Topic: Why doesn't 3rd party sell on Nintendo?

I have heard recently that one of the reasons why the big N hasn't gotten a lot of 3rd party support since SNES other than the being really nasty with them in the olden days is because 3rd party doesn't sell on Nintendo consoles. Do you think this is true and if so why? Keep it civil, if I can stay civil and I'm a huge Nintendo fanboy so can you. Thankfully people here have been debating pretty calmly and rationally so I probably didn't even have to add that.

3rd party games sell well on Nintendo platforms..... Kingdom Hearts 3D sold incredibly well and thats from Square Enix. Capcom's Resident Evil:Revelations sold incredibly well on 3DS. Those are just 2 examples. I can name alot more. I think it really depends on if there is enough desire for the game, if the demo is mindblowingly awesome, and when the game is being released.

I will also say that Nintendo gamers have a certain standard when it comes to games. So when some 3rd party games don't sell well... its either because the 3rd party game is missing content, the game sucks, OR... because the game doesn't fit the standard that Nintendo gamers have.

I second this. Large third party developers usually just slap on a port on Nintendo consoles which are usually terrible instead of making unique content. I want to try Deus EX since they said they worked it from the ground up.

It can be because of several reasons:
1) The game is a mediocre port and/or the publisher barely acknowledges the port exists (see Call of Duty: Ghosts).
2) The game went for a crowd that isn't often found on Nintendo systems.
3) The game had already limited appeal and was probably not going to sell well on any platform.
4) It was sent to compete against top-tier Nintendo franchises which is a deathwish.
etc.

There are third-party games that have and continue to sell well on Nintendo platforms, though more often than not they have established history on Nintendo platforms.

There's really no one reason. It is a really long and complicated tale, extending all the way back to the NES era. Maybe tomorrow I'll write it if no one else does, I'm too tired to put it all together today...

One of the reasons is the demographic Nintendo caters to. Things like Sonic and Just Dance and Rayman sell, but things like CoD and Assassin's Creed don't.

Probably because they rapidly abandoned N64 so Nintendo became the Nintendo and Nintendo and Nintendo console. Granted, this idea is only half true and the other half is denying that games that aren't actively trying to be SUPER HARDCORE BRO!!!! exist.

Pretty much this.

During the 64 bit era Nintendo lost the Majority of its marketshare at the time to Paystation. The kids who bought nes/snes moved onto the the Playstation brand and looked at Nintendo as now being Kiddie or a guilty pleasure. Now all those same kids who abandoned Nintendo are in charge of the Industry, the problem will be compunded as more of MY generation (10-21) will grow up with Playstation and Xbox Nostalgia.

Its a combination of that, old resent from the Yamauchi era, and Nintendo not really fostering a Market for those types of games on their systems. At the end of the day where were all the Wii U proponents when ZombiU or wonderful 101 cratered.

One of the biggest reason is because third parties give Nintendo shoddy ports and then say, "Well, you didn't buy our shoddy ports, so why should we make good games for you?" When they do give us a proper port or when they do make a good game, then they do sell well. I don't like how they make us Nintendo gamers have to jump through hoops in order to get good games, then even if we do buy the games they still don't give us the good games. It's not like xbox or playstation gamers have to do that. Plus, even when they do make a good game for a Nintendo system, they usually port it to the other systems with extra features (Resident Evil 4, Goldeneye (Reloaded)).

Other reasons games by other publishers don't sell on nintendo systems:

-Publishers release LATE ports on nintendo systems
-Publishers release games in a big series, but haven't released the original on a nintendo system
-Publishers don't advertise at all (Strangely, many gamers seem to think Nintendo's at fault for this...)

Oddly enough, the massive success of Nintendo's handhelds may play a large role in their home consoles not getting the third-party support they need. Most Japanese developers have shifted most of their development resources to handhelds, and many see little reason to support Nintendo's consoles when they can make more money, reach a larger audience, and take fewer risks by making a game for Nintendo's handhelds.

The rise of Western Third-Party developers have done no favors for Nintendo either. Most of the biggest ones like EA, Bethesdea, Acitivision, Rockstar, and Valve found their early success on PCs and other platforms such as Sega, Atari, Sony, and Microsoft. As a result, they are less loyal to Nintendo, and their core audience is unlikely to buy the games on Nintendo platforms. This is in sharp contrast to Konami, Capcom, Square Enix, and other major Japanese companies who found their early success on Nintendo's platforms.

That's one of the main reasons why Western developers seem to be so indifferent to Nintendo's platforms. Most of them have little to no history with Nintendo.

Plus, Nintendo's hardware design philosophy turns off third-party developers. While the others focus on going with common standards that the rest of the market is following, Nintendo goes their own direction with hardware. While this allow Nintendo to build their own games that are suited to their own hardware, third-party developers are often left building games for platforms that use different standards, and the payoff is often not worth learning to work on Nintendo's hardware.

When major 3rd (also second?) party titles crash, I really don't want to stand in the ruin and claim to have standards.
There is a reasonable line to hold, of course, where other publishers should be held accountable for sub-par efforts.

Yet faced with picky customers, the more likely scenario would see third parties turn to other consoles, where they might find an audience. And if they are successful on those platforms, don't look for them to come back either!

ZombiU sold decently well, the problem is that it fell into impossible budget nonsense.

But yeah Wonderful 101's fate is borderline inexcusable.

One of the problems is that not enough people even have a Wii U yet, which is a HUGE shame! It is a fabulous system

While I dislike the saying I do feel there is a bit of truth in the Nintendo Gamers only buy Nintendo games ideal.

Going back to the 5th generation, when the PlayStation came out, Sony was eagerly handing 3rd party developers out anything they wanted, and when Nintendo finally released their 3D system, they used cartridges, which 3rd parties found reprehensible due to their meager storage (1/10th of one CD, and multiple CD's could be used on PS1 and Saturn), and long and expensive manufacturing time (Not to mention they had to get the cartridges direct from Nintendo). Nintendo even admitted later that they had made the system hard to develop for, in an effort to remove poor quality developers from the equation. Virtually all 3rd parties went to Sony, and most would only develop exclusively for the PlayStation.

In the next generation, Nintendo finally went to optical media, which brought 3rd parties back to a moderate extent, but even then, the PlayStation 2 had uncontested popularity (Even 2nd place, the Xbox, had a little over 1/6 the sales of the PlayStation), and most 3rd parties preferred to develop for the PS2.

Even when the Wii gained mass success for Nintendo, they had tried to encompass the most varied and undefined demographic possible, and many Wii owners had their systems collect dust save for social occasions, waggle games, or Nintendo games, so it was almost impossible for 3rd parties to sell AAA titles for the system. The system was weak as well, which meant that ports between the HD consoles and the Wii were nigh impossible, so third parties had to choose between developing for the HD systems or the Wii, and the vast majority went for the former, since they had a vastly superior track record.

Now, that we're on the Wii U, Nintendo has tried to get some of the gamers they lost with the Wii back on board, but the very low install base is making 3rd party games risky ventures and compounded with a bad history of failure on Nintendo systems, many 3rd parties have been content to leave it at PS360 ports. They probably will still have problems even if that does improve, since it will still have the power problems the Wii did.

The developers preferred to develop for the playstaion because it used DVD which not only boosted sales but held more data than mini disc. Gamecube got screwed hard, teh Japanese developers stayed with the Playstation, and the few western devs nintendo had jumped ship as that part of the industry went with the xbox.

Because of this, I am not sure if Nintendo will ever get back to the glory days (Pre Gamecube) When every developer worked with Nintendo and Nintendo barely missed on any games except for Sony Exclusives.