact.

Now, let's all watch and see if the marketing men at Nintendo actually did you wrong--it's not like spinning the truth and selling you whatever corporate slant is exactly their jobs or anything like that--or if it was just a bitter old Lorne Lanning spouting junk to make children cry. . . .

Generally, I think he's wrong but I don't really want to rehash arguments when so many are entrenched.

However, the comments about Iwata are very unfortunately at best.

Plus I'm not sure what other media is viable for a handheld console? Even if it they did discs (and why the heck would they?!) it would still be proprietary media (and therefore 'expensive'). Is he seriously expecting a handheld console to run games from full sized DVDs or SD cards?!!

@PAL_VERSION Using "salty" doesn't make you cool or Lorne any less spot on.

Context doesn't really matter much here, that was an incredibly insensitive and stupid thing to say. I don't care if you agree or disagree with everything else he says, that part was at best horrible choice of words and at worst downright insulting to the dead.

He just comes across as bitter to me because his port of a 15 year old Xbox game flopped.I'm pretty sure there was an interview with him on here before his game released and he was praising Nintendo. Other than the needless Iwata comment he's just spouting the same stuff that's been said by countless others on various comment sections across the web.If he doesn't want to try again by bringing his game to Switch then it's his loss as plenty other indies will be successful on it.The Wii U was a disaster,even Nintendo struggled with many of their own titles let alone indies.The Switch is a whole different kettle of fish.Indies get their place on the store front just like everyone else and can even have their own channel in the news section.What more do they want?

What a crock...

Just Dance sales say "Hiya".

Same goes for Lego Star Wars.

There were 150 games that sold 1mill+ on the Wii. They weren't all Nintendo games, dip****!

His sense of tact is awful and it will cause him problems.
As for support, considering other indies have said other things, this seems like a grudge for his late port not selling.
Marketing should be shared between the dev and the eshop, so if he expected people would just flock to it, he doesn't know a thing about business.

Watch him port something late in the Switch's life, bomb, and complain it didn't do as well as those that released at the beginning of the lifespan.

So what he's complaining about is-
1. Anti-piracy efforts
2. Quality control
3. The same old complaints about power, which are legitimate, but at this point who cares- it almost never actually impacts 3rd party developers anymore, they just slightly downgrade the visuals.
4. Nintendo not promoting games that come out months after they did on other platforms.

So basically, they just want Nintendo to have a bunch of crappy shovelware, diminish the sales of everyone else's software through piracy, and massively promote months old games.

I mean, Nintendo does have genuine issues with third parties, but this is basically him crying over Nintendo not letting third parties get away with murder.

@Admirau

He in no way, shape or form disrespects Iwata.

You, however, are comfortable telling people to F*** themselves and shut up.

Way To Go.

Being a company that always tries to set itself apart from the competition has its ups and downs, and in many ways, his points are valid, Nintendo does feel a little bit backwards or behind times with some of its practices, but at the same time, it offers a truly unique concept with the Switch.

But I do not approve of his choice of words, maybe there's something personal, maybe that's just how the guy is. There are many ways to message your lack of belief on Nintendo, but respect needs to be mutual if you expect to succeed in a business relationship.

Oh there are so many things wrong, which is very unfortunate

For one, cartridges were brought because optical media on a portable device just doesn't work.

You'd think, as a developer, he'd be well informed about these things

I could go on for days countering how wrong he is haha

@Grandpa_Pixel It's a poor choice of words if you're a child and can only deal with stuff that is expressed in terms of fairies and rainbows.

But that's just my opinion, expressed in my personal choice of words.

I hope nobody dies over it.

Teh internet weeps.

@impurekind I just feel he doesn't make good games that many people care to play. It doesn't matter that he thinks Nintendo sucking killed Iwata. He's still an entitled jackass. Making a game does not mean you're going to sell several million copies. It has to be a good game.

I hope he didn't expect Nintendo to use UMDs for the Switch instead of carts/cards. It's still a portable, after all. At least they're not using proprietary storage cards.

@Serebii he probably doesn't even have a Dev kit.

I seem to remember a good level of advertising on the Wii U eshop for Oddworld. I even remember considering buying it because I'd seen it advertised on the front page. Glad I didn't as this guys opinion on Iwata is massively disrespectful.

@Alikan And yet, nothing he said in that video was actually being a jackass--so God knows where you pulled that from.

Shame on him !
Such a rubbish statement !

You needn't go any further than doing a search on Lorne to realize he is somewhat of a shock jock. He spouts out things like this. He's accused Microsoft and EA of basically the same things. He even accused capitalism of killing the game industry.

Some things he says may have merit. Other things may not. It was a poor choice of words, and while it is hard to judge intent, he knew what he was saying. He was looking for a reaction.

@Serebii He never argued otherwise; he never said that wasn't ONE of the reasons. It is, however, 100% not the ONLY reason, and the other reasons he provide are all entirely valid . . . and true. Also, the point he was making was about how those choices by Nintendo (going with cartridge, wanting release parity in order for a game to receive the best representation, etc), regardless of why or how they came about, are what is going to lead to basically no major third party support on Switch--which was the entire overarching context of everything he was saying on that topic (why Nintendo will or won't get major third party support)--and he is totally and utterly spot on.

Third party games didn't sell on the Wii? Tell that to the 21 out of 104 games to sell more than a million on the console that were third party. Plus, Just dance 2 peaks as the eighteenth best selling on the console, which I think is good for a third party.

How dare you say that about Iwata. This guy literally has no credibility and I won't even bother reading the rest of that trash.

He sounds bitter and the comment about Iwata was way out of line. Unless he was in the room with Iwata when he was being diagnosed by his doctor and all follow-ups I don't think he has any ground to make such a statement. When the Switch is surpassing goals left and right I hope Nintendo reminds him of these comments when he wants a game on it.

I think how Nintendo is promoting indie games now is a great start. Having them promoted on the news channel is great for exposure and ensures a lot of people see them! Early days, of course, so that could change at any moment.

Also kinda baffled at him bemoaning the use of cartridges on a portable console. Is there a non-flash small factor format that can store 32GB and still maintain decent read write speeds? I'd rather not carry around a bunch of UMD 2.0s everywhere, or whatever form tiny optical media would take. Besides, he rarely publishes his games at retail, so that doesn't affect him in any serious way.

Also, Oddworld failed on Wii U because the console at that point was dead. I bought it on Linux because I'd rather not have to go back to consoles I rarely play unless I really want to.

He just comes accross as pretty bitter.

Yapping about Nintendo focusing on their own business when really thats exactly what he is doing.

And yes his comment about Iwata was a tad tasteless, but I think he didn't mean it as it came accross.

The guy has zero credibility commenting on what Nintendo should be doing if he thinks cartridges were a bad move. Frankly for a device designed to be portable it's the only sensible move. Whatever other side benefits for Nintendo might come from it are irrelevant.

Optical media is garbage, the only reason it exists at all is because its considerably cheaper. Or at least it was. It's an advantage that due to Moore's Law it's losing ground on rapidly.

He's seeing it from an eshop publisher level, and he's partially right- some games that are vanilla will be lost in the shuffle- but then those with a Nintendo style like Snake Pass and Yooka Lele and probably Rocket League will be big hits.

We all know the Switch isn't going to get PS4 level 3rd party support, but I think we can hope for a 3DS style platform that has Japanese titles and family stuff and perhaps some 3rd party stuff using Nintendo IP.

Because it's a personal console instead of a home console I think sales will be high as there will be more than one owned per household. I think indies and big publishers have to make sure their games are the right style to fit on a Nintendo system.

@impurekind Stop acting like your opinion is the ultimate truth and everyone else is a "tool" or uninformed

@impurekind entitlement. Just because you make a game does not mean it will sell well. Nintendo doesn't owe him anything.

His statements are heavily influenced by his point of view. He is a particular kind of small third-party developer with a mostly forgotten game franchise that released one game to middling success on Wii U during a time when Nintendo was already preparing to move on. He's not wrong about how he experienced Nintendo compared to other platforms. He's just not an expert on some of the other things mentioned like Wii and his idle Iwata speculation.

Particularly his take on the nature of Switch as a portable seems out of line with how consumers are viewing it and he's making the mistake (from a gamer point of view) of seeing it as uncomfortable and inconvenient to develop for as an additional target rather than asking why gamers want to play on it so badly and what he can offer them. (Sadly most developers are in this situation where every game has to be a significant success so budget and ROI comes to mind first. )

Knew odd world wouldn't do that well. Didn't interest me. I feel as though it got advertised enough though

I really don't think he meant the thinking "killed" Iwata in the literal sense. I think he's saying he wanted to transition Nintendo further and it was metaphorically killing him that he couldn't. It was an unfortunate slip with no ill-intent. Well, probably at worst he wanted to give the statement a bit more punch and didn't think it through.

I can see some of his points but he sounds like some one with one heck of a chip on his shoulder.

I myself never bought his game as it didn't seem to appeal to me and frankly the main character design made me wanna hurl.

He might have had a good point, but the moment he suggested "I think it killed Iwata" was where I just couldn't listen anymore. It just went over the line.

@impurekind Agreed, I'm not seeing any disrespect for Iwata there. The comment was unnecessary and probably a mistake to make it because it detracts from his argument, but it's a fact that stress can impair your immune system and make it much harder for your body to deal with diseases like cancer. And I think that's all he meant.

On the whole, though, I'm not sure how much weight his opinions carry. Dude is a one-hit wonder who's always had issues with the console gatekeepers. As much as I loved the first two Oddworld games, he's never been able to recapture their magic, and I remember him saying things like this about Nintendo and other companies before.

I'm also, without checking, about 95% sure Oddworld New 'n' Tasty had roughly zero impact on any console.

He claimed that unless you release "day and date" with other versions of a multiformat game, Nintendo refuses to promote your title in any way.

Too right they do. Stop treating Nintendo customers as some kind of afterthought and maybe your games might get a bit more recognition.

Came for the salty NDF, leaving satisfied.

I love how everyone idolizes Iwata as well just because he's dead now. Sure, he did SOME things right (mainly in his younger days and as reactionary things to HIS mistakes), but he was also the biggest detriment to Nintendo's gaming business in the past 40 years.

Funny to see everyone latch onto emotion rather than facts. It's why the NDF are usually the biggest joke online tbh

Wow... Where is the point to bring Iwata's death in the argue ? Thats very poor reasoning...

I had respect for Lanning, though he were the kind of guy looking for emotion and innovation. But it seems for him a videogame needs to be on as many console as possible with less efforts. Damn that sad he lost his passion for that buisness.
Maybe he could have sell more games on Wii-U with an exclusive title instead of a remake available everywhere else.

I knew about Oddworld, but if I had wanted it I would've already bought it on PS4, as it was release way later on Wii U. With the Switch it's different. If a game is released on several platforms - a game that I want - I will probably chose the Switch version, even if it's a bit later than the other ones, because it's a more flexible console. If it's a simultaneous release, it's a no brainer.

This guy is a jerk. Last time I checked, Iwata was one of the most important people in Nintendo, even playing a major part of the Wii and DS eras, as well as his contribution as executive producer and global president of the company. He was part in shaping the "thinking" of Nintendo. By this jerk's logic, his own thinking killed him?

Plus, about his "complaints"? They make no sense, nor does it help the case of laziness of some third parties, since they need to pull their own weight in promotion and development. I mean, whatever happened to doing the best with what's at hand, establishing parity, or even making a special version for the console? Surely a few tweaks wouldn't be bad?

And by the way, isn't the Switch the last console he worked on after his death? And look how it turned out in just months.

It's one thing to mock a company for its mistakes, even if others have their own problems, and to mock a console that you don't understand, even if it's doing well, but to make those statements about a person who died years ago and his legacy, that's just crossing the line.

Dude is a bitter little slimeball. His game were dated when the first one came out on the playstation/pc and only became popular by their aesthetic and their borderline dreamwork style of humor. Never was my cup of tea. His games didn't sell well on the Wii because they didn't sell well on any other console of that generation. They sucked back in the late nineties and they still suck today. Sorry bro, you're a talent-less dweeb.

Now that I've insulted his integrity, I'll talk about how wrong he was about the wii. Third party games sold painfully well on the Wii, so much so that companies went through the downgrading process and added crappy controls, tacking on millions to developement costs because they knew they'd get that money back.

As for the Iwata comment. Yeah, selling 2 pieces of gaming hardware that sold over 100 million put him into a grave early huh? All that success... Not cancer or anything. You little, moronic puke.

No Lorne, you belong to a type of class of people that I consider to be subhuman manchildren. You can't see into the future, you can't accept that some companies just do things different.

Your want is to have everything on one box, you pray for a day when all third parties just make for one platform. You want a utopia that can't exist. You're like so many entitled PC gamers that cry when consoles get a game that you don't, even though the PC has literally THOUSANDS of exclusives and amazing, unique games. You want Nintendo to go the route of Sega, or make an Xbox One or PS4 style system. Neither will work out financially for them.

Nintendo doesn't have the nearly 100 years of hardware developement resources that Sony has. Nintendo doesn't have the big, long standing hardware component agreements that microsoft has. Nintendo just has their imagination and their creativity to keep them afloat, and considering they have a lot of money amassed to keep them going in case of another Wii-u, I think they'll be making games long after Sony and Microsoft bow out.

And it will happen, why? Because companies like Sony and Microsoft do not look into the future in the same way. They still think in this day in age of Smart TVs people still need multi-media boxes. They build a house of cards too high, with no real foundation, and bank on in your face advertising campaigns and third party support that will eventually fail.

Nintendo will be doing cloud gaming first while Microsoft and Sony continue to play catchup with the PC(News flash Mcfly, PS4 was underpowered as hell when it came out, compared to even low end PCs, where a back in the day Playstation hardware was almost always guaranteed to try to match PC capabilities).

Comparatively, as a handheld, the switch is anything BUT underpowered.

