Bethesda: Nintendo didn’t engage third-party enough before Wii U reveal

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Bethesda’s Pete Hines has poured scorn on Nintendo’s efforts to discuss their intentions for Wii U with third-party publishers ahead of the console’s announcement.

Asked as to what the company could do once again attract them, Hines stated that the time for that “has long past” and that Microsoft and Sony involve them in the design process far more.

“The time for convincing publishers and developers to support Wii U has long past. The box is out,” Hines explained on Bonus Round. “You have to do what Sony and Microsoft have been doing with us for a long time.

“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 talking to folks like Bethesda and Gearbox, they say ‘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.”

He continued, “You have to spend an unbelievable amount of time upfront doing that. If you’re just going sort off deciding ‘we’re going to make a box and this is how it works and you should make games for it.’ Well, no. No is my answer, I’m going to focus on other ones that better support what it is we’re trying to do.

“So you’ve gotta spend more time trying to reach out to those folks before you even make the box, when you’re still designing and thinking about how it’s going to work.”

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  1. agree 1000%. Nintendo is out of touch with modern gaming, shown by it’s laughably surprised reaction as to how long it takes to make an HD game and completely oblivious when it comes to how to handle 3rd parties. Bethseda is a giant along with R*. Neither one wants anything to do with Nintendo’s failing system. It is underpowered, STILL overpriced even @ 299 w/ mediocre Gamecube Zelda.

    The PS4 and XB1 are going to stomp a mudhole in Nintendo this gen. Wii was a fluke, it will not be repeated. Remember N64/Gamecube sales? The Wii U will hope and pray it can reach those terrible levels. Tech and gaming quality and production advances at a super fast rate. Nintendo is stuck in the past and will get steamrolled because of it.

  2. @Vektor

    The Wii was hardly a “Fluke” it was one of the most sold consoles of the past generations.
    Nintendo will bounce back look at the 3DS it’s out selling the PSvita, my guess you’re ethier a Sony or Microsoft fanboy.

  3. …. yeah. It sold the most because of it’s appeal to casuals with it’s absolutely terrible motion controls. Wii U has lost the support of casuals this time. The Wii was absolutely a fluke… a one off. If you honestly think Nintendo is going to win this gen, you are kidding yourself.

    My main platform is PC. I currently buy 80-90% of my games on that platform because it is the best quality. Consoles in general are underpowered and stuck at one level. I have been playing “next-gen” games for 2 years now. Consoles are finally catching up, but they will be left behind again as soon as they are released.

    3DS and Vita are both crap handhelds. If I’m stuck at an airport, I’ll play games on my phone. Handhelds are terrible for core gamers. Even worse quality than current consoles. Don’t care one bit how well any of them sell.

  4. And now I can say for sure I’m not going to take the opinions of you, Vektor, seriously at all. You sound like an “analyst” spewing crap. Seriously? Dedicated gaming handhelds do not appeal to core gamers but yet effing CELLPHONES do? And yet you rag on casuals when yet cellphones have become the ultimate casual gamer paradise these past few years.

    Not sure if I should call you an idiot tech elitist who makes the rest of us PC gamers look bad (I play on PC too but don’t reinforce that idiotic “PC Master Race” bullshit), or just a flat out idiot who has no idea how the core gaming markets really works.

    Also I heavily disagree with Bethesda here. For them it’s more like “Nintendo didn’t pay us money so screw them” since it’s been shown that buying out a third party is, frankly, not that hard of a task. Microsoft getting exclusive deals with Rockstar and Activision thanks to them shoving lots of mu-lah their way? Yep.

  5. This guy’s whining is insufferable. What does he want Nintendo to grovel to Bethesda? Sure they might not like Nintendo’s seemingly indifferent methods, but that didn’t stop developers like EA, Ubisoft, Namco Bandai, Tecmo Koei, Platinum Games, Sega, and Activision from supporting the system. Besides it’s not like they’re forced to make games for the Wii U. If you don’t like the box, don’t make games for it. They can happily keep making games for PC where their only salvation is the modding community and release watered down ports on consoles. Yeah, Sony reached out to them, and they got an unplayable Skyrim and Fallout, great work Bethesda. Do us all a favor and keep your shitty games out of the Wii U, not like we’d be able to play them if they came anyways.

