Nintendo dropping the ball again?

So, all that talk of working with third-parties more closely must have just meant they would help publishers with the Wiimote. And here I was hoping for better third-party support all around, including online and letting them use Miis.

I understand that Nintendo wants to bring out new features gradually, but waiting until a minimum of 2008 to let third-parties develop online games is ridiculous. Even if Nintendo does not have the infrastructure ready, the least they can do is give third-parties the tools (even beta tools) to develop online games, and then a time-frame of when they expect the service to be ready. Even though Nintendo was not into online for the Gamecube, Sega went ahead and created a couple of online games, but now more publishers are asking for online kits and Nintendo is stone-walling them, which is insane. Waiting too long to give developers the tools they need will discourage them from making online capable games and will be detrimental to the Wii's game catalog.

Third-parties should also have access to the Miis. Although the Mii idea seemed to have come late in the design for the Wii, Nintendo needs to let third-parties have access to use them. The only reason not to let other developers use Miis in their games is that Nintendo wants to keep exclusive to their titles, which directly contradicts their statement of working more with publishers.

Nintendo needs to continually work on their relationships with third-parties if it wants a steady flow of titles from them. They cannot make the mistake of giving third-parties access at the beginning of the system, only to block them from later features. I know Nintendo wants to be first out of the gate for all their new features, but maybe they should let third-parties have a go at it and then Nintendo can learn from their mistakes.

Sources

http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2007/03/03/snk-president-talks-about-neo-geo-on-the-vc/    Votes: 1

Posted by Steve

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