No, bro, you're out of touch. Your games suck, you suck, and I'll never touch one of your overhyped products again.

@Ensemen It is.

End of.

Please don't cry.

But, if you do, the internet will help wipe away your tears.

Who other than Nintendo were making money on Wii by the end of its life?

Well, Ubisoft and Activision, to name a few.

While Lorne is right that most third parties couldn't figure out how to appeal to the new crowd of users on Wii, they mostly had themselves to blame for not doing proper market analysis.

On the other hand, Nintendo were still notoriously slow with approving products, compared to what developers were getting used to on mobile platforms and PC, so a good market opportunity might slip right by while a game was in LOT-check at Nintendo.

The Wii (and the Wii U) could have been so much more than it was. Hopefully the Switch won't suffer the same lack of attention to opportunity.

"I think it killed Iwata"
...this guy is either a progressive, pioneering, free-form medical philosopher - or a repugnant pig - I'm leaning towards the latter!

It'd be a real shame if the Switch turns out to be as unsuccessful as the Wii though - I'd rather hoped that it'd replace the HB pencil...but I guess it's just another games console

Sure this is coming from someone with a bad Nintendo experience and his phrasing is a little over the top. Doesn't necessarily make his points less valid. Nintendo has, historically in previous generations, had an issue with third party support and he states some possible reasons for this.

I don't think it is the full picture but I would also listen to the opinions of someone that has tried putting a game on Nintendo platforms more than the rest of us that haven't. We all love Nintendo but no organisation is perfect.

I hope they do better with the Switch, I think it has a good chance if mistakes are learned from.

The guy comes off salty AF

Despite the apparent bitterness, the guy makes some solid points. I think most would agree that for a game developer the barrier of entry is higher with Nintendo than Microsoft or Sony. And unless the Switch launches to superhuman levels of success, it's just not going to be the most financially prudent choice to optimize your AAA title for the hand-held. Hopefully FIFA, Rocket League, and NBA2K can prove the assumption wrong, but let's not kid ourselves...we're here for Mario, Link, and Donkey Kong. And we always will be, as long as Nintendo continues to make better games than most of these other game creators.

@impurekind So basically he either wants a third identical box on the market, which the market has no place for, or he wants a device that is impossible to exist in the consumer market right now.

Gotcha.

Wait?

Level of success like that of Wii U and Wii.

How the hell does the guy compare those two platforms as a single level of success?

Is the guy an idiot?

Oh, telling that Nintendo thinking killed Iwata-san.

Yes. The guy is an idiot.

@Pod Agreed, this is what I took away from all this. It takes two to tango when it comes to success. The big businesses have their part to play in all this.

On a slightly different note than my first rambling blurb here:

The Switch eShop is already much much better than anything Nintendo has done previously concerning online sales.

I do commend people like Lanning for saying it straight, what the developers are worried about, as this is most likely a huge part of what pushes Nintendo to move forward with their efforts.

CLEARLY 99% of you didn't actually listen to the talk and are instead just taking a few comments and creating your own stories around them.

If you have listened to the full talk then I expect far more of you would know, at least buried deep down somewhere inside yourselves, that virtually all of what he was saying is basically spot on.

Okay i read all your comments about how bad is this guy for saying for Iwata do you know that the cause of cancer is stress and yes stress can kill so much music legends died from cancer and Steve Jobs died from cancer too famous people have a lot of stress and that's why they have cancer

@impurekind lol thanks for the laugh

There has been a lot of Nintendo bashing from developers lately... I understand the Wii U years where rough but sheesh. Everyday there's a new developer stating why they don't like the Switch or won't be able to support it. Seems to me while Nintendo is acknowledging their failures and moving forward, some third party developers are stuck in the past. I'm hoping in time, the Switch will change all of that. Looks to see if anyone is around Which is why Nintendo needs to kill off the Ds. WE NEED THOSE DEVELOPERS NINTENDO! Sorry Ds owners

@Ensemen I do my best. I'm happy to make you happy.

@MailOrderNinja Well said.

@Serebii Of course . . . that must be exactly what I just said, or all that can be concluded from what both of us said.

The WiiU version of Oddworld NnT is awful. The cutscenes don't have sound at all when played through the gamepad. It's a very poor port that arrived far later than the others that had been heavily discounted already so the sales probably reflect that. I'm a massive fan of Oddworld but instantly regretted my purchase of NnT.

Here's hoping the next game is as well built as the originals and not on par with NnT.

@impurekind the fact that you are here all day, every day tells me nintendo must be doing something to keep you interested.

@impurekind

No bruh, its not. What he says comes from a place of bitterness. I read everything. He is factually wrong about most of it. You're just part of the same sort of backwards thinking mindset as him. You -think- things are a certain way that they aren't, that's why what he says seems 'RIGHT AND SPOT ON' to you.

There are numbers to disprove his assessments, you're just part of a very narrow minded group of people that would agree with this little slimeball and I pity you for it.

@Alikan No one claimed otherwise.

Do you just go on the internet and look up the popular junk responses of the dWEeB on Facebook and Twitter and then post them as your own thoughts?

salty, entitled . . .

You people are sheep saying what other sheep said before you, imagining there's some truth in it where there isn't, without ever actually properly absorbing and learning any real information that is put in front of you.

Regarding major third party support on Switch going forward, Lorne is totally and utterly spot on.

Watch and see how right he is and how sensitive you are being. . . .

@Menchi187 Mom look, another useless provocative Menchi post that contributes nothing to the discussion and is a cry for "pay attention to me, I might be dead wrong in pretty much everything but muh opinions (which I disguise as facts in case someone is dumb enough to consider them as such) blah blah blah". I'd rather be NDF than stupidity df any time, any day. Came to see you being salty, left satisfied.

I think the problem with 3rd party games on the Nintendo consoles is that they cannot compete with the games Nintendo themselves releases. 3rd party usually release crappy versions of the same game they released on other consoles and that with a 1-2 years of delay. For Christ sake make the effort and come up with something original or exceptional quality wise and it will sell no doubt. It's always like that - 3rd party are dipping their toes with some poopy, lackluster port (I'm looking at you EA) and then they complain it isn't selling. Of course it isn't as it has to go against the best of Nintendo's in-house stuff which is not a easy thing. Look at the 3DS, are 3rd party complaining about it? Not really. Do they come up with original games for it? Yes, it's usually the case.

Stop whinning and go actually make a good game for once.

@AugustusOxy You read a few quotes from a talk that goes on for about 40 minutes on the same subject.

You know nothing of which you speak.

Don't pretend you're more than another Facebook/Twitter/"social"-media/internet airy fart in the wind that only believes it's something more.

Bit offensive to say that Iwata's work killed him. He had an illness. How the heck would this guy know the details of that? Gross

@gortsi Didn't realize facts trigger you so badly. Then again facts are triggers for the NDF.

@Maxadams

What the heck are you talking about? Stress is not cause for cancer.

@Maxadams stress can contribute to cancer. It's not 'the' cause of cancer though.

Nintendo killed Iwata?? Is he on crack?? No-one gives a toss about Oddworld so he can bog off.

@impurekind naw, I just roll out of bed, then sigh at this guy before typing exactly how I feel about his games and that if he made better ones they'd sell better. I'm not up in arms about his Iwata comment, I'm annoyed he thinks a videogame player company needs to advertise his below average games better. That's on him. I as a consumer am allowed to make the decision not to purchase his products although I've been aware of them since I played the first one on PC in the 90's when my neighbor lent me the game.

@impurekind Wow you said "sheep". Now you only need "brainwashed" or "Nintendrone" and you got yourself an "Internet warrior BINGO"

@Menchi187 there's nothing factual in what you wrote. Keep crying snowflake

@Menchi187 Sorry to interrupt, could I ask what NDF means? I have never heard of that term before and I was curious.

well maybe make better games. oddworld was never great.

@Alikan Was it on the PC? I had no idea!

@slatanek What are your thoughts on games like Lego City, Mario+Rabbids and Snake Pass where there is a genuine effort to be liked by Nintendo gamers? Do you think they can compete against Nintendo's sort?

Quite curious to your thoughts given your post

What a load of crap.

"That thinking killed Iwata" HORRIBLE choice of words. Not funny or smart.

And the whole "Nintendo wouldn't promote my game," I mean, you're an indie dev. Did you pay Nintendo to market it? Did you have any kind of deal with Nintendo beyond getting your game on their console? If you're a small indie dev, marketing is on you, and if you want a company to market your game, either you have to be insanely lucky and they see something amazing in your game, or you have to pay them and actually have some kind of contract to make that happen. You're an indie dev. That's the way it is, and if you can't handle it, don't complain about it.

Not to mention, Oddworld is just a very obscure property that has never sold well. Putting it on a console with a rather small install base wasn't going to do much of anything for that, even without marketing.

This guy just comes across as very bitter and angry with a huge chip on his shoulder. I never played any of his games before, because I wasn't interested in them, but now I'm even less interested considering the attitude of the creator.

"Personally, I think it killed Iwata; that he couldn't move the organisation into a really successful arena."

Some of you lot are just getting touchy for no reason. The guy is complimenting Iwata. He is saying Iwata wanted to move the organisation on, but he couldn't. It was metaphorically killing him. Just like it's killing me that some of you can't understand a basic expression. Aside from that, the guy from a fantastic developer pointing out how Nintendo could improve, so you lot can get more games. What's not to like?

@TadpoleSHero He wasn't trying to be funny or smart. He was trying to empathise. Look it up.

@Grandpa_Pixel I had no idea it was on Playstation as well until I googled it, but yes, came out for PS, Windows, and DOS in 1997.

The guy sounds like a big baby.

@Shellcore Me it's just the use of words. It could have been spun into a more palatable sentence.

"The thinking has to change. The biggest problem I see at Nintendo is the thinking. Personally, I think it killed Iwata; that he couldn't move the organisation into a really successful arena. "

With a bit of work.

"The thinking at Nintendo is overdue for a change. Nintendo's way of thinking is a flaw in their approaches to the industry as a whole. While Iwata is no longer around to confirm, I am sure he would confirm there were moments where his ideas for success could not proceed due to the standards set in the organization. I think if Nintendo accepted change, they would have benefited from it"

Just threw that together. It's not perfect but it shows how a change of words can get the point across without being spun negatively

@Grandpa_Pixel Nintendo Defense Force. The most hardcore fanboys, completely blind and defiant of factual evidence. Coming up with all sorts of excuses and conspiracy theories just to defend and justify their narrative for their piece of plastic.

They exist for Sony and Microsoft of course too, but the NDF has been the biggest joke because they've had to endure 20 years of Nintendo being Nintendo at this point in the home console market.

@Alikan We had the version on PS. I never got to play it. In fact I have never played Oddworld. What are they like?

@Menchi187 Ahhh I see. Can't be one then sadly. I have happily slammed many developers for dumb decisions but praised them for their smart decisions.

Is there a Nintendo Neutral Force?

The guy makes a number of decent points. However, the moment he brought up Iwata, there was bound to be some negative feedback on it.

@BacktoNarnia I agree, but to bring him up unprovoked in a way that could easily be interpreted as very disrespectful towards a man who many Nintendo fans adored is a self inflicted error. He could have left Iwata out altogether, and his point still would have been made.

@impurekind

Actually, bruh, I have my eggs in a row. I read the whole convoluted interview. I wanted to see just what kind of mechanations that go on in the mind of such a bitter swill like this and it just made me more frustrated.

Please show me the 'numbers' of how this guy is 'spot on'. Something that even he couldn't do. All this is anecdotal nonsense, from you, and him. His game didn't sell well because it was garbage when it launched on other consoles, the dude is a washed up hack, like so many other of the big mouthed, talentless devs out there that expect hardware devs to do all the work for them.

The problem is bruh, you just want want he says to be true, so it fits into your neat little box of confirmation bias. You're part of that class that lives in a fantasy world, they want a NintendoBox4 or nintendo to make third party games because you don't have the pocket change to afford more than one platform. Just admit it and I'll respect you a whole lot more for being honest.

@Grandpa_Pixel Yes, they're generally considered the logical fans. By remaining critical to their (Nintendo's) flaws and praising their strong choices/points. As well as being objective on clear and factual evidence versus running around spouting "muh emotions!!!"

Could have left out the Iwata part. There are parts I agree and disagree with his points here. And I thought some 3rd party games add some success such as Just Dance, Rabbids, EA Active, Resident Evil 4, Guitar Hero etc.

@Grandpa_Pixel For goodness sake. Get a grip.

@Grandpa_Pixel side scrolling, puzzling, and full of lots of dying. The cinematics were really cool looking though. I remember the game being pretty difficult, but I liked the atmosphere. I was 10 at the time and awful at puzzlers, so take that into account.

I think the main problem is that developers target Xbox One as the lowest common denominator instead of Nintendo's platforms. So when a game comes to Switch, it has to be downgraded hastily.

@gcunit agree plenty of 3rd parties had great success on wii. Hell Skylanders died when they stopped releasing it on the Wii. plus regarding his wii u. I read that a few indie games made more on wii u than any other format.

I take his comments to mean two things:

1. Given the PS4 and XBox ONE are pretty identical in terms of architecture, that Nintendo is "different" - and has been since the Wii, though PS3 and the 360 were not identical either - is a limiting factor. Basically, he can't build once and have it run everywhere. In fairness to Nintendo, they have attempted with the Switch to mitigate this factor greatly, but anyone with a custom engine (EA) or has a small studio not using a supported framework will incur costs in porting a game made for PC/PS4/XBox ONE to the Switch.

2. Nintendo "failing to promote non-Nintendo games" is an indicator of the cost of porting not being beneficial to some studios - including his own - relative to the earnings it could produce. Meaning, in his view, Nintendo should do more to defray costs through either larger marketing deals or helping studios out. However, I think this is mostly sour grapes as I don't see Sony or Microsoft promoting games they don't have a direct investment in either (whether first, second, or third party). The difference is that those platforms are so architecturally similar, and similar to the PC, that you get tremendous market exposure with three pretty similar builds. Nintendo being a different architecture - forget form-factor - means there is a non-zero cost serving as a barrier for entry.

