Nintendo Explain their Attitude to Third Party Publishers

If you own a Wii U, it might almost seem like you’re being ignored by the big publishers. Sure, you’re getting Call of Duty (who isn’t?) and Square Enix managed to release Deus Ex to the system, but there are certainly some big holes. In an investors meeting, President Iwata revealed how Nintendo look at third parties.

In terms of how we view our relationship with third-party publishers, I think it is natural that there is a difference between publishers who have the software development resources like Nintendo’s to build a software lineup of their own and publishers who do not. Since former President Yamauchi passed away, I have been considering what he taught us in the end, and his words that the worst thing we can do in entertainment is to follow what others are doing spoke directly to my heart. Following and imitating others is the kind of reasoning that Nintendo tries to avoid the most, and while we certainly do not have a negative attitude toward strengthening our ties with third-party publishers, employing the same methodology as the other manufacturers would only lead to the most simplistic competitive approaches, such as price wars or money-giving that would never end. We would like to take a unique approach of our own and build sustainable relationships with our third-party publishers.

That’s a really long winded way of saying they won’t be putting as much cash and time into wooing the third party publishers, which is either fantastic or a real shame. If you love Nintendo games, there’s not much in the way of worry. Nintendo are always going to support the Wii U, and if you’re happy with one or two releases a month (with three or four major releases a year), this isn’t going to change anything.

On the other hand, it’s possible that wanting to do things differently – a company aim that’s been both very successful and terribly unsuccessful – is stopping a bigger level of success. Would less people be tempted by a PlayStation 4 if Nintendo could do almost everything else, had the same games, but without the major graphical cost?

Unless they start looking at things in a different way, it doesn’t look like we’ll ever find out.