Nintendo aims to increase third-party support
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 4:01pm by Derek
Nintendo has a message for its third-party partners—there’s still plenty of room in the Mushroom Kingdom.
Speaking Tuesday with the Wall Street Journal, Nintendo of America president Reggie-Fils Aime said he hopes to increase the percentage of Wii games published by third-party companies by 15 percent.
Fils-Aime’s goal would raise the third-party Wii share from 55 to 70 percent, roughly the same as the split for the Nintendo DS.
In addition to improving publisher relations, increasing the third-party presence on Wii would also strengthen the diversity of games available, a cyclical benefit Fils-Aime says helps sell Wii hardware.
“In order to achieve high levels of sales of hardware, we need all genres in the market,” Fils-Aime told the Wall Steet Journal.
Though often accused of showing little concern for the success—or lack thereof—of its publishing partners, Nintendo is making atypically assertive efforts to cultivate the third-party environment on Wii.
Electronic Arts will debut Nintendo’s highly anticipated MotionPlus controller peripheral June 8, packed alongside Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010 in both North America and Europe. In addition, EA will release a second MotionPlus-supported release, Grand Slam Tennis, the same day, more than one month ahead of Nintendo’s first such title.
Both games have received extremely positive previews.
Allowing EA to release the first games to support MotionPlus, let alone include the peripheral as a pack-in, seems to represent a shift in philosophy within Nintendo. Some developers expressed frustration when the company announced MotionPlus at last year’s E3, blindsided by a peripheral they were completely unaware of and could’ve been implemented into their own applicable games months prior.
What a difference a year can make.
May 27th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
If the Wii had more power they would already have better third party support.
May 27th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Clonester said: If Wii developers had more balls the Wii would already have better third party support.
fixx’d.
May 27th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
— Fils-Aime’s goal would raise the third-party Wii share from 55 to 70 percent, roughly the same as the split for the Nintendo DS. —-
He must mean Wii third party software sales even though WSJ fails to mention this in the article because according to my release lists out of 597 games sold in America; Nintendo publishes only 5% of the games released on Wii full retail. More or less. And it cannot be overall titles on Wii since it’s only 11% that Nintendo has published. So; yeah, Reggie meant sales.
May 27th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
I really think that this year we are going to see a lot of new, well-made, quality titles coming from 3rd parties. EA seems to be leading the charge, and I’m expecting to see some more great titles from them.