I really don't have any empathy for their stance on Xenoblade. When the Wii came out, everyone was begging for large, big budget games on it. I remember E3 2006, with the 'on the show floor' interviews one of the third party studios was asked "is this coming to the Wii?" and responding, "that's the question we get most now." There was a lot of demand for games like that but Nintendo never gave them a chance, and third parties had already abandoned the platform for major games in development.
It's like what happened to No More Heroes 2. Ubisoft published that in North America and assumed it wouldn't sell, so the number of copies put on shelves was almost nothing. I remember going to Best Buy on launch day to pick it up, and asked where it is. He said they got 5 copies and it sold out in 30 minutes.
They were probably right about Xenoblade not making money if they released it at the time they did, but to me it feels like they dug their own grave. It's not all Nintendo's fault, but if you don't invest you won't get a return.
It's amazing how many people are saying power = third party support. It means nothing, the only thing that matters is the installed base. If Nintendo sells 50 million units in two years, third parties will run to it like mad... with crappy ports of old games. If it's two times more powerful than the PS4 and it sells 10 million units after two years (which is better than the Wii U), it will be ignored.
The only way they'll get third party support is if it's cheap and easy to port software to. But even if it was a PS4 clone, third parties wouldn't care to do the marketing & publishing work necessary to support a platform with no install base. At best they might release a couple titles at launch to hedge their bets, like they did with the Wii U.
No matter what, I see this console being ignored by third parties for a couple years unless they come up with another Revolution. I don't see Nintendo designing a console for third party needs; I only see them coming up with something that they'll be able to sell in large quantities, whatever that is. Power is only one factor in that, and an expensive one.
Nintendo needs a console with a PowerPC chip, unless they want to throw away all the Gamecube, Wii, and Wii U stuff they've done. Otherwise they'd start out with zero software, which is just stupid. It's likely that NX will debut with the next Zelda game, which has also been confirmed for Wii U. That reminds me of the dual release they did for Twilight Princess (something Reggie hinted at recently saying it contributed to a good Wii launch). I think it's likely that it's going to be like the New 3DS.
To attract third parties, they need (a) a platform that's easy to develop and (b) a user base. They'll definitely address (a), that's the point of merging their portable & home console divisions a few years back. It's also the Wii U's biggest problem. Really it just needs to be good enough to be an Unreal Engine 4 target platform; give it enough cores and enough RAM and a better GPU, and it's useable.
The user base... the Wii U's software problem was that because of (a), everything was delayed. And of course it didn't help that people thought the Wii U was just a peripheral for the Wii, because of really dumb branding.
The only thing I can see a new console being good for is being a better platform to develop on. If they released a generic box that was just as powerful as the PS4, people still wouldn't want to buy it, and third parties wouldn't care because there's already the PS4 which is doing well. Even if it was more powerful than the PS4, who cares? They're still going to target the PS4 anyway and just port stuff to the 'more powerful' console as an afterthought. It's like how Gamecube launch titles look better than Wii launch titles because third party developers started using PS2 middleware for everything.
But, back to hardware, making the PowerPC 750 run with three cores for the Wii U was an interesting magic trick; that CPU was blazingly fast (at its debut over 15 years ago) because it was designed for single core only. Unless IBM can pull out a brand-new PowerPC architecture chip out of a some magic hat and ramp up production, I'm pretty sure the NX will be based on the Wii U's multicore chip's CPU (hopefully at least six cores to make a useful difference). The only other successors to the PowerPC 750 are Motorola's old G4 chips, and the G5 that's used in the Xbox 360 & PS3. Neither of those are options, because (a) Motorola's not IBM (not to mention dead) (b) those chips are expensive & inefficient.
Reading that the battle dialog was 11,000 lines and made the voice actors lose their voices, I decided to check who the Japanese cast was. For the female avatars, you have a bunch of choices including Atsuko Tanaka (Major Kusangi from GITS), and Shiori Katsuta (Melia from Xenoblade). #$!@!!!