I don't think his points are that far-fetched, but he delivered them in the most unflattering way possible. Personally, I think the Switch is and will continue to be a rousing success, as it's essentially the primary alternative to PC gaming at this point; in that respect, I disagree with his viewpoints. However, when viewed from the standpoint of someone running a software studio (or in charge of some portion of one), I can see why it presents a challenge, why Nintendo still has a long road ahead of them.

I love the underpowered comments. I love that sony basically gets to set the 'power standard' despite the fact the PS4 was weak as hell compared to low end PCs when it came out. This isn't people being constructively critical of Nintendo, this is full blown anti-nintendo bias.

@Menchi187 "triggered" "NDF"
Hey, a troll using stupid buzzwords - incapable of having an actual discussion. Great.

The way this guy talks reminds me of some recent American president. What was that guy's name again...?

@bcmikey
His points aren't far-fetched from where he and many other half-assed lazy devs stand, sure. Their games don't sell well on Nintendo platforms, but that's because their games don't resonate with Nintendo's core audiences, or in the case of most of Lorne's games, are just bad and un-interesting, or worse, stuck in the 80s.

Plenty of third party devs LIVE off of Nintendo's success, more so than any other hardware producer. Just because people like Lorne and a few bitter PC devs from the 90s can't manage in this changing environment, doesn't mean he's right about anything.

@Alikan Oh that does sound like fun. I might give it a try if there is a suitable sequel or port on the Switch

Right now I am limiting my spending on games because so many good titles and gear is coming and I want to cleverly save for it. So I can not commit to Oddworld today. Maybe next year though!

I think he only made 1 Wii U eShop game for 19,99.
Oddworld: New'nTasty!

It is a remake of a PS1 classic and has a great story and atmospheric world. But the Wii U version has a slower framerate, lower resolution, and longer loading times than the other versions. I would be ok with all of that, but I came across numerous bugs as well. My main problem was in the gameplay though: missing or killing inhabitants on accident was just too easy. My aim getting 100% ended in a couple of repeated tries (from scratch) and then stopping the game in frustration.
I might go back to it some day and play through it casually, not caring about getting 100%.

Btw, was this game updated?

@samuelvictor Do you have a link to that article about the Wii Sports and Fit? I'd be interested in reading it.

And definitely agree. Let's point out there are very few of us in the conversation that can speak from experience. Lorne did make a popular franchise after all. It might not have been super popular like Mario but it does have its fan followers.

Xbox and Playstation both have huge 3rd party support and sometimes-- PS4 version sells several times more than the Xbox Version or vice versa. Should Sony or Microsoft be berated for not 'promoting a game' enough because they don't talk it up?

Does this guy really want that buttpat for a god awful port of an uninteresting game that felt like it was from 1989? Is that what he was expecting from Nintendo?

make the games like this.

make it from the ground up for switch handheld first. Then port it over to PS4 and Xbox One, applying nice visual improvements. Everyone wins.

Sure, there are lots of criticisms to make. But you're a fool to not take into account each individual's bias.

Here's my bias: I never thought this guy's games were particularly good.

Just keep it in mind.

I think the most interesting thing to see to hold up against comments like these would be ACTUAL third-party sales of stuff that has been on all the consoles. NBA Playgrounds, for example. That would be an interesting article: let's see the sales figures for that game between Xbox, PS, PC, and Switch. IF Switch sold the most (not saying it did), and that fact was presented in an interview like this, I wonder what his excuse would be?

@impurekind

Tickling your confirmation bias is not 'harsh truth'. How is it harsh? How is it truth? Actually prove your point. You can't, the numbers completely disagree with you and him.

You want him to be right. I'll say it until the end of time.

This isn't about people's emotion, its about industry decorum. Its about being a respectable business man. You talk up people's inability to control their emotions, but here he is, being an emotional, illogical dog turd and you're praising him for it.

This was never about truth. This is your sad reality's perception of what 'truth' is. You just happen to agree with him, when nothing he says has cold, hard evidence to prove. Its not a harsh truth, its a sad opinion from a washed up dev and a fanboy who can't help but pat himself on the back.

@Menchi187 ohhh, your little brain farts are so cute! Nobody has to endure anything sweetie, it's you who tries to be clever about what pieces of plastic people like, but guess what, nobody cares. Keep them coming though, we need the entertainment

"PEOPLE JUST NEED TO CONTROL THEIR EMOTIONS! NOT JUST HAVE KNEE JERK REACTIONS TO WHAT HE SAYS".

First of all, its not about emotions, its about industry decorum. Even Nintendo's greatest rivals have had nothing but respectful, insightful things to say about Iwata.

Why should we be expected to control our emotions, when this turd has literally sat on his bitterness for all these years just WAITING for a chance to say this? To accuse Nintendo's second worst selling system of killing its beloved President? Dude, he's the emotional one, not us. Hes the one with issues, not us.

How can you be part of an industry and have absolutely NO idea what you're talking about?

I saw the article headline and was ready to shame this man then I read the article and saw the context in which he was speaking. Click bait at it's finest Nintendolife. You should really fix that.

The sooner 3rd party developers and gamers accept the fact that Nintendo is different and gonna do things their own way from Sony and Microsoft, the better off we'll all be. We may not have the latest COD, but we do have the latest Zelda, and no one else can say that. There are other alternatives for that 3rd party fix.

Whats this clickbait nonsense? That video with Lorne Lanning was from April 28th,how is it news now?

Meh to his comments.......

His insistence on getting the file size down in order to fit on Wii U basic models was what made Oddworld such a failure. It delayed the game by a year or more, long after the Wii U was at its peak, simply in order to fit on the smaller model that didn't sell very well anyway. Not only that but the port was a bit of a mess anyway, and far too expensive. Guy just sounds bitter.

The real fact is that third party failed to utilize the uniqueness of what Nintendo has to offer on their platform and instead want Nintendo to offered the same crap that was on the other system then later made excuses that, "why would we bother making games for them when there's 3 other platforms of the same specs already out there" but when Nintendo does something different, they made excuses, "Oh it's too different and they'll never support it." Like c'mon make up your mind. If you don't want to make games just get out of the gaming industry, if you do then bring it on and let the audience decide. Gaming ain't cheap anymore and if you're only here to make quick bucks, you're in the wrong boat. Can't port your game to Nintendo system, then make another version or just don't bother.

Hey, english is not my first language, or is it a cultural thing? But I never read malice or found lanning's comment about "nintendo thinking killing iwata" as rude, or gross...
Maybe this place has a lot of little sensitive kids...
Who knows?

@memoryman3
You forgot "...and have them feature Daisy!" ...

@Grandpa_Pixel I think they have a genuine chance especially early in Switche's life cycle. Look at Snake Pass - it currently sits on the top spot in weakly sales according to eShop listings. The upcoming Rabbit game has hype around it and it looks neat, but it's worth noticing that Ubisoft treated this game as a big deal not an afterthought like some company's do. I think Nintendo has problems with 3rd parties, but it's not all down to them. The guy speaking released a poopy port of a remake (not exactly something I would call original) on a console that didn't sell well in the first place and he complaints about the game not being a success.

Look at Bayonetta 2 - it sold 0.8m copies. Not a smashing hit, but still it's a substantial quantity. Considering it is a bit of a niche game it's decent enough. But this was a quality game.

I do agree though Nintendo should be promoting 3rd party games more, however I also feel this is changing as even indie games get the spotlight from Nintendo nowadays.

3DS is a good example that 3rd party can exist on a Nintendo system, but they have to persevere cause unlike on Xbox and Ps4 they have to make a name for themselves among the spoiled Nintendo fans.

Nintendo thinking: Let's make a console that goes where you go.

Nintendo thinking: Sorry NBA Playgrounds, we are not going to allow a 15 GB update (2x the size of MK8+) on a 32 GB system.

Lorne Lanning thinking: I know what killed Iwata!!

I like to thank Oddworld for this comment section I'm about to read

@AugustusOxy - I don't disagree with your points (though I would be careful about calling anyone lazy or half-assed). However, I think it's reasonable to take the perspective of an independent studio and understand their perceived challenges. Again, the way in which he presents his points is through griping and complaining, which undercuts him severely; that doesn't mean that, for a good swath of independent developers (though not all), Nintendo platforms don't represent a potentially difficult proposition. For third parties largely making PC or PC-like games - whether stuck in the 80s/90s or not - coming to Nintendo is business risk, and not everyone is going to have the appetite for it or handle it well.

I say this as a Nintendo fan since the 80s, and someone who very much wants to see this company succeed. I agree with your point about some devs really finding success with Nintendo (Yacht Club Games comes to mind), and it makes me both happy and hopeful that this trend continues ticking upward.

I absolutely agree it is reasonable to ask whether this was an appropriate game to port to Wii U, and that he blames Nintendo for its failure to really be a huge revenue generator for him is honestly just plain silly.

it has nothing to do with your poor quality game, right? and this is coming from a fan

I'm glad to see a lot of people agree, that he made a very poor choice of words regarding Iwata and someone who feels the need to say something unnecessary like that, will enjoy no respect from me either.

@impurekind

"Well . . . I'm there are some sensible and informed people in here will recognise gold when it's laid before them."

Thank you so much for educating us. You really have given us something to aspire to. Could you provide a reading list that might make us all smarter? If you have the time, I know everyone here would welcome a long form essay from you.

@slatanek Have a like! For a well rounded and sensible answer

I agree, it does feel like things are starting to shape up. In fact, that guy who designed Mario+Rabbids. It was really heartwarming to see the designer cry at the E3 conference for Ubisoft. It shows that this was 100% not a throwaway. Ubisoft were genuinely commited to making a game. And Starlink looks grand as well!

EA have started doing good work too. Their FIFA version genuinely plays well according to previews. It is sounding far more positive than the Wii U's era for a start.

I have hope they will succeed. So far, Nintendo has been doing really well and 2017 is already sorted with an excellent turn out. Let's hope Nintendo keeps up the work next year

He's not completely wrong with some of their ways of thinking being really stange and some of it being outdated, but this guy seems like a bit of a jerk. That Iwata statement was definitely a bit much. Maybe he should focus on making some good quality games.

While I know a lot of people will be touchy and salty about it, but this guy does bring up a lot of valid points that you can't really disagree with (his point about the Wii is spot on). However, I do think it was very low of him to bring up Iwata's death to try and proof one of his critiques.

What a pile of horse poo lol.. look.. if you're gonna be a guy that buys stable stock then moans why they missed out on that out of nowhere start-up / new IPO you've only got yourself to blame.

Nintendo showed everyone what the Wii was but developers who saw it as too risky decides to not dive in - and ultimately they missed out. Their loss.

On all this other horse poo about how Nintendo's being Nintendo about carts to only profit for themselves - he's beyond deluded. It's amazing tech and carts are necessary for battery and combating poor load times.

The last thing I'll comment on is this douchebag saying how the switch / Nintendo killed Iwata.. that's beyond moronic and hideously distasteful. I'd expect someone like Lorne Lanning to be more careful with his choice of words. It's absolutely disgraceful. No matter how anti-nintendo he may be, his comments are absolutely grotesque.

@impurekind I do agree with you response, and people do tend to over react, but it does seem like bad form to say that it killed Iwata. Especially since he had to have known that people like to overreact.

As for this article, most of his points aren't wrong per se, and I find it hard to blame devs for this attitude. It's up to Nintendo to win them over. In my opinion, it seems that the Switch is doing well enough to start forcing devs to pay attention. We'll see in a year or so, but things are definitely looking promising.

With thing I can't disagree more with is his comment on cartridges. While piracy may have played a role in the decision, eventually, everything is pirated anyway... but even still, why would we want anything other than cartridges, especially in a portable? Memory is not nearly as expensive as it was 20 years ago when home consoles used cartridges. You get a much smaller, power efficient, durable solution with quicker load times. I'd say Nintendo made the right call here.

Oh boy the good old smear campaign is back. Yeah why don't Nintendo follow the same policy as the megacorps Sony and Microsoft and favor big budget western games? Nintendo is truly evil for favoring an audience who isn't interested in those games.

No....
That certainly wasn't what killed Iwata.

I agree that Nintendo still need better third party relations, but I always thought they were pretty good at supporting indies. I always saw the latest indie games on the eshop homepage. Although I can only speak for Europe. NoE even published a few indie games at retail!

@impurekind Fact based on what?

You saying what he says is fact without backing it up.
"How can you people be so naive" just shows whatever you're talking about is more obviously not painfully obvious to everyone else. So how about instead of complaining about how people don't see your point of view at all, you stop doing that and actually try explaining it, hm?

@Tarolusa My days. He didn't refer to Iwata's death at all. He was saying it WAS killing him (figuratively speaking) that he could shift Nintendo's thinking. It like saying "After that run, my feet are killing me". It's a turn of phrase. We have all said it at some point.

@MrYuzhai "The last thing I'll comment on is this douchebag saying how the switch / Nintendo killed Iwata.. that's beyond moronic and hideously distasteful."

Erm, he didn't.

This guy has done nothing but port his Oddworld games over and over. To the point where they had to hire another developer entirely to create New N Tasty (which should've been renamed Oddworld: Clunky N Boring).

All you have to do is look at the DS/3DS line to see how well 3rd parties can do on a system when they try. Not a bunch of me-too re-releases that have to be "day and date" as all other platforms.

Whatever, it won't stop here. All these people know that their only way of making headlines is to down-talk the NS while it keeps selling like hotcakes. It reeks of a PR push created to distance gamers from the Switch.

@GeminiSaint He never said anything literally killed Iwata. I know the language is complex, but he was actually complimenting Iwata, saying that he tried so hard to change Nintendo's way of thinking and it was figuratively killing him that he wasn't successful.

