Their's a tough break.  Nintendo will need to expand Nintendo.  No one else is going to help.  There soon going to be like Leapfrog.

Well, they tried. Perhaps not as hard as some would have liked, but Zombi U was more than any thing from other big third party publishers.

Man, even Ubisoft is jumping ship. Nintendo is really on their own from here on out.

Harsh.  I can't but think sales of Rayman hurt this situation.

Fixed.

Well, I can't say I blame them. If I was a 3rd party dev, I would have pulled out long before they did. Once again, the Nintendo console is only a place to play Nintendo games. Nintendo needs to expand their studios...badly. It disturbs me that Iwata hasn't announced that as part of the company's recovery yet.

Do I believe these reps? not really.

I wish third-parties would be more transparent about their relationships with other first-parties as much as they are with Nintendo (usually negative).

I can understand no Wii U games, but why no 3DS games? That system is selling like hotcakes.


Maybe it's because all the games they are announcing will be for the Nintendo Fusion system!.. right? ... right?

Fun fact: this was in response to whether or not we should book an appointment for E3 with Ubisoft. So unless they want to show Nintendo games and not have them covered by a Nintendo outlet, this is factual. No conspiracy; no misdirection.

After those MK Reviews they may be doubting this sites Faith.  :P

I'm also curious about the huge lack of support for 3DS.  The system sells well, has a strong install base, and should be considerably cheaper to develop for than home consoles.  Yet support from western developers has been sparse at best.


Can't really blame Ubisoft for bailing on Wii U though. As much as I like the console, it's hard to see it as a viable option for significant third-party support.  As long as X comes out I won't feel bad though.

I remember back when the Wii U was launched (and the Wii as well actually) Ubisoft games were used as "proof" that the console had decent third party support.  My response was that Ubisoft supports EVERYTHING, even the N-Gage, and having their support means nothing and if you didn't have them and EA (another dev that typically supports everything) then you were really in trouble.

Well the Wii U is really in trouble.  If it doesn't have Ubisoft and EA games I can see a future where Nintendo is literally the only developer making Wii U games.  Unless they grab a fucking brain and replace this dud ASAP.  How will this thing last a normal lifecycle if it has no games coming out?  You think stores will want to carry something that gets like one new game every four or five months?

Replacing the dud would require a system to already be far along in development, and would require not completely destroying consumer faith. Why risk buying a new Nintendo system if Nintendo will have a history of just killing it quickly after two years?

You know it's bad when not even Ubisoft will put their shovelware on your platform.

And no COD as well. I can understand Warner Bros or Ubi dropping off but COD was always a sure thing.

It's funny.  Everyone says people who own Wii U's only buy Nintendo games.  Looking at my shelf, my mix of games are 1/2 Nintendo, 1/2 3rd party.  I guess I'm the exception, not the rule.

Ubi isn't my favorite 3rd party, but Zombi U was an interesting take on the survival genre, and Rayman Legends was great.  I hate how the Wii U is dying on the vine, because in spite of my problems with it, I really do like the system.

Guys, it's because Nintendo is going to be rounding up ALL the remaining 3rd party support and housing it in their Nintendo booth at E3. Nintendo wanted to make the biggest impact possible by housing everything you can do on a Nintendo system in the Nintendo booth.
It's a bold move, but Nintendo can pull it off. Best E3 Yet. guaranteed.

One thing's for sure: this certainly leads credibility to the sentiment that Nintendo's doing a Direct-focused E3 this year because they have very little to show. They have pretty much no 3rd party support for the rest of the year, at least. It's all Nintendo software now.

Same for me since the Gamecube days. But we multiparty supporting Nintendo fans are few and far between. I always figured "we" were only about 400k of the North American market. Not enough to sustain a company such as Nintendo or any supporting 3rd parties for long, especially with a slow selling system like the U. The original Wii at least had a large enough user base to rope in extra sales.

It's a shame.  I may be mistaken, I had thought that Ubi had already given indication that they weren't planning to put any more development efforts into the Wii U.  The lack of 3DS support is a surprise, though.