I REALLY hope they include the Japanese voices in the Western releases, but it's a lot of data >_<
Comments 4
Re: Chris Pranger From Nintendo Treehouse Discusses Harsh Realities Of Localisation
I really don't have any empathy for their stance on Xenoblade. When the Wii came out, everyone was begging for large, big budget games on it. I remember E3 2006, with the 'on the show floor' interviews one of the third party studios was asked "is this coming to the Wii?" and responding, "that's the question we get most now." There was a lot of demand for games like that but Nintendo never gave them a chance, and third parties had already abandoned the platform for major games in development.
It's like what happened to No More Heroes 2. Ubisoft published that in North America and assumed it wouldn't sell, so the number of copies put on shelves was almost nothing. I remember going to Best Buy on launch day to pick it up, and asked where it is. He said they got 5 copies and it sold out in 30 minutes.
They were probably right about Xenoblade not making money if they released it at the time they did, but to me it feels like they dug their own grave. It's not all Nintendo's fault, but if you don't invest you won't get a return.
Re: Talking Point: Raw Power Isn't Vital to Nintendo's NX, But It Does Matter
It's amazing how many people are saying power = third party support. It means nothing, the only thing that matters is the installed base. If Nintendo sells 50 million units in two years, third parties will run to it like mad... with crappy ports of old games. If it's two times more powerful than the PS4 and it sells 10 million units after two years (which is better than the Wii U), it will be ignored.
The only way they'll get third party support is if it's cheap and easy to port software to. But even if it was a PS4 clone, third parties wouldn't care to do the marketing & publishing work necessary to support a platform with no install base. At best they might release a couple titles at launch to hedge their bets, like they did with the Wii U.
No matter what, I see this console being ignored by third parties for a couple years unless they come up with another Revolution. I don't see Nintendo designing a console for third party needs; I only see them coming up with something that they'll be able to sell in large quantities, whatever that is. Power is only one factor in that, and an expensive one.
Re: Rumour: Nintendo NX Won't Be As Powerful As PlayStation 4
Nintendo needs a console with a PowerPC chip, unless they want to throw away all the Gamecube, Wii, and Wii U stuff they've done. Otherwise they'd start out with zero software, which is just stupid. It's likely that NX will debut with the next Zelda game, which has also been confirmed for Wii U. That reminds me of the dual release they did for Twilight Princess (something Reggie hinted at recently saying it contributed to a good Wii launch). I think it's likely that it's going to be like the New 3DS.
To attract third parties, they need (a) a platform that's easy to develop and (b) a user base. They'll definitely address (a), that's the point of merging their portable & home console divisions a few years back. It's also the Wii U's biggest problem. Really it just needs to be good enough to be an Unreal Engine 4 target platform; give it enough cores and enough RAM and a better GPU, and it's useable.
The user base... the Wii U's software problem was that because of (a), everything was delayed. And of course it didn't help that people thought the Wii U was just a peripheral for the Wii, because of really dumb branding.
The only thing I can see a new console being good for is being a better platform to develop on. If they released a generic box that was just as powerful as the PS4, people still wouldn't want to buy it, and third parties wouldn't care because there's already the PS4 which is doing well. Even if it was more powerful than the PS4, who cares? They're still going to target the PS4 anyway and just port stuff to the 'more powerful' console as an afterthought. It's like how Gamecube launch titles look better than Wii launch titles because third party developers started using PS2 middleware for everything.
But, back to hardware, making the PowerPC 750 run with three cores for the Wii U was an interesting magic trick; that CPU was blazingly fast (at its debut over 15 years ago) because it was designed for single core only. Unless IBM can pull out a brand-new PowerPC architecture chip out of a some magic hat and ramp up production, I'm pretty sure the NX will be based on the Wii U's multicore chip's CPU (hopefully at least six cores to make a useful difference). The only other successors to the PowerPC 750 are Motorola's old G4 chips, and the G5 that's used in the Xbox 360 & PS3. Neither of those are options, because (a) Motorola's not IBM (not to mention dead) (b) those chips are expensive & inefficient.
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles X Development Details Emerge in Iwata Asks Interview
Reading that the battle dialog was 11,000 lines and made the voice actors lose their voices, I decided to check who the Japanese cast was. For the female avatars, you have a bunch of choices including Atsuko Tanaka (Major Kusangi from GITS), and Shiori Katsuta (Melia from Xenoblade). #$!@!!!
I REALLY hope they include the Japanese voices in the Western releases, but it's a lot of data >_<