He feels sorry for Nintendo's current situation? Nintendo is doing incredibly well. PS4 is currently on 60 million while Switch is on 5 million after just four months. The Switch is very quickly catching up.

And why do people always say that the Switch is underpowered? It's a very competent home console and as a portable it's the most powerful ever made.

Anyway, who is this guy? I've never played his games.

Not sure about that Iwata comment... but here's the deal: Nintendo is a software company. They build their consoles to sell their games. Third party support is always an afterthought.

I think it comes down the Odd World is no longer an interest point to anyone except nostalgia players. In the the world of social media today, even a couple years ago, blaming someone else because you couldn't get promo is a load of BS. I suggest he looks at what FDG has done so far. Funny how they are in the top 5 on Switch pretty much everywhere in the world right now.

Cartridge systems didn't stop third parties to stop supporting the VITA as well....just saying.

Finally using Iwata's name for excuses is completely disrespectful and low no matter how you try to spin it.

Not saying Nintendo is perfect. Far from it, but this kind of ranting is simply burning bridges between the dev. and Nintendo's player base.

"The thinking has to change. The biggest problem I see at Nintendo is the thinking. Personally, I think it killed Iwata"

Hmm, that was a bit in bad taste. Though I get what he means.
I do agree with his statements though, however indies stand in lines to get their games on the Switch (but not Lorne Lanning, no Oddworld 2 for us). Weak console + bad third-party support from Nintendo (I mean, if Nintendo properly would have supported them I am sure their titles would have sold) led to the situation that basically all proper third-party's have gone. Is this bad for Nintendo? Probably not, since the Wii was a succes without much third-party. And what about gbc? I can't remember a single third-party game that I wanted, then again I don't have much gbc games either.

In a perfect world Nintendo would create a strong console again with lots of third party's, so that they themselves can create a few very strong titles now and then. Now you see Nintendo frantically keeping their devices afloat with tons of games (Fire emblem echoes, Arms, Mario Odyssey, Miitopia, etc) since there are no third-party's to support them. Yes, there are quite some interesting games among them, but there will also be some duds (Hey Pikmin says hello)!

The first sign he was off his rocker was that he did an interview with kinda funny. That's a sign you're desperate for attention. Then the iwata comment, yikes, talk about insert foot in mouth.

The part about Nintendo Promoting Indie Titles while his game got no promotion is what made me facepalm here.
Lorne, you've seen massive success with Oddworld and you even said you made plenty of money off of it. Indie titles on the other hand have next to no promotion outside of YouTubers so they deserve it way more than you do.
Also, you see a similar success as with the Wii U? Dude, the Wii U was dead during it's launch! The Switch is doing way better than the Wii U was! Even to the point where everywhere is sold out and people are angry they can't buy this new system! What planet is this guy living on? Oh right, he's on the planet of jealousy because his game didn't do well on Nintendo's Console.
As for the Iwata comment, that's just horrible, very disrespectful and terrible choice of words.

@CreamyDream that's how I read it too, immediately obvious he's not saying that killed him in the literal sense. He's pretty blunt in interviews sometimes and could certainly benefit from choosing his words more carefully but arguably has some points here and is entitled to his opinions even if the more hardcore of the fanbase disagree. He doesn't speak for everyone in his dev team too, it won't stop me buying the Abes Exodus remake as New n' Tasty was great.

@Shellcore Dude, just using his name to put in a rant on Nintendo and trying to spin it in one direction or the other is such a douche move. Of all things he mentioned, this is one thats going to stick to many. Guy easily forgets that most Switch players have another console as well and might not even pick up a title of his...if he ever comes up with anything else even if its only, say on PS4.

On a side note although he may have not his phrase correctly, it doesn't help due to the fact that Iwata actually died whilst still working for Nintendo.

I can say "work killed me today" but I'm standing right here able to make that statement. To say the same thing to someone who actually was working there when he passed away is either a real poor choice of words on his part or a phrase crafted with a hint of spite.

Which honestly from his tone I'm not 100% sure which is correct.

I'm not sure if it has been said but I doubt he meant it literally killed Iwata. I'm assuming he meant it bothered Iwata. Poor choice of words but I feel that people are overreacting; take a step back, you all probably know what he intended to say.

What about the DS?

So is he bitter because his game didn't sell well on wii U or that other indies did extremely well?
As for the Iwata stuff seriously that was full of crap

Wow did he really just tie Iwata-denka's health issues with Nintendo? Who the heck drags a dead man? I try to judge studios based on their game output but professionalism is very important to me as well. Well Lanning doesn't have to worry my "faith" in him as I won't be touching anything with his name on it again. (What has he made recently anyway? The odworld remakes really, really don't count.)

@MsJubilee Slow news day, perhaps?

I don't have a Switch and plan on skipping the entire generation to play and have time to ENJOY the games of the past couple console eras, properly.

That said, this guy is a bitter old man. Oddworld sucked a decade ago, and sucks even worse now as it is not offering anything buy the same ol' shove-out-the-door middle-ware.

@impurekind: Hi Lorne, glad to see you respond to your own press.

@impurekind While the guy does have valid points, there still was no reason to mention Iwata. That is what people are hung up on. I agree with you that there are several valid points brought up. Take care.

As much as we try to blame Nintendo, but is it their fault that lots of these mentioned 3rd parties gave Wii, 3ds, Wii U and even switch inferior, late ports? Some 3rd parties stepped it up but most of them are small indies. But the big AAA devs like ea complain their games don't sell millions of copies day 1 when we get them 6 months after other consoles got a better version.
Nintendo has always looked at gaming as something to have fun with. Today's gamer plays more hours a day then Nintendo snes days. Back then gamers were dorks. Now everyone plays. I knew no girls in high school who had a n64. But my son plays dark souls with his gf.
Btw, how late was oddworld at being released on Wii U?
I love my Nintendo consoles and if they were not what they are, I wouldn't be gaming today. Switch with botw and binding of Isaac had take up my last 6 months and my PS4 hasn't been touched.

@RainbowGazelle Nintendo even aided in the development of Snipperclips by an indie dev, SFB Games (they even published it). They even had Image & Form on a Nintendo Direct to advertise SteamWorld Heist.

Nintendo is very pro indie, or Nindie as we like to call them.

@bcmikey Best comment I've read here. Nice work, good thoughts. It's also worth noting that KPIs and other success indicators for the Switch will be a little different than for PS4 Pro/XboneX because the nature of the system is so different. I view the Switch as both a huge innovation and the beginning of something bigger. It might not be as big of a traditional success as either of those two other pieces of gaming hardware, but I just read an article yesterday on a well-respected tech reporting site that praised the Switch for Nintendo doing exactly what this dude claims they're doing: edging themselves into the mobile market. The point of THAT article, however, wasn't a criticism, but a praise because at this point mobile tech is improving and growing cheaper more quickly than non-mobile architecture is, so Nintendo moving themselves firmly into that position before everyone else is wise because it's conceivable that their next console revision could potentially be as powerful/affordable as other consoles while still remaining a crossover home/mobile console. Remains to be seen, and I think this guy has a lot of intelligent comments in criticism of Nintendo, but I wish he had presented them with a bit more tact and a bit more tact.

@Wexter there is over 100 indie games on my Wii U that agrees with this.

@kuliddar Why not use the name of a businessman he respected trying to reverse the fortunes of Nintendo? He was holding up Iwata in a positive light as a proponent of positive change. I don't understand why he shouldn't complement someone just because they passed away. This whole business celebrity stuff needs to go. It drives people to regard the money men as idols and takes away from the product.

Taking the Wii as an example is pretty weird and stating 3rd party titles didn't sell (or make money) on the Wii is factually wrong.

Sounds like he just needed a scapegoat, which happened to be Nintendo.

Headline: Guy who made decent game 20 years ago repeats what people already said. (apart from the Iwata part).

@Grandpa_Pixel In my opinion Nintendo is so far killing it in 2017. Yes, one could say "Where's the VC?". But I feel like this isn't something they should prioritize. What they should and are doing is getting new games on the system in a quantity that will guarantee peoples interest in the system. VC is important but it's not important to the general public and is not a selling point to someone looking for a new console.

Zelda, Mario Kart, Splatoon 2 even Arms are games that are Nintendo's biggest strength at the moment. Add Mario Odyssey, Rabbits and a load of great indies (I'm still playing Thumper and it's fantastically challenging) and we've got a good base for a success. I hope with time they'll bring games like Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze and Super Mario Maker over cause those are real gems from what I've gathered and are overlooked just because of the failure Wii U was.

Also an obvious sign of changes is the simple fact Nintendo allowed for cross play in Minecraft which Sony, sitting on their high horse at the moment, didn't allow.

I used to be very sceptical towards Nintendo but as of late they really seem to be changing at a pace never experienced before (by their own standards that is).

You are absolutely right about Ubi - it seems it's one of the few big publishers who actually has feelings. As to Fifa on the Switch, I guess my gripe with it is that it's a nerfed version again. Why not call it something else entirely? As it is it's another one of those that people can point their fingers too and say "well, I'm getting Ps4 cause it at least has the REAL Fifa game". I mean make a Fifa Street or something, just don't imply yet again that this version is inferior (not running on frostbite etc.)

I'm gonna get lost in the comments

@slatanek They even secured 2018-2019 with two huge hitters and some smaller, but popular franchises with both Metroid Prime 4, Yoshi, Kirby and a mainline Pokemon title. Let's also not forget No More Heroes 3 which is still in the pipeline for that niche third-party darling.

@UK-Nintendo Haha me too, might see you around!

"The biggest problem I see at Nintendo is the thinking"

That's right Mr Lanning. Nintendo's thinking has got them a market cap of about $44 billion today. What has the thinking got your company? $440?

I think of the Wii U as a GameCube, but swap most of the 3rd party support for stable online and a VC. It had amazing first party games, great local co-op, and I really liked mine.

@DankeyKang89 - Thanks! I like the idea you're presenting here as well; I very much agree that Nintendo has set themselves up really well for a mobile-minded market, and for regular hardware updates and iterations. For example, a more powerful version of the Switch could be released such that someone upgrading need just purchase the screen+CPU is honestly brilliant. Similarly, different control options to the Joy-Con down the road being compatible with the physical Switch interface affords tremendous flexibility. It means the Switch isn't tied to a single form-factor (like a mobile phone or tablet) and doesn't require wholesale replacement (like a traditional console), keeping future costs down for those in the ecosystem.

If the article is available and you have a moment, would you mind sending a link? I'd love to read it if at all possible. Thanks again!

@Wexter I didn't mention those just because they're far off, but you're right. I cannot wait for Metroid Prime 4 and still am salty about Metroid Prime 2 remake releasing on 3DS only, although I have the system at home as well.

"there's still this impression that Nintendo is the least well-supported when it comes to externally-created software."

It's not an impression, it's a fact.

He's right about some things. Third parties have been a problem for almost 2 decades. That's why the phrase, "I buy Nintendo consoles, to buy Nintendo games" exists. Nintendo has been the second or third console for a lot of people for a long time. It simply doesn't have to be that way, but Nintendo seems content with coexisting rather than being a major competitor.

At the moment we're seeing steps in the right direction. EA, appears to be making a good effort, and Ubisoft is as well. Indie games are also making good headlines. Nintendo was more regressive this time around on Switch, but it is a debatable decision I agree with. The eshop on Wii U was hampered too much by the likes of RCMADIAX, TreeFall Studios, and other bottom of the barrel — so called developers who had no idea what they were doing. The eshop was quickly turning into the App Store.

Now, the big question is, will Nintendo fans, who only buy Nintendo games, take a chance on a third parties this time around? A good friend of mine only buys the big Nintendo games, Mario, Zelda, Yoshi, etc. He's part of the reason that Nintendo has failed on this front for decades. So it isn't just the thinking at Nintendo, it's also the thinking of some fans who only buy Nintendo's biggest games. It can be argued that third parties at times offer bad ports, and that's true of various degrees. The catch 22 here is, developers aren't going to spend the time on something that will not sell well, so they put little effort into it. So in that respect, he's right. The Switch is a bit of a different animal since it really is a portable system, but yes, Nintendo is running the underpowered angle again, even if it has a legitimate reason to be.

That said, the Iwata comment, good god... I get what he's saying, but bad choice of words.

The only thing I can't agree with is the controllers. The Nintendo joycons are most probably the most advanced gaming controls in the market (at least mainstream) and the pro controller, albeit 10 bucks most expensive that I'd like, is comfortable and lasts a ton.

One thing that is spot on, among others, is how bad is teh exposure of third party games in both the 3DS eShop and the WiiU eShop.

The impression I get from his end of the conversation here is because his paths have not intersected well with Nintendo, he has generally removed Nintendo from his own bubble for quite a few years, has not paid attention to it, and therefore doesn't understand its current position or offering at all.

He speaks as though Wii and WiiU were Nintendo's only products, and that the DS and 3DS did not exist, as though the 3DS has not thus far outsold XBox One by a wide margin, that the DS didn't outsell even the PS2, as though those platforms weren't loaded with buckets of third parties, and as though the Switch is not an iteration upon that market, instead citing the very odd era that was the Wii, and the market failure that was the WiiU.

His display if ignorance or lack of knowledge of Nintendo's market is remarkable. Why give an interview on a subject that the obvious better answer was "I stopped paying attention to Nintendo during the Wii because I didn't think I could do business on it, so I'm not sure what their current market is."

It's also interesting that he praises Nintendo's use of controls over their market as being the best thing to happen to the industry, but then picks up with the tagline that they need to bring the controls into the 21st century, effectively advocating non-control.

The REALLY sad thing about all this is the kinds of games he makes would almost certainly do very very well on the Switch. So he comes off looking foolish, and a large market of highly potential customers for his otherwise quality games doesn't gain access to his product.