  6. “Handhelds are terrible for core gamers.”
    Actually handhelds are the last refuge for core gamers in the world of consoles. Their games are not “cinematic” casual shit with inflated budgets that must appeal to very wide audiences to recover the insane ammounts of money they waste on marketing, bribing videogame publications and voice acting. Handhelds are the only place where you can have variety and challenge this days because smaller budgets and smaller games gave the developers the chance to experiment a bit instead of shitting another cinematic cover based shooter. Go play Skyrim, CoD and R* games in your home console, casual.

  7. Man Vector is really out of touch. A Nintendo hater at heart, obviously a young 20 something dude who gets caught up in flash and no gameplay. Wish there was a ignore button for such posters of rubbish.

  8. Pete Hines might just be a spokesman for Bethesda but is easily one of the most annoying personalities to endure in gaming. I’m not suprised Nintendudes are very much angry with him, most were on PS360 and no doubt supported them there when they needed it. Its like a kick in the balls.

    I can’t stand the company personally. Just in general they are anti-gamer and Hines is just one of the yesmen there.
    When Bethesda on 11.11.11 launched Skyrim and promptly decided to exit, for near 3 mths holidays, during the worst software launch in the history of gaming; where 90% of PS3 owners couldn’t play the game.

    I took it upon myself to post a work around on the Bethesda forums; and then when the creation kit came out, a patch. Despite much appreciation, was banned. The following two patches used the exact same code.

    I’d say that the Wii U doesn’t meet the DRM requirements and that it impacts on delivery of micro-transactions.

    The PS4 & X1 both have hardware DRM measures builtin that EA, Bethesda and Gearbox want and will use. Didn’t see anything that extensive in the Wii U.

  9. Wii wasn’t a fluke but Nintendo is retroactively making it appear so. Low price, especially cost of entry, used to be very important to Nintendo. One example is their long resistance to producing a color Gameboy, despite all of the color handhelds appearing from competitors. They felt it was more important to have a low cost of entry, along with long battery life, than than the glamour of color and other features that would break the formula.

    This worked very well for them, with the Gameboy line dominating handheld gaming nearly as long as it has been a category, up until the entry of smartphones changed the market.

    If the Wii U had treated the Gamepad as an optional accessory and was instead marketed as a $200-250 Wii HD, it would be in much better shape right now. The Wii was priced just right for impulse purchases by those who were not dedicated Nintendo franchise fans. This included the casual gamers who may never have had a console before or not since they were much younger, and gamers who spent most of their time on the latest super-hyped FPS but still wanted to enjoy the latest Mario entry.

    But at $300 or more, the potential buyer had to give it some thought and that is never a good thing in sales.

    I have a Wii U and have not been impressed by the Gamepad’s use so far. It does some nice stuff, especially freeing up the TV for other users. But this is not sufficient to justify the cost of entry for what the machine offers at this point in time. I fear Nintendo lost track of what worked for well for them in the past.

  10. The big 3rd party developers get butthurt because Nintendo don’t need them as much as Sony/MS and therefore won’t comply with all the shitty little tricks they want to play on us gamers to get more money out of us.

    The Xbone and PS4 are consoles built with commercial ability in mind. Selling micro content and delivering adverts throughout your gaming experience.

  11. Essentially this is what is going on.

    Bethesda believes they have a big dick and every one console wants their franchises on their system.

    so they feel that the hardware makers need to cater to them… them not cater to the hardware makers.

    If by chance nintendo gets a bigger market than both microsoft and sony that no would quickly turn into a yes.

    However.. since nintendo is floundering.. and developing for the WII U would take some work as compare to the other consoles. They can confidently say fuck you Nintendo.. you think we will go out of our way to develope for your under performing system with all of its quirks when you don’t even have a huge makret?? dream on

    that is essentially what is going on here.

    I hope nintendo kicks the pants off of every other console so this asshole has to beg nintendo to develope games for them.

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