The Wii had a few issues other than outdated graphics but the lack of support from third party publishers, and even when they did support their games went from being high end graphics to blocky sprites of the past, will third-party publishers answer their call for the Wii U?
The President of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, has now suggested that the Wii U will be unable to get by on the strength of only first-party titles, Iwata says that the console is going to need several hits from third-party software publishers within the first year from the release of the platform.
“We think that it is important to encourage the software publishers to think ‘This is a platform on which we can perform our business’ in the very first stage of the platform,” said Iwata speaking during Nintendo’s 71st Annual General Meeting.
“We think it very important to make several hits from the third-party software publishers within the first year from the release of the platform, while offering Nintendo software seamlessly.
In order to achieve this goal, we have shared information about the new hardware with the software publishers earlier than we did previously and built a cooperative structure, and we are developing several titles in collaboration with these publishers.”
Sadly Iwata has said that the firm will be unable to talk about which of those publishers Nintendo is working closely with, or even the names of the titles that are due to arrive on the Wii because their firm has “not announced this information yet”.
“But what we are aiming for with the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U is platforms which have much more software and a wider variety of software than the former Nintendo DS or Wii,” he continued.
“Therefore, we are thinking of creating an environment where software from other companies will become hits. Please understand that Nintendo is prepared to invest in order to make this a reality.”
Iwata is quick to blame the lack of third-party supporters on the Wii was due to a result of sales that “did not reach (the) expectations” of software publishers, “which made them think that they could not have high expectations for business on the Wii.”
Though the Wii did see many first-party hits from various titles such as New Super Marios Bros. Wii. And Wii Fit, they are hoping to get a lot more third-party support. So far they already have a lot of support for the Wii U from publishers such as THQ, Sega, EA, Ubisoft, and Codemasters. The EA CEO already promised an “unprecedented partnership” with Nintendo, allowing titles like Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3 to land on their new console which will be launching in 2012.