Okay, he's entitled to his opinion.
Some of what he said is valid but some of it is unverifiable and heresay. I think Nintendo is changing at their own pace and they have the right to take it slow and one developer's thoughts shouldn't be taken as fact. Neither should they be dismissed. How he feels is valid and if Nintendo really wants third parties, they need to listen to their concerns.

Make better games.

He sounds extremely bitter. Bet he's eating his words now though as the Switch is a massive hit and of course it's all about Nintendo. It's their system.

And only in gaming would you hear one business partner speak so poorly about another, claiming doom. This industry is truly bizarre sometime...little boys pretending to be men.

Lanning makes somes very valid points. And the Iwata quote was taken out of context. It wasn't meant literally, he meant that Iwata must have been very despondent that he couldn't get Nintendo as a whole to change and join the 21st century.

@AugustusOxy Show me all the major third party games on Switch as of 07 July 2017 that prove he isn't spot on. . . .

Because that's what the entire 40 minute conversation is basically about and around, whether major third parties will come to Switch or not and the multiple reasons behind this.

So far, Lorne has provided plenty of proof of his view that the major third parties aren't going to be on Switch, via all the evidence we have to date and based on past history and the last few Nintendo consoles that also backs that up (which he mentioned/covered numerous times), and you've just went "blah, blah, but nooo!".

Be naively optimistic about the major third parties coming to Switch, if you must, but no good or logical evidence exists to support that belief right now, either in the present or in recent history of Nintendo's consoles.

Ergo, Lorne is spot on--and I bet you can't and won't be able to prove otherwise, especially as more and more time passes. . . .

Lorne is literally telling everyone the blunt facts of why most major third party games aren't on Switch now and are nigh-on-certainly not going to be coming to Switch in the future either, from the point of view of an actual third party developer who has more clue than most people in here stuck together--and the likes of Wii and Wii U are visible and measurable historical examples of this actually playing out exactly as he described too--and you're simply not listening. Instead you want to pretend it's not true because Iwata died of cancer and because you don't like Lorne's games and whatever other blah, blah, crap. You want to argue the meaningless crap and ignore the main argument of the point that was raised.

If you wanna know the truth, he's telling you it--harsh as it may be. If you don't wanna know the truth, keep pretending to yourselves that all those major third party games are coming--and stay in La La Land.

@EveryoneElse debating me: See post above.

His concerns may well reflect some unfortunate market climate trends where people are in a hurry to sell their games right there and then or face the need for profit-hitting discounts. One can certainly see where that's coming from, but unless we're talking self-competing annual franchises like FIFA, the longevity of demand is still a factor to outbalance late ports. We see gamers pining for 20 year old games, so "same date, same place" is hardly a dominant factor.

When it comes to close-mapping multiplatform release dates, Nintendo - whose consoles have historically got plenty of ports as it is, regardless of the custom workload as long as the consoles themselves sold enough - has already invested into a solid bit. From increased horsepower (to the extent they could currently afford without compromising the product - or making PS4 v3 some gamers inexplicably want them to squeeze into the long oversaturated and an arguable evolutional dead end of a market) to perhaps the most developer-familiar architecture they've had in decades, so what's the current issue with their thinking, again? All the more questionable to phrase Iwata's life and death into the argument, considering that the man gave Nintendo's business and strategy an almost equine kick forward - and the impact has been felt across the video game industry since.

Hard to agree with the point about cards, too. Sticking to cartridges was about anti-piracy back in N64 (after Ninty's sore experience with FDS), but we live in the age where ironically their previous two flash storage systems have been hacked to the moon and back and relatively soon at that. Now it's more about the fact that optical media are becoming progressively inconvenient for video games (to the point where modern games still install most of the BD's contents on the console to avoid/reduce the bane of loading times) and losing the mass production price benefits they used to have over cartridges as well. Even the memory cards' capacity limits have exceeded BDXL by now. Strange that this factor is passing by a game developer of all people.

@impurekind

He comes off as a total sscumbag who's extremely bitter. He also is not close to being professional in how he speaks. I'm a 40 year old man who works daily on million dollar projects. I've helped build the biggest building in the Bronx...hundreds of million of dollars. I interact with very high level folks.

Acting like this guy is UNHEARD OF in business. And if you can't realize that, I assume you're extremely young, inexperienced or simply have no clue what you're talking about. But this is not normal. It's insulting and to bring up a dead man? No class at all.

Business professionals dont act or speak this way. This guy's speech burned bridges, I guarantee you that. A low class loser and for anyone to defend him simply tells me you just don't get it. This is NOT how you run a business or build cooperation over time.

@Agent721 See my last full post above. . . .

@impurekind

Sensible people will see gold when it's laid out? Look in the mirror! What a foolish comment. Truly, I hope some of you grow up and one day look back and realize, what was I thinking?

I read the head line and expected a total lynching in the comments.

I was not disappointed.

@impurekind

Naw, I'm done. You make no sense, are clearly very young or are simply not smart. Enjoy having no clue.

I am sorry but its painfully obvious here Lorne has not much clue what he is talking about. A lot of the policies that existed with Wii and Wii U are pretty much gone now including the day and date policy from what I hear.

4GB is relatively impressive for a system of the Switches nature. The Switch using cartridges was mainly due to design limitations adding a disc drive would have likely raised the cost and murdered the battery.

While yes the Switch is underpowered compared to the twins the gap is not nearly as severe as it was with Wii and Wii U plus Switch has the advantage of not being held back by a highly dated architecture coupled with modern development tools.

Also what the flying donkeys is he saying claiming Switch killed Iwata last I checked Iwata fell victim to bile duct cancer. Also the Switch was basically one the last things Iwata had any involvement in before he passed. I kinda lost a good deal of respect for Mr Lanning now.

Also last I checked Switch has been selling like hot cakes with little signs of slowing down and it will likely continue that way seeing what they have planned for the rest of this year and beyond

Lorne Lanning has always been outspoken. I don't totally disagree with his entire outlook, but I do think that the Switch could be very good for third parties. I see more "hardcore" gamers buying a Switch on top of their PS4 / XBOX ONE than with the Wii or Wii U because of the portability factor. The casual crowd that made up 50% of the Wii's install base and purchased mainly first party titles will be lower on the Switch. I think the gamers that buy a Switch will want AAA games on the go. The sales will be there.

@Agent721 See my last full comment above. . . .

Ummm not to be a wiseass, but wasn't this the guy who was so confident that the X-box would destroy the Wii and Ps3, that he signed a contract with microsoft granting them exclusive games (Oddworld Much's Odyssey and Stranger's Odyssey), and his company suffered heavily as nobody really bought them?

@impurekind took the words right out of my mouth.

I'm pretty sure he meant the "It killed Iwata"-comment (Poor choice of words that it was) more in the sense of "This headache is killing me!" than in the "The job literally killed him"-sense.

That being said, he brings up nothing new, the usual "Crappy third-party support, weak hardware, doom! GLOOM!"-talk...

Notable for one sub-par game, game industry expert... :-/

@bcmikey Porting depends on the engine you chose. Unreal Engine 4 has porting tools and full support for the Switch, so that is much easier. If you are using your own engine, you are going to have to change the way it interfaces with the hardware. I've heard nVidia has been offering support, but I've also seen them comment that the built in APIs are intuitive. Still not that easy to convert an existing game though.

In the interview the guy mentioned the lack of RAM on the Switch. It has 4 GBs of DDR4 RAM, 3.5 GB is available for games. That's pretty close to what the PS4 and Xbox One provide. I doubt that would be the issue.

The guy sorta has a point i agree with, compared to the other consoles on the market, the Switch is massively underpowered, not that it needs to be on par with the PS4 and XB1 but giving the Switch more power would allow for the more demanding games like MH World for example, to be put on it.

@Wolfgabe I took it as stress. The stress Iwata had hurt him. Stress has been linked to some forms of cancer. That's how I took it. Iwata was trying his damnedest to move Nintendo forward to a more modern console setting but the higher ups that are too traditional always buried his thinking with their rules and regs. The stress Iwata suffered is more than likely (just my opinion now) is possibly was caused him to fall ill unfortunately. Saying "it killed him" isn't the best way to get your point across but anyway, that's how I saw it.

Oh blah blah blah blah blah. People don't have faith in Oddworld either.

I believe not from a business stand point that Nintendo aims to do what the rest can't. If they were a carbon copy of Sony and Microsoft then the gaming world would be very different, not trying to downplay the two at all but we all know how different Nintendo is. Sometimes it doesn't work but sometimes it does and the fact that millions can enjoy that which Nintendo brings is truly amazing.

Some valid points on his end.

The Iwata comment was in poor taste, no matter how you slice it or try to justify it.

I will say it does come off as a bit disingenuous to dismiss your the idea that maybe your POV is tinged by some hard and bitter previous feelings. Which is not to say he's wrong for feeling how he feels. But it does help your case if you can acknowledge that. Otherwise, I can see why this would come off to some as strictly a bitter grump with no room for perspective

FWIW Nintendo Life liked Oddworld for Wii U. 8/10. Certainly not a bad game. So they did make a good game. No one bought it. So comments that they made a bad game are off base.

Then there was the article in Eurogamer a few years ago about how unresponsive Nintendo was with helping third parties develop for Wii U and how slow the dev kits were. Then, a while back, I read somewhere that Nintendo takes a bigger cut than Sony or MS do from third party sales. Then you add the smaller, more expensive game cards, which I'm sure third parties have to pay for, It's not hard to see why third parties are in "wait and see" mode or even "not a chance in heck" mode. Most third parties don't have the cash that Nintendo does to make games for their system and are one good flop away from going out of business.

@kotag yep, and most people misunderstood it, he didnt mean the stress was a factor to his death, he meant it metaphorically, with his ideas an all. But eh, you cant stop people interpreting a statement the wrong way.

@bcmikey Having a hell of a time trying to find that exact article in my browser history, but here are a couple that support both your point and mine.

TL;DR Mobile tech is moving really fast and will overtake non-mobile computing architecture in the consumer sector in the near(ish) future, pushing even more innovation: https://www.wired.com/2015/02/smartphone-only-computer/

TL;DR Porting some games to Switch is difficult (read: not impossible) not only because of GRAPHICAL restrictions, but because of computing limitations like not being able to display/run enough rats with individual AI as other consoles: http://www.dualshockers.com/a-plague-tale-innocence-switch-not-powerful/

Nintendo will be Nintendo, and I'm happy to say that after skipping the Wii U, the Switch has given me hope in its survival as both a hardware and software company. What I'm excited to see is whether or not this shift to mobile helps them to not only survive but thrive as a hardware company. Otherwise, we'll have their software and theme parks to look forward to

Don't think he literally meant "killed," but he probably should have worded it differently. I remember Iwata got a lot of hate before he passed away. It's like all of a sudden everybody loved him and glorified him. People are very fickle. As far as his attitude on the Switch and Nintendo, its very pessimistic. Bet if he had a more upbeat and optimistic mindset; or even make a fresh game or new IP for the young Switch, people may jump on it. I mean. I bought Fast RMX because it was perfect to go with Zelda and there was nothing else. Maybe he needs to change his gameplan up a bit. Strike while the iron is hot.

How appropriate, I have no interest in Lorne Lanning nor in his boring and depressing games. Stop crying about third parties not earning money on Nintendo console and start trying to think how you could possibly made a game as good as Nintendo games are, then you'll begin to see your profits rise maybe

@NEStalgia and you wonder why people complain about nintendo fanboys.

And why is everyone saying his games are bad? Just because you don't agree with his opinion doesnt mean you have to attack everythign else he'd done, half of you are exaggerating and half of you haven't even played the game.

"It killed Iwata" This guy should show some respect.
He makes some good points about the lack of 3rd Party support being worrying but I personally see the Switch as more a 3DS successor than PS4 competitor.
Once 3rd parties see that I think they'll come around.

I remember seeing this interview a while back ago. I can't help but wonder if Lorne is kicking himself right now with how well Switch has been doing

I legitimately don't understand the outrage over his comments about Iwata. I find it very possible that the stress of his job and work ethic for the company and industry he was obviously passionate about contributed negatively toward his already poor health and could have sped along his death. Remember the reports that he was contributing to Pokémon GO while hospitalized? That's not something I'd consider normal.

That said, I'm not entirely convinced about the rest of what he says. Nintendo definitely could have done a better job promoting his game on the eshop, but ultimately I think it would have made little difference. You have to optimize how much effort goes into promoting something compared to how well you expect or need it sell.

I think his point about cartridges is off the mark though.

@greengecko007 Exactly. Don't forget to factor in Japan's crazy work culture. 12-14 hour days are normal. People literally work themselves to death. I can't imagine the pressure a guy like Iwata could have been under, especially after the rocky 3DS start and Wii U debacle. The Wii U, in particular, was very weird. Clearly there was some internal strife about it inside Nintendo.

@greengecko007 That is not a Nintendo issue that is an issue with Japanese Business culture in general. It is not uncommon for Japanese workers to sleep at their desks and never see their wives/husbands till the next evening. It was not Nintendo that caused Iwata to work the way he did it, it was because of the ingrained culture of Japan.

The inspiration for Boo came from a developer working on Mario 3 who came home one night to find his normally quiet wife in a rage over his hours.

@impurekind not really. His comments are biased and NOT well researched. The Wii has had success from third parties, to the point they still release games on it. The Wii U suffered from large game droughts, confused consumers and a lackluster design philosophy (even the dev kits were difficult and not properly documented).

The Switch is definitely relying on Nintendo's first party games coming out each month and occasional big third party titles, and a bunch of indie games all over. My bet is that next year will show stronger third party support due to a promising install base. They still aren't doing a lot of advertising for third parties, but that's not something you are entitled to. That should be considered a bonus, not something to rely on.

And why should anyone get excited to get a half baked port months or years after the game came out on other consoles?

