It has been a few weeks since the WiiU launched, and I am loving it. Miiverse is amazing, ZombiU is amazing and New Super Mario Bros U is pretty close to topping Super Mario Bros. 3 is terms of being my favourite side-scrolling Mario game. While the game journalism side has already been torn apart by Grubdog, its time for me to tear apart the other BS part: the third parties.
If third parties of the western portion have already failed massively in supporting the 3DS (though then again, they suck as making portable games full-fledged…), then I am not going to be surprised or shocked if it happens to the WiiU. Hell, its already happening! Did you watch the recent VGA awards? …No? Oh, ok, I see you are a normal human being and that is a good thing. Yet if you decided to be curious, then you noticed they announced some games. What did all these games have in common? Hmm… NO WIIU VERSION.
I will spout the obvious, but I am not going to yet; instead, I am going to ask a question for you, third parties: What is stopping you? You constantly whined about the Wii not being powerful enough for you (how hilarious your bloated budgets mostly did you in… hi Free Radical and Factor 5!), and you constantly wanted Nintendo to make a Wii HD with online and HDD support. Well guess what? They DID, its called the WiiU, so what is stopping you? What is keeping YOU from making games for it? How about we ask the guy behind Bioshock Infinite?
“I bought one and I like it. I play games on it! But in terms of development, nothing is brewing right now.”
Ken Levine, the face I’m making to you is both a “huh?” and a flat “what.” face. I heard ports are pretty easy to do on WiiU since the hardware is balanced in comparison to, say, the fucking PS3, which has had terrible ports not made by Japanese developers since… 2006. Nothing is brewing right now in the western developer big budget brain of yours? What is keeping YOU from porting it?
The answer I will now give: they are scared. Sans UbiSoft, which spouted lies upon lies at the Wii launch and launched with a shitty game, launched with an amazing WiiU game called ZombiU and Rayman Legends is coming out in February next year. Granted, I think Nintendo’s piggy bank helped with it, but, you know… (third party joke). WiiU finally gives them the things they have whined to Nintendo for, the things Nintendo bent over backwards for them to give. What does Nintendo get in return? Nothing, except a “I don’t know what to do with it,” excuse. Remember the 3DS launch? Remember how the year prior Nintendo showcased TONS of third party games, we hardly got any of those. Who is to blame for that?
All I do know is that thanks to things like Miiverse (which thankfully has idiots for me to troll), Nintendo can now see us telling the truth to them, when they were the ones blamed for the problem; third parties are at fault. Hell, here at Pietriots we’ve said it for YEARS, but now we have a way for others who own a WiiU to say it to them. The silver lining in this bullshit is that Nintendo is now fully embracing digital downloads and head-hunting indie developers, and making partnerships with developers and not publishers (AKA Platinum Games).
Now please pardon me, I must troll some idiots on Miiverse and draw more pictures showing Monita as an evil bitch.
Pietriots 
These kind of comments from the industry is why I’ve given up expecting them to deliver something worth playing on NIntendo systems. Granted, NIntendo was pretty hard to work with back in the 80’s and 90’s, but that time is done and over with.
There was sound reasoning on the limitations in the 80’s, Nintendo saw what the glut of crap games did the American gaming industry, it sunk it. My history on Nintendo in the 90’s is not up to par on that (The book GAME OVER by David Sheff is a cracking good read about their history). From my understanding companies griped about competing with Nintendo (an argument they still cling to).
If you can’t compete with the console manufacturer on making a good game, then why even bother? It just shows how lacking in skill and capability you are.
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To be fair, Ken Levine has made like, 2 games (including Bioshock Infinite) in the past ten years. Bioshock 1 was made on the Unreal 2 engine it took him so long. Bioshock Infinite will probably get a WiiU Port down the track. It’s pretty hard to cobble 3 years of development onto a new system in a few months without arsing it up.
Sounds like the Mass Efect Trilogy will worm it’s way there too.
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Sadly it seems like Take 2 is stopping him. Same goes for Borderlands 2, the developers don’t get to make what they want.
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Ken Levin cares more about a stupid cover art for his game than bringing his creations to as many people as possible. That’s really lame and sad.
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These dudes will find any excuse to give Nintendo players the shaft. But they will learn the hard way and come crawling back to Nintendo. When the Wii U picks up steam, they’ll all be clamouring to jump on board the gravy train.
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Most Nintendo naysayers are proclaiming that in ~12 months this situation will get considerably worse once the PS4/720 come out. I think that depending on how many rumors are true, how much common sense Sony/MS have and how much industry saboteurs like Mark Rein get their way that ~12 months from now may actually see a boom in WiiU 3rd party support. There comes a time where even the most stubborn companies will be looking at the inevitable choice between lower cost business models and bankruptcy.
If the PS4/720 become the bleeding edge tech so many short sighted psuedo-hardcore gamers think then these companies struggling to break even on the PS360 will have no choice but to change their approach to game development. Where this support will go (The WiiU is only one of many ‘cheaper than the PS4/720 options’) I don’t know but unless Sony and MS wise up soon the PS4/720 may end up being the best thing to happen to the WiiU in terms of 3rd party support.
Time will tell to be sure but let’s face it, Nintendo is no stranger to inhospitable environments for publishers and developers. One of the bigger reasons Nintendo lost it’s once vice grip control of this industry was because their consoles became so much less welcoming than the competition. Unlike Sony and seemingly MS as well, however, Nintendo seems to be adept at learning their lesson and the lessons of others. What they’ve created with the WiiU may be a platform simply waiting to be embraced once future doors get slammed in peoples faces.
People think Nintendo has created an SNES in the WiiU like the Wii was the reborn NES. Honestly, the similarities between SMW and NSMBU aside I see more of the PS1 in the WiiU than the SNES. People forget how suspicious and apprehensive gamers where of the PS1 when it launched and most of its early games didn’t seem any more impressive (and often times less) than the best looking/playing SNES games of the time (like DKC). It didn’t start to skyrocket until major 3rd parties saw how much more inviting the PS1 was for development and costs than the N64.
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Well said.
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