I agree that introducing new console hardware at this point would be counterproductive.  As Phil says, it would destroy consumer faith.  Also, the intial sales and subsequent price drops of the 3DS and Wii U, Nintendo has already taught me that it doesn't really pay to be an early adopter of their systems anymore.  Unless the new system was amazing, we have no reason to believe it would sell any better at this point.  Similarly, if Nintendo introduced new hardware at this point, third parties would have no compelling reason to suddenly jump on board again.  The support has been more or less declining for three system generations now, and many of the the reasons for it go back even further. 

I didn't purchase my Wii U until the Wind Waker bundle came out, but I've enjoyed my time with the system.  If major third parties aren't going to support the system any more, at the very least I've got a whole load of kickstarter indie games to look forward to going into 2014-2015.

People keep saying the lack of 3DS support is a surprise, but as Neal pointed out on Twitter, the last 3DS game Ubisoft released came out in 2012. They cut support for that a long time ago.

Terrible news...no one can say they didn't try.

And the 3DS thing...western devs have shown very little support since day one.

3DS survives out of Nintendo games and Japanese 3rd parties....it's amazing how powerful Nintendo franchises are....can't imagine Sony or MS surviving out of their own games with little or no 3rd party support.

But yeah....I don't see this thing changing even if they WiiU sales improve. I bet that Ubi has data confirming once again what everybody knows....that most of Nintendo console owners spend money on Nintendo games 1st, and then, if there are some money left, buy 3rd parties...but sometimes those owners have other consoles and buy 3rd parties for the other consoles.

I mean there is no game like ZombiU in the other consoles....that game should have sale pretty good....but tanked.

This.  Folks wonder why Nintendo doesn't hand out moneybags for third parties - they don't have to (and when they do, they end up in messes like they are in now).  Sony and Microsoft would tank without third party support (in fact, the gaming divisions in both companies are floundering right now - the mainstream gaming media just doesn't pick up on that since they can hide it better via their other divisions).  Nintendo can and has survived on little-to-no third party support (GameCube, N64).

Its moreso sony can hide the embers brewing in their gaming division with the wildfires that have engulfed everything else they do.

I actually could see all the remaning third party support being shown at Nintendo's booth... because there's so little of it.

So replacing the Wii U will supposedly damange consumer trust.  And getting to the point where Nintendo is the only Wii U developer won't do that?  Nintendo already has a bad reputation for having terrible third party support so do we let it get worse?  How do they ever bounce back if at some point the Wii U release schedule does become literally four or five games a year or major retailers stop carrying it because it has too few games?  Or is just over for Nintendo on consoles?

Personally I'm less likely to buy any future Nintendo consoles if the Wii U limps around with jack shit support for five years.  By then Nintendo will have a "oh are they still here?" reputation and I'll assume that their next console won't sell and won't have any support and thus isn't a worthwhile investment.  If they replace it sooner they stand some chance to salvage some relevency and not let the world forget about them while Sony and MS build up their userbase.

Nintendo ditched the Virtual Boy when it flopped.  IBM dropped the PC Jr. and it didn't hurt the reputation of their main PC products.  Dud products get canned.  It happens and isn't always a death sentence.  Remember that Sega was in poor financial shape when they released the Dreamcast while Nintendo is not (yet).

I don't think I care about Ubisoft, but there are other companies I care about not having.

The N64 and Gamecube were still getting annual sports titles and a few bones from 3rd parties. The WiiU isn't even getting those.

I disagree, I think the majority of us left because of the lack of third party games. I love Nintendo games but I don't love every game they make and I like games made by other companies nearly as much as Nintendo. Wii had third party support it just had crap support because it was all the market wanted. Wii U is just a dud. Also with Wii you at least had the Virtual Console to hold you over between releases, Wii U apparently is kind of lacking in that area.


I won't say they need to replace it or die or that if it fails they are dead, but I can't see them limping along forever. I am still interested in Hyrule Warriors but now I am thinking it would be best to snatch some of these games now, console or not, before the Saturn-like rarity turns them into valuable collectibles.