@ballistic90 - I agree, RAM wouldn't appear to be a huge issue. The base (original) PS4, for example, seems to make about 4.5 GB of the 8 GB on-board available to devs. (I'm getting that from a quick scan on the internet, not first-hand). Having said that then, it's going to be the pure computational power of the CPU/GPU, which is where the Switch is behind the PS4/XBox ONE. Digital Foundry did some excellent analysis on this point back in October/November last year, shortly after the reveal of the Switch.

I do agree that developers are getting a lot more support from both Nintendo and nVidia - I've seen this mentioned in articles (some on this site, some elsewhere) and this was what I was alluding to in my original post. That's the big step forward this generation over the Wii/Wii U era. Unreal 4 and Unity being fully supported is huge for independent studios using the more commonly available tools, and with Nintendo and nVidia helping squash bugs and such this can only be viewed as a positive. Given more time, I think we'll see more support for additional engines, whether proprietary or otherwise ... so long as it makes sense for all parties to entertain those costs.

I hadn't seen the comment about the APIs being more intuitive, but that's really heartening. Thanks for passing that info along!

@gcunit This is what bothers me about how a lot of third-party for Nintendo is being handled. I do not mind a belated port if, like Binding of Isaac AB+, the game on other formats hasn't been discounted or isn't so old that it's kind of a joke.

Oddworld's situation was a really funny one, for me, in that I recall it having been heavily discounted on both PS4 and PC mere weeks before the Wii U version's release — and the PS4 release included the PS Vita version as a free bonus back when such a thing was a really great incentive. So, naturally, even as somebody who had given the devs the benefit of the doubt and was willing to wait... I was swayed into not waiting.

To complain about the sales of your product when actively jeopardizing them through your own pricing decisions is just in poor taste, IMHO.

Hah! Another gold comment section.

You have the guy with its entitled opinion and then you have the clueless ones :>

(And of course, others like me, who have a great time reading these comments :^) )

Back on topic, the guy does have some valid points, because the Wii U was a flop in general. (Also wasn't this an interview from some time ago? Seems deliberately to post this now to generate drama...)

@DankeyKang89 - Thanks for sending the links! I'll give those a read.

I love the optimism here as well - you're absolutely right that, no matter what happens with Nintendo's hardware, they will always have their IPs to offer through software and other forms of entertainment. Personally, I'm very excited about the Universal deal! Probably more excited than a grown man should be about video game characters in an amusement park, but I'm OK with that.

A lot of developers live in their own bubbles, and let their personal biases skew their perceptions of reality. Wii was an overwhelming success, and the only reason a lot of 3rd parties didn't make as much money as they could have is because too many refused to take it seriously, insisted it was a fad, and only threw out cheap Wii Sports imitations. They have no one to blame but themselves for that.

You can especially see his blind bias in action when he claims the decision to use cartridges for Switch was for control on Nintendo's part-- completely overlooking the obvious fact that its portable nature is what made that necessary. Sure, that was true about N64, and the choice to use mini-discs on GameCube, but if his point was that Nintendo doesn't learn from their mistakes, the very fact that Wii and Wii U used traditional discs demonstrated the exact opposite.

@bcmikey nVidia made mention of the APIs at some point. As for the Digital Foundry assessment, they went over a stock chip that was mentioned for the Switch. They didn't actually run any performance tests on an actual unit at the time because none were available.

Alternatively, there was a screenshot about someone claiming to have run an unoptimised benchmark on a dev kit (a system with root access anyways), and the system ran a lot faster than expected, at maybe .9 Teraflops, with the benchmark not even detecting the 4th core on the processor. Now, yes, this is a shaky claim, but I never found anything definitive dismissing it either, so you might as well consider it as accurate as someone making an assessment on different hardware.

Sounds like he's pissed Oddworld didn't sell on Wii U. It was a floundering system, and the game isn't that great, and there's no nostalgia to carry it in this fanbase.

But watch countless others make money on Switch in his stead.

And btw, that comment concerning Iwata is completely out of line. Salty, reactionary comment out of spite for a small Wii U fanbase not eating up his $30 digital only port of Oddworld

@Wexter Oh sure, it's a cultural issue and there is a long history and reason behind it. But the main idea or speculation is simply that Iwata was working so hard for his company to try and turn things around that it negatively impacted him. Certainly doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility based on our observations.

@NF6429 The retort would be nice, if he wasn't being level-headed, and showing actual basic knowledge.

@greengecko007 What observations? Other than the fact that the poor man is dead?

@JaxonH Your entire comment comes off just as salty. Odd world New n Tasty was highly reviewed. Passing it off as not that great is indeed a reactionary comment and a great disservice.

Comes across as a little bitter to me. Doesn't seem very open minded either. Still, he is entitled to his opinion. I wonder if it has changed any over the last few months.

@MegaVel91 Observations about Japanese culture and the work ethic and expectations that come with it. Also the situation Nintendo was in at the time, and the numerous times Iwata stepped up to try and make things better, despite he himself not being in great health.

I wish he would come around but he has every reason to be salty. In some ways, Nintendo has been very good to indies, but only if they control the field. Nintendo has blocked a lot of quality titles from being ported to the Switch so far because they aren't "new or improved versions" of existing games or launching simultaneously with other platforms.

From Nintendo's perspective, they want to avoid the situation wherein they are receiving late ports that sell at full price (Wii U) and offer no additional content. If it's a deluxe - or expanded - version of the game, they see that as a positive.

It's too bad Lanning and Nintendo can't see eye to eye. As an Oddworld and Nintendo fan, I would love to see the "Soulstorm" on Switch.

@greengecko007
No salt here. It's him that sounds salty. I'm just pointing that fact out.

I own the game and it's not that great. It's a good game, but nothing spectacular. He released a decent game on a failing system without any previous games released in the series, and charged $30 For digital only among a fanbase that prefers physical for that much money.

The fact he's ranting on about Nintendo's thinking is bizarre. Nintendo doesn't make consoles with the sole intent of making HIM money, they make consoles with the intent of making THEMSELVES money. Their thinking is fine. It's his thinking that's off. The comment about Iwata, that's just straight up salt. A whole bag of it. I get that he's upside his game didn't meet expectations, but he's going off the deep end here.

@impurekind Are you being serious? So suddenly, you and this idiot know more about Iwata's terminal illness than he did?

Jesus, you need to stop and look at what you're saying every so often. Unbelievable.

@greengecko007 That's called being selfless.

Entitled whining is nothing new for this guy, unfortunately.

For instance:

http://www.mtv.com/news/2467585/lorne-lanning-microsoft-policy/

"At the business level, Microsoft isn’t acknowledging people like us,” Oddworld Inhabitants boss and industry long-timer Lorne Lanning says. “It’s as if we don’t matter.”

"There should be a big, mass firing and they should publicize that. Then they’d get people saying, ‘Hey, maybe there’s going to be a good change.’"

For starters, to suggest the Wii and Wii U both had pitiful 3rd party support is ludicrous and factually incorrect. The only Nintendo platform in history with better 3rd party software sales than the Wii was the DS.

Now one could argue that the Wii didn't make that much money for 3rd party developers who only made inferior ports of sports sims, shooters, and cinematic action games on PS360, but those who made games with the Wii audience in mind were met with great success.

Also, WTF does "Personally, I think it killed Iwata; that he couldn't move the organisation into a really successful arena" mean?? It's either being incredibly disrespectful, or the most incoherent mesh of words ever put together...

With this bitter attitude, I'm glad Oddworld bomb/underperform the way it did. Guys like this don't deserve success in any capacity.

Lol. Such a poor, entitled, butthurt little boy. His saltiness is delicious. x'D

@JaxonH A fact would be that Nintendolife's own review gave it an 8/10, which indeed corresponds to "great". Another fact would be that It's above an 80% on Metacritic, which is a great achievement and marks a well reviewed game.

Now of course I'm not gonna claim that you have to agree that the game is great. Everyone has their own preferences. But your negative opinion about the quality of the game as an attempt to rebuke the claims of the developer is indeed salty.

@impurekind Hey bud. Rather than telling people to open their mind to new opinions, instead of mindlessly following there own, which is exactly what you're doing, how about you provide concrete examples of things Nintendo do should do other than follow PS4 and Xbox into a weightlifting competition of specs? Because everything he said illustrates why 3rd party support is lacking on Nintendo platforms: 3rd parties ha -delightful- bake a port with less specs and features, and then get upset when it doesn't sell. You can't just be lazy and port the same game unless you're not tech-driven. That's why Nintendo games do so well on their platform: they understand that making the game fit the platform is far and away the best way to go.
This fella also condemns the portability as being irrelevant. How, exactly, is a key feature of taking hd games on the go irrelevant? Because they're not as shiny as they would be on Scorpio? Let's see how well those "big boy consoles" can take their consoles on the go, and see what kind of concessions they have to make.
His tone is absolutely a one-sided, anger-based rant. I noticed he didn't bring up the wonderful success games from companies like Atlus and numerous indie devs have had on 3ds, like Shovel Knight and Azure striker. Nintendo is providing a very different space for developers than other Co soles. Heck, you wanna talk about a lack of Promotions, Steam won't even show your game on a new release list if it's not a big Marquee title. I have a PC if I want to play games that look nice. And I have my switch on the go. What niche, then, is Microsoft and Sony fulfilling ? Persona is the only thing keeping my PS4 hooked up. Coming out of E3, a lot of indie devs are much happier with Nintendo support now more than ever before, so what exactly are they not learning? They have a great, unique piece of hardware, their games are great, they're helping 3rd parties more. The only thing that isn't working is the 3rd parties who keep doing lazy ports of the same stuff, rather than creating truly captivating software.

@Ralizah Bless this post.

@MegaVel91 Of course, but does someone who selflessly sacrifices themselves to save someone or something else change the fact that the act saving the other thing killed them?

I love how consumer focused he is! Oh...wait. Did he in one breath harp on about releasing a version months after the competitors and then in the next breath expect Nintendo to market it like it's a new game? Was his game on Wii U discounted to current other versions? The man is bitter about something lol. I would like third party support but they just don't want any effort. Switch isn't there to give em a free ride. It's a new proposition. Some devs sound like they are trying to get square blocks in triangle holes, and they really like to come across as smarter than that.

@greengecko007 No, but it shows a strength of character.

I usually side with how the 3rd parties feel about Nintendo from a business standpoint, but f*** this guy for that dumb a** comment on Iwata!

@MegaVel91 There is I gave up my vacation time to work overtime to push out a product then there is Japanese Business Culture. It is well reported that the expectations are exceptionally high. I do not believe it was work that caused Iwata's untimely passing, just pointing out that to claim Nintendo killed Iwata in someway downplays Japan's own problems as a country and demonises a company that the man lead and always wore his heart on his sleeve for.

Iwata lead by example and because of that endeared himself to his staff and his partners (during his early months as president he was debugging Smash Melee in the trenches! What president does that?). He was not a perfect president as he did oversee one of Nintendo's biggest failures, but also three of their biggest successes and righted the ship with the early years of the Switch. He may have fallen victim to a Japanese work culture, or maybe just an untimely passing. I think it is just rude to even make the claim to begin with.

@Ralizah Thanks for that gem. I thought he was just disconnected from Nintendo and yet willing to make rash statements without even understanding their offerings. Instead he appears to be disconnected from reality, instead. Apparently he's just a special snowflake that wants corporate benefactors to look after his well being.

I especially liked the part where he called for a mass-firing at Microsoft until they come around and give "people like [him] what [he] want[s]."

@MegaVel91 Sure. I don't see anybody denying that Iwata seemed to be a very good man.

This guy made 2 games for the playstation, 2 for xbox and 1 remake of his first game that dated from 1997.
He made only 4 games, re-released 2 of them in 'HD' and remade his first game.

His games are original and creative and do deserve attention but most people played the remake already or have little to no nostalgia for it and don't seem interested in it's quirky presentation and main character.

It's feels that he is a bit sour that he cannot live on old succes like Nintendo does but their legacy is much bigger than his.

@Agent721 Preach! That is such a problem with middleware and shovelware devs; many of them weren't groomed in a structured business environment and that plus the celebrity status that gaming brings a lot of average people, means way too many of them have no idea how to speak professionally. You don't say these things to clients, potential partners or consumers and expect everything to be ok.

That is before the fact that the oddworld series is middling (it isn't bad but it isn't a stellar series either) as and has no nostalgia tie on Nintendo systems to boost it.

Very unfortunate that he thinks that way. I hope that someday he will have a change of heart and that the success of the Switch will continue.

Having said that, I've never played any of his games, so I probably won't miss him if he never brings any of them to the Switch.

His comments don't carry a ton of weight with me personally. He's worked on one series and that series hasn't been relevant since the days of the Playstation and Xbox.

I downloaded Odd World Old and Tastey for free on my PS4. Got bored with it during the first level and deleted it. Maybe his games just suck.

And yes, if you release late ports to Nintendo's consoles they will be left in the dust. Release your games same day as the other consoles and it will sell much better. Can't believe this developer doesn't know this; must not be a very smart business owner.

Ok people, enough with the profanity on here, otherwise I'll just start deleting posts instead.

Funny, he says no one was making money with the Wii, and yet in a recent interview Sega said that they were doing great sales on the Wii, even on titles that weren't particularly great quality.

Now, who am I going to believe? A developer that actually took the time to create titles specifically for the Wii, or a guy who did nothing?

@MegaVel91 If I had to guess, I'd say Lorne Lanning is probably the sort of person who would scream and demand a manager if a waitress at Denny's didn't get his seasoned fries crispy enough.

@greengecko007
I was about to say that's fair, until I read your 2nd attempt to tell me I'm salty.

I'm just commenting on this dude who's ranting nonsense. That's not salt, that's observation. Call it whatever you want, but I'm not the one blaming Iwatas death on Nintendo refusing to make PS/Xbox clones

@NEStalgia It's a special sort of person who can go from "right now people like us are clearly not in Xbox One's business model" to "there should be a big, mass firing" in the space of a single interview.

