Time for convincing third parties to support Wii U 'long passed,' says Bethesda

[SiNAR 212]

And this is what I have been saying. Yeha people said this about the Gamecube and 3DS but this time, they are LOSING all their 3rd party support. Thoughts?

Nintendo's window for garnering third-party support of the Wii U has "long passed," vice president of PR and marketing at Bethesda Pete Hines told GameTrailers.

Speaking in a video in which he answered fan questions, Hines said both Microsoft and Sony developed their next-generation consoles with input from outside developers and publishers. He suggested that Nintendo did not do the same when it was building the Wii U.

"The time for convincing publishers and developers to support Wii U has long passed," Hines said. "The box is out.

"You have to do what Sony and Microsoft has been doing with us for a long time," he added. "And it's not that every time we met with them we got all the answers we wanted, but they involved us very early on and talked to folks like Bethesda and Gearbox [sic] and saying, 'here's what we're doing, here's what we're planning, here's how we think it's going to work.' To hear what we thought, from our tech guys and from an experience standpoint, what we thought.

"You have to spend an unbelievable amount of time up front doing that. If you're going to just decide, 'we're going to make a box, and this is how it's going to work and you should make games for it,' well, no. No is my answer."

Hines reiterated that Bethesda is not developing games for Nintendo's consoles. Borderlands 2 writer Anthony Burch added that developing for the Wii U comes with its own set of difficulties, namely how to utilize the GamePad controler. Burch said developers are unlikely to simply change game mechanics to incorporate the controller's touchscreen features.

"It's probably not too controversial to say the Wii U is not where the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will be, and that's a lot of development time you're going to split between a bunch of very different platforms if you're trying to release on all of them simultaneously," he said. "That's really where it comes down to, how similar it is to what you're doing on the other [consoles]. And we've got to strip all of this other stuff out to make it work and we've got to completely redo the controls. It's just not going to happen."

Via: Time for convincing third parties to support Wii U 'long passed,' says Bethesda's Pete Hines | Polygon

 

[Esperahol]

Not really - this is actually the second time that someone from Bethesda has said something like this. Really I have to wonder why Bethesda feels the need to tread this same ground over and over and over again. I mean I can't really think off the top of my head the last time Bethesda actually worked with Nintendo on anything. I also feel like it wouldn't matter in the long run because Nintendo is all about finesse and Bethesda is really rather glitchy. Maybe that's why they're acting like this is such serious business? Nintendo didn't actually seek them out due to not wanting buggy software on their already not really admired hardware?

 

[bifftape]

They are right in the sense that most 3rd party developers don't want to deal with incorporating the tablet, but the tablet itself is a draw of its own. There is a lot of unique design space that hasn't been utilized.

He comes off pretty bitter that Nintendo didn't seek to involve Bethesda up front.

 

[incredibleone]

Hasn't this been the case with Nintendo since the N64 days? I think SNES was the last Nintendo console that had excellent third party support. The company really peaked in the mid to late 90's and has been failing ever since. I wish Nintendo would hire more people and develop a whole bunch more first party games because they actually do do a good job producing quality first party games. There's just not enough of them. Maybe they should buy up a bunch of these third party developers?

 

[Esperahol]

They are right in the sense that most 3rd party developers don't want to deal with incorporating the tablet, but the tablet itself is a draw of its own. There is a lot of unique design space that hasn't been utilized.

He comes off pretty bitter that Nintendo didn't seek to involve Bethesda up front.

Oh, good so I'm not the only one tilting my head at this guy. I mean if you aren't going to develop for them then don't , but constantly covering the same ground just comes off as petty or something. Seriously though if Nintendo can get even one good title shows off the possibilities the way The World Ends With You did the DS they've got it made. That said it's a fairly new console so who knows what's likely to come about in the (near) future. That said I'm waiting for my Bayonetta 2. I have such high hopes.

 

[BlackSolaris]

Godammit, Bethesda, go back to your hole and fix your games, you are drunk again.
The PSP had the same problem, developers just need to see the opportunities that they have here. Maybe if Nintendo started released their franchises on the console so that people would buy the thing, it would be easier!