I've only sifted through the first 30 or so comments (no time to read them all), but lets just say I agree with many of the posts that have been upvoted the most.

LOL at anyone who says Iwata wasn't a Nintendo legend long before (and after) his passing.

And obviously this dude was pretty passionate about his profession and let his words get away from him in a pretty unprofessional manner. I always loved the Oddworld games on PS1, but never bothered with them past that.

@Ralizah LOL, that's an understatement.

I does raise the question, though, if XBox has no place for him, and he has no faith in Nintendo succeeded or producing success for him because they have controls but shouldn't have controls but need 21st century controls, and are, apparently, too underpowered to run his 2D platformers, I'm curious, is Sony the company that has a place for him? Perhaps he's lining up with that new Atari box? Because so far it doesn't seem like the video games industry has much of a place in their business models for him...

This comment section is just as delicious as I expected it to be. Haha, I genuinely had a blast reading through these comments!
In addition, for every @impurekind there just has to be a single @NEStalgia (the latter is, as always, spot on. Took the words right of my mouth and then added a polished cherry on top. I don't even know what to say to add to his points).

I get the jist of people reacting to "Nintendo killed Iwata" is like the equivalent of saying "Your favorite characters are just functions" in Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: Everyone will get mad at poor wording despite solid points that were said

@StuOhQ mmm.... The problem right now with the Switch and indie developers is that their barrier for entry is not evenly applied and is not well communicated. They appear to be repairing that already, but their North American communications team seem to still be lacking.

Well I had fun reading the comments section LoL., I do agree the Iwata comment was of very bad taste and very uncalled for ., and to add my two cents , at the end of the day Nintendo is a business and I don't believe they owe him anything . AS for his predictions and complaints about the Nintendo Switch well let's just hope he likes the taste of CROW cause I'd say he is getting served some .

I haven't watched the interview so I'm relying on the quotes to represent it accurately, but Nintendo is a Japanese company that thinks in a Japanese way, so saying there's a problem with the thinking is saying there's a problem with thinking Japanese-ly, and that alone for me undermines anything he has to say. It doesn't mean he's wrong about everything, of course; just that if he's right it's an accident and not because he has any expertise or authority on the matter.

@NEStalgia I'm guessing he chilled out after Microsoft altered the policy he was so riled up about. It WAS a stupid policy, but it's the arrogant, unhinged, disrespectful way he talks about these companies that gets me.

Well that's just sad. A part of me was hoping that the Odyssey remake or maybe even the Exodus remake would come to Switch. I guess not though. A shame, since I loved the Oddworld games.

He sounds awfully salty about this though.

Well he isn't wrong about 3rd party, the big guys are avoiding the switch like the plague, they don't find it New & Tasty. Can't blame them really, especially reading many comments on many articles bitching about 3rd party devs and their games, got to say many switch owners don't deserve them, they do right releasing on other hardware where they are more appreciated, it's not all bad, hmm yes it is actually

@DrRandle See my last full comment above. . . .

@MegaVel91 I can agree their, i understand how people think he's not using basic logic with his statement, i personally dont agree with it. I was just stating that people misinterpreted the statement as iwata was killed by the stress, being a factor, this isnt true. But i do agree that he didnt use much logic in that line.

Lorne was wrong is just about as many ways as one can be wrong. I do agree, a little, that is hard for 3rd parties to make money on Nintendo consoles, but it didn't use to be. The hard truth Lorne has to accept is that companies use to compete better with Nintendo when it comes to making games, but MOST developers just can't match them.

You look at MS and they make almost nothing in house. I get that would be attractive to the lazy.

We've seen plenty of 3rd party and Indies do well on the Switch. However, if you're going to drop crap at me feet when titles like Zelda exist - then don't expect me to bite.

It's that simple devs.

@HappyMaskedGuy See my last full comment above (#214). . . .

He sounds like the kind of person who just thinks his experiences equal the reality of the entire world. He would definitely sit at home and claim if he was running Nintendo, the company would become much better and he'd save it from all its mistakes. It's not as though everything he is saying is a lie but if he wants to sit there and speak as if he's the voice of all the 3rd-party developers, he is just lying at that point.

Oh come on guys, the Switch is great, and I enjoyed, and paid for, Oddworld: New and Tasty on WiiU...

He brought Iwata into this statement. Shame on his soul!

I didn't like the Odd World remake. I loved the original on PS, I got the remake, thinking the voice accents would be the same

Sligeach Fire is gonna have fun with this one.

The old 3rd party/Ninty conundrum. Nintendo make hardware for themselves, to create the games they want. Always have, always will. 3rd party support was there for the SNES, but then lessened each subsequent generation. Howard Lincoln paid EA for support during the N64 era and Iwata did the same when the Gamecube was floundering. Didn't make one bit of difference, most gamers stuck with Playstation in the knowledge that the games would come. This is still true to this day.
So, for 20 years Nintendo hardware has struggled to attract 3rd party support regardless of hardware power or sales. Has this harmed Nintendo as a business? Not really. A shaky year or two with the 3DS and Wii U, otherwise printing money. Do people who buy Nintendo consoles expect decent western third party support? In the main, no, they buy Nintendo to play Nintendo.

That's Odd!!....... Boom boom.

You could hardly expect Nintendo to put a cd drive into a portable tablet.

He's just mad that they took the time building it for Wii u and didn't get too many sales. That has nothing to do with the Switch. Also, Iwata was already working on the Switch before his death so he was helping set this whole thing up which so far is successful. These guys will probably never work with Nintendo again. Shame cause I like odd world games.

What a load of nonsense. And I'm saying that as a huge Switch critic.
Seems like he's holding a grudge for some unknown reason.
If the Wii was so inprofitable for 3rd parties, then why is Ubisoft still releasing new Dance titles for it?

Clearly he doesn't know what he's talking about, because the Wii U had Unit support and the Switch supports the Unreal Engine among others.

And that part about Iwata was even more rubbish and disrespectful.

That guy really needs to get realty about it and he's not.

If getting your game launched on Nintendo's platform isn't a priority for you why should promoting your game be a priority for Nintendo?

Lanning: New 'n' Salty

As one of the few (only?) people on this entire comment thread who has actually spent time w/ Lorne Lanning in real life, I just have to add: this is just Lorne being Lorne (read: a drama queen)--he's notorious for this sort of thing and he does it because he wants the media coverage, period.

"He also claimed that Nintendo stuck with cartridges on Switch to control manufacturing and combat piracy. "It's all about Nintendo first," he said."

Who does he expect them to put first? They're not a charity.

Mad comment section, it's a veritable rollercoaster!

He doesn't know the difference between WII and WII U.
He doesn't know the Switch has 4 gigs of ram.
He doesn't know how the current indies Switch market works.
He doesn't know how many units have been sold.

Need I go on? on how many wrong statements and assumptions he made? my goodness.

@WiltonRoots the cart comment is utterly ridiculous: they went w/ carts for the same reason Sony did for Vita after using optical in the PSP--you can't drive a bloody optical drive with huge capacity on a mobile-type device, unless you want even less impressive battery life and more heat generation. The rest of it--piracy, etc.--is a secondary o tertiary concern.

This interview is about his point of view. Many things are true, other things are just his distorted point of view.
You can see with statements like "ohh...super mario mobile didn't sell well, or at least like they expected", but when someone tries to talk about pokemon, then "ohh pokemon is something so big that we can consider separated from nintendo".... That's just negativism.
You know, we just have to take to another path: Nintendo releases a console with the same power of a PS4 Pro and XB1X, will sell less and compete in the same segment. Will sell less, but will have crap ports from these companies without any efforts. Good for then, bad for Nintendo. Then they'll say "Nintendo should go third party, you know..." or "Nintendo needs to make something different".
And yes, a man that claims about goals and success is only able to point problems, not solutions (ok, not his work).
He doesn't know about Switch specs (clearly).
He says small cartridges are for "nintendo control" (not because it is portable... I guess he thinks it should have an external Bluray reader or use SD Cards maybe).
Honestly, someone so negative about Nintendo should not spend a second with Oddworld for a Nintendo System. Even because - unfortunately - it would sell well for Switch today, while the console is living with 1st Party + Indies.

@ECMIM Yep, you need rapid read/write with no moving parts for portable devices like that to even be viable in the first place.

Did he really say the Switch has less than 2 GB of ram?

I see a very distinct pattern between devs who just want to dump a late port on Nintendo's hardware and complaints about the low level of support.

Why would Nintendo promote a late port of a remake over a new indie game or an enhanced one? It's hypocritical to do the bare minimum and then complain Nintendo isn't promoting you as much as the indies who are doing more.

@ECMIM So basically, the man's an arse

@impurekind See my comment, you arrogant wee man.

@Rika_Yoshitake exactly. Basically "let's point everything that can be a problem" and about the good part, let's say "oh, it's a good hardware for a portable system, but this is irrelevant".

"I don't have faith. I have no faith. It's due to experience. I see a similar level of success than they had with previous generations. Wii U, Wii.

When it was pointed out that the Wii was pretty successful, Lanning countered by stating that very few third party publishers actually made any money off the console:

"How successful was it for third parties? By the end of the life of the Wii, who else was making money aside from Nintendo? How many titles sold for the Wii that weren't Nintendo first-party? They started basically evaporating third party support. We get to Wii U - same, no third party support."

Put that goalpost down!

@impurekind I just can't believe that you are so dumb that you can't see whats wrong with what the guy said. I know that you are pathetic hater but it's really unbelievable how stupid you can be, i feel sorry for you.

@rennandovale See my last full comment above (#214). . . .

@HeroponRiki
I thought that guy in the vid was sligy lol

@subpopz "How much did third parties make from Wii? Well, how many third parties put down Wii when it was new, like this guy is doing to Switch now, then saw it unexpectedly take off and so they start churning out shovelware garbage and lazy half-assed ports for it to try and get in on the action, rather than develop proper titles for it. Then he's shocked no one bought it? "

Makes me think of this. It never gets old. https://pietriots.com/2010/12/17/the-3rd-party-wall-of-shame/

The Iwata thing was kinda not cool to say but then again I dont put people on pedistals.

Oddworld hasnt made games in a long time I would have liked to see him makes games instead of giving poorly thought out statements.

@ECMIM Really? Kinda low for him to say stuff like this just to get attention

@impurekind
Are you the guys pr agent or just dense?

Wow. Internet overload!! 335 comments (And rising)?? I will admit, he did do some tell it like it is, which does have credence and can be proven. I... don't know if ALL 3rd party devs feel that way though. In the end, it was his perspective, I'll just take it at face value. And, I know what he was trying to get at with the Iwata comment, but, imo, it wasn't necessary to go that far just to justify a point about Nintendo causing stress and grief. I "get" it, but it was poor taste in words and at least could have been said with a little more tact while still getting his point across (again, just my opinion). Sorry about your experience on Nintendo platforms, Lorne, geez...

@HappyMaskedGuy Yeah. Apart from the insensitivity, It doesn't even really make sense. Lanning doesn't have any insider info and as far as anyone has heard Wii and Wii U were both brought about under Iwata's stewardship and had his full backing.

For the people saying that he is spot on, please make a list here of all things that are "spot on" on his statement.

He just buried himself more. He should not release games in Nintendo consoles again. His words are in poor taste. That Iwata part is sad.

I think what this story really needs is ... more comments. Keep 'em coming, people!

@SetupDisk See my last full comment above (#214). . . .

@Ryu_Niiyama We need to check our cards, I feel there's a winning line in here somewhere...

Pretty spot on. Third parties have been making similar comments for the past few years about nintendo.
I think nintendo are happy to run consoles without major third party support. They produce enough games on there own.
For me i purchase the switch(my last nintendo console was n64) for the portable factor. I will enjoy 2-3 games a year on it.
But my main gaming console comes from sony. As i have much more gaming choice. An more hardcore games.

@CreamyDream Nah, see the problem people are having on this forum is that what the man said besides the Wii U is wrong. Nintendo has been changing their mindset since 2013, and the fact that he is so dismissive of cartridges for the switch is downright dumbfounded. Nintendo has been pushing indies like crazy for years now.

I could go on and on.

Everyone needs to stop comparing Nintendo to its competitors. Sony & Microsoft NEED 3rd party support almost completely, while Nintendo almost completely DOESN'T need 3rd party support. As long as Nintendo hurries up and give the Switch some necessary features like YouTube & an Internet browser, it's gonna do just fine with the 1st party lineup just like their other systems other than the U.

Lorne Lanning is a loser..His company has not made a new game in decades and really who is guy..Nintendo is worth more money then he will ever be and nintendo will be around long after he is dead and gone..I really hope his weak company crashes and burns..Iwata was more of a man then this loser ever will be

@brendon987 Sony is nothing without third party and indies...

His games were never that great anyway.

@impurekind You do realise that people have an opinion which might actually be superior in logic to yours? Stop 'referring' people to your previous comment as if you have any authority on the subject whatsoever. It's pig ignorant.

@WiiUPS4Gamer I agree.
Sony/Microsoft strategy is to work with third party/indie. Plus release there own games.
Nintendo strategy is to release there own games and largely ignore third party support wishes.
Both models works.
I do wish that nintendo work with third parties more to get the best games release on ps3, xbox 360 ported to switch. There so many games i missout on that i would love to play on the go.

I dont think he's entirely wrong. I was doing a bit of digging as to why the gamecube truly failed. I think the reasoning that Nintendo wants too much control is something I agree with. They are changing but ever so slowly. I'll link some articles so people can do some more reading.

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/games/nintendo/262192/how-the-gamecube-made-nintendo-cynical

http://www.dromble.com/2014/01/07/dolphin-tale-story-of-gamecube/

Finally, a third-party developer that actively hates Nintendo and wants to see them fail. I always wanted to see candid arguments from developers rather than pundits against Nintendo and it took this long for one to come along with serious points against them.

@deucezulu22 The cartridge comment is pure cynicism with no basis in reality. Given the Switch's concept, they had no choice 'but' to use cartridges. What did he want them to use, Vita style disks? Yeah because that wouldn't be problematic in terms of battery life or making the form factor even chunkier. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Bunch of idiotic and even distasteful comments by him. Yeah, Nintendo totally chose to use cartridges to keep control of manufacturing and piss of Third Parties. Not, because the damn system is a portable and optical disc drives not only use too much power and space, but are also easy to break in case you drop the system.
Also, Nintendo DID promote Oddworld. At least in Europe! They used huge banners when it was released AND promoted it, when it was on sale. As a matter of fact, I only know this game exists thanks to Nintendo's marketing he claims doesn't exist. He comes off as unnecessary bitter and malicious.

Totally unnecessary comments concerning Mr. Iwata. And I'm confused about his first comment: he says that he sees a similar level of success as the Wii era. If that's the case, he doesn't have faith how?

And I think that we should get the "it's easy to port titles over to the Switch" cleared up. This guy's saying it takes too much time and energy to port. He seems to blame Nintendo for a lot of problems.

@MsgBoardGamer I agree with you, it's just sad to see the same haters screaming how RIGHT they are without pointing any proof to their dumb claims.

The butthurt is palpable.

Well, for whatever much or little this is worth of me to say, my immediate reaction to this is to think how much of an impact Switch has made to gaming in just four months vs what kind of impact Oddworld has made to gaming over two decades, and pretty much just write Mr. Lanning off.

Time will tell, of course. But rather than having a ring of validity to it to my ears, it sounds more like having a ring of butthurt. But I guess Lanning and Switch believers like myself will just have to let the courts of hindsight settle the dispute for us.

Til then, my Switch will get a lot more use than his games.

Cheers!

This comment section has went to the gutter.

@WiltonRoots man this article is so good, I think NL should talk to the guy who wrote it and get his permission to have it pinned on the website for every time someone talks about Nintendo consoles and third party support. A truly embarrassing wall of shame and solid proof that even when Nintendo beats the competition easily they will still find excuses for not even trying

I always find it funny that people want Nintendo's platforms to be more like Sony's and Microsoft's, but at the same time, will complain that there's no originality in the game industry...

@impurekind Spot on.... in terms of getting his facts and wording wrong. He seriously believed the Switch has less than 2 GB of RAM (when it's actually 4 GB) when this was recorded.
Like @Grandpa_Pixel said in his first comment, I lost my respect pretty fast when when listening to his opinions regarding Nintendo in this talk show. He's acting like it's their fault for his port of a game well over ten years old not selling well on a system that is now widely regarded as Nintendo's Dreamcast in the last year of it's lifespan. And saying the company's lack of "thinking" killed their president was an incredibly insolent comment.
I wouldn't be surprised if he makes a decision to release a game for the Switch after all this backlash and then complain about how it was * insert generic excuse * here.

@Pigeon Allow me to blank your stupid comment.

In today's comments:

1) people who cling to one single sentence so as to not acknowledge the rest of his points.
2) people who don't remember the slow, painful death of the Wii in terms of third-party support.
3) people who get mad at someone for not knowing the specs of the Switch when Nintendo themselves has not disclosed them.

Wow. That just blew up this community.

But actually, that was really disrespectful no matter how you put it.

@brendon987 Sony hardly releases any first party games as Nintendo does and so they would not last if it were not third party they would defeated

@victimOfNirvana If you're a developer who says they don't like X system because it's underpowered and then proceeds to try and back that up by talking about how it has such little RAM and gets the size wrong, then they do deserve backlash for getting their facts wrong. Nintendo did actually confirm months ago that the Switch has 4 GB of RAM.
And as I've just proved, it's not just one distasteful comment about one of the most influential figures in the industry that's wrong with what this dev said regarding Nintendo during his time on the show.

@gortsi It's a great site full stop. But yeah that one article is pretty special.

I will always consider the GameCube to be Nintendo's best console just as much as I love the Dream Cast.

If this guy had developed a game 1/10th as good as most of Nintendo's first party output .. I might give a listen . He seems to constantly resurrect himself as some kind of rock star as a result of what ? Developing the Oddworld series ? Give me a break already .

@gcunit Second class citizens.... Old ports with all the DLC like Fate/Extella and Disgaea 5 help soften the blow.

But then there's Xenoverse 2, being both full price and adding none of the DLC. What is one to think when one sees that and has ANY other console? I mean, I'd love to support third-parties, but not like this...

this guy needs to lay off the drugs cause wat he's saying is bs.

Whether he meant it offensively or not, horrible choice of words about Mr. Iwata. Iwata was an amazing creator and spoke highly of the Switch (NX at that time).

But even so, I think this guy is completely wrong. Nintendo is successful even without 3rd party support. I think this year for Nintendo has been it's best in a long time, and I absolutely love my Switch. Now there are some things to work out, but we can see that some system updates and improvements to things will come in the future. Breath of the Wild is absolutely amazing, may be my favorite game ever. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and back some of my favorite characters and a battle mode and made a game I already loved a whole lot better. And Arms is such a fun fresh take on fighting games and a blast as well.

The fact that Nintendo so called lacks thinking is absolutely 100% incorrect. Lots of review sites, gamers, and other game developers rave about how Nintendo's games like BoTW, Arms, and Splatoon have not only been unique but some developers like the Witcher's director said that the bar has been set with Breath of the Wild.

And to be honest, I think Mr. Iwata would be very pleased on how successful this console has been in just 5 months. And this guy has some guts by the way cause he just set off the whole Nintendo community, not cool dude.

Ok so off the bat this guy says Third party developers are going to struggle with the Switch, yet every third party developer said the Switch is the easiest to develop for. Heck Snake pass got ported over in a day of work.

@patbacknitro and were getting another disgaea game which is in the works plus plenty of rpgs coming this year for switch as well.

@brendon987 Microsoft literally have a parity clause that means if they don't get an indie game the same day as the PS or Nintendo release they completely refuse it.

Also with how Nintendo treated Shovel Knight can you really say Nintendo's approach to indie games is bad? When they have a good third party exclusive(timed) they've given massive support and promotion.

He might be right but the Wii was very successful for some 3rd parties. Do people think there'd be annual FIFA, dance games etc. if they weren't selling.

It obviously didn't do that well for a number of high profile companies that invested decent money in certain games.

It's unknown territory with the Switch, we've never had Nintendo focused on 1 console

maybe he needs to make better games for the Nintendo crowd. I hope we get better 3rd party games for switch soon... releasing crap games isn't gona cut it. neo fricken geo really? I will have to try out some of the fun looking games that are on smart phones, im sure they will play better with real buttons

@impurekind He might have said some things that aren't too far off the truth, but he is obviously just pissed off at Nintendo and that shows in all he says and the way he says it. That takes away a great deal of credibility.

Nintendo has a long way to go to change some of its thinking and make itself a more open and developer friendly company. Japanese companies are quite closed and averse to change. Nintendo isn't perfect by any means. But that said, he's also blaming Nintendo because his games didn't do better. Well, to put it nicely, that is just ridiculous. You can't expect to make a mediocre game (or wonderful game, I'm not judging his games here) and then make Nintendo sell it for you. Should Nintendo provide better tools for promoting games? Yes, they should. Should Nintendo do everything to sell your game no matter how good or bad it might be? Hell, no!

You yourself said, that you've got more knowledge about the development process that we all combined. That's all well and good. You all also call us all naive. That's all well and good. But... expecting Nintendo to do the job for you (and I don't mean you or Lorne directly, but the development community as a whole) is being naive. And with all that knowledge about the development process that you've got (again "you" being use in general), you should know that it is your job and responsibility first to make a game that people will enjoy, and then to make people know about that game. If the game sells is because you did a good job, and if it doesn't sell is because you did a poor job. Nintendo has nothing to do there. Don't be naive.

And what I said is just the "harsh, cold truth". And gold, gold it is too!
You said to other person here (and I now I mean you directly) that "I'm sure it's beyond pointless trying to convince you of anything other than what you've already told yourself to think and believe here."
Well, that quote applies to you too exactly as written!!

You, yourself sound quite bitter too towards Nintendo. I don't know why and I don't care but biased comments and calling people, naive or sheep won't make you any more right.

I'm not trying to argue with you. I'm just telling you what my "unknowledgeable about the development process" opinion is. Also I don't tell people they're sheep when they disagree with me.

Wow, I wrote way more than I intended. Now, sadly, I need to get back to work because Nintendo isn't going to do my job for me. Have a good day!

@impurekind
Eh....
I DON'T need AAA 3rd party games for Switch as I know mostly of them are nsfw games that I hate most.

I'm happy with some 3rd party games that still contribute their Kid Friendly games, same like they did for NDS & 3DS games such as Harvest Moon / Fantasy Life / LEGO City / FF Crystal Chronicles Ring of Fates / Petz series / Cooking Mama series / MySims series / Minna no series by Taito / etc.

I don't live in La La La Land. I just only NEED Appropriate games. I DON'T need at all AAA nsfw 3rd party games. Nintendo can still survive with some 3rd party developers or Indies that contribute More Kid Friendly games and Teen games (Still Safe for Watch).

These kind of butthurt rants always baffle me. It would be awesome to see Nintendo open up more and provide robust developer tools and support (no region lock is a good first step), but what does that have to do with Iwata's passing? Or his success? Does this guy just completely forget the Wii, DS, and 3DS? You know, those things that printed money.

I get it, Nintendo does need to get with the times in a lot of respects, but everyone seems to constantly ignore the amazing games (better than any Oddworld, imo) that they are STILL making, and the fact that Nintendo inspired a vast majority of the super hip indie and smaller developer titles.

While the comment about Iwata was unwarranted - how would Lorne really know the background - there is a valid debate. Is Nintendo putting prohibitive conditions on indie developers? Or are they expecting too much leeway on a new platform, especially after the poor performance of Wii U? I feel he has a point, but was possibly over-egging the pudding a bit, which diminished his more salient arguments (and not just witj the Iwata comment). Here's another video which explores similar themes with a Switch title - worth watching: https://youtu.be/F4s71LCxS7M

@Lewieboy124 Can you cite me your sources? The only thing I can find is a story about when Samsung accidently posted the Switch's RAM module's details on its website, and then took it down (probably because Nintendo asked). There's no official source that I can find citing the 4 GB figure. Even the Wikipedia page says this number without sources.

THIS GUY IS JUST A NINTENDO HATER.PLUS HIS GAME LOOKED LIKE CRAP

@electrolite77 NOPE.THE PROBLEM IS NINTENDO MAKES BETTER GAMES THAN THE CRAPPY THIRD PARTY DOES AND THATS WHY THE THIRD PARTY WONT MAKE MONEY CAUSE THEY SUCK

POWER DOESSNT MEAAN SQUAT IF THE GAMES ARE ALL LAME WAR OR RUN AND GUN GAMES.

I'D NEVER BUY NONTENDO CONSOLE FOR THIRD PARTY ETHER THEY COME TO NINTENDO OR THEY DONT GET MY SUPPORT OR EKNOLEDGMENT

@impurekind lol, spot on my bootay. Plenty of 3rd party companies made a poo load from the Wii. Just because his game sucked and nobody bought it doesn't mean he has any point to make about Nintendo at all.

Nintendo is indicative of Japan as a whole; inert, sclerotic, and stuck in the past.

Both will continue to muddle through, living on previous success. Neither entity will change until they hit a wall. For the former I hope that isn't bankruptcy (thinking quite a way into the future).

"I think it killed Iwata"

Jesus, that's quite a claim.

@Shiryu Are you staff? This interview is pretty great for a post.

https://gonintendo.com/stories/284728-nintendo-on-switch-production-multiple-switch-titles-in-the-work

Nintendo don't care about 3rd party, people who bought Nintendo console don't care about 3rd party either. So, what's the problem?

3rd partys' game on Nintendo console looks inadequate and not fun compared to 1st party Nintendo games. Has always been like this and will always be like this. Lousy 3rd party who can't make fun games shouldn't even bring their games to Nintendo console, it will make them look bad... its a waste of effort and time.

Constructive criticism. That's what will make Nintendo improve, and that is what Lanning gave them. Although harsh, he easily pointed out the weakest points of the Switch while giving suggestions to improve. Great work. Good to see that there are very few Pachters and more Lannings out there.

I mean. Just give me good games. I'll play the third party games I want to play on my PC.

A lot of developers who complain like this have not taken the type to get familiar on how to develop on the console or make an exclusive game on a Nintendo console. You have developers like 13AM Games who made Runbow and KnapNok Games who made Affordable Space Adventures on Wii U and both sold well. Then you have Yacht Club Games who used the Wii U and 3DS versions of Shovel Knight to make funds for releasing it on PS4 and Xbox One. Wayforward Technologies did the same thing with releasing Shantae & the Pirates Curse on 3DS and Wii U to later release PS4 and Xbox One versions. New 'n Tasty came out on Wii U over a year after the PS4 and Xbox One versions came out. Sony even had it for free on PSN before it released on Wii U. This does not help any game.

Hi to all & nice to meet you.Reading for a long time your news but didnt signed up to comment until now.
All i see the last days is some developers criticizing the switch for how underpowered is and etc. I think this is done because there is a mass problem worldwide with the switch's stock and the main problem for that is Samsung. From the start every single one knew that its an underpowered console but a fully unreal4 compatible console (fully comp. after an update ) . This mister here is very negative with nintendo because being negative with nintendo is the main thing with nintendo these days. Oddworld was a good game at 90's.And i think even WiiU (correct me if im wrong) was at most , after the 1st parties made their way on the console , an indie machine. either way there's an old meaning says "You can’t see the wood for the trees." (that's the eng. translate at least ).

And by the way the whole world has problem with stock in switch and at my country , every store has at 5-10 consoles on their shelves.

@CreamyDream Exactly. I think alot of people jumped the gun on an Iwata insult.