Nintendo Canada general manager Pierre-Paul Trepanier has shared that E3 2015 will see the company reveal “more big third-party partnerships.”
His comments were made as part of a discussion as to why Nintendo isn’t turning to Canada’s “wealth of game developers” to publish more games on their systems. That being said, Nintendo work closely with Vancouver-based Next Level Games who most recently worked on Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (or Luigi’s Mansion 2 in Europe).
“I would love for us to do more in Canada for sure,” Trepanier admitted to Alphabeatic. “There are some second-party projects that were developed in Canada, like Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon that launched last year for example. It was developed here in Vancouver. We still have those great, big third-party partners like Ubisoft who continue to invest in our platforms. In the next few weeks at E3 you’ll be hearing about more big third-party partnerships.”
Outside of that he was keen to reiterate Nintendo’s continued partnerships with independent developers, sharing favourites such as Shovel Knight and Guacamelee!: Super Turbo Championship Edition.
He continued, “Beyond the big guys, as a gamer myself I’m more excited about the smaller indie games that are popping up. There are lots of partnerships in place with indie developers that are doing really well or are in the works for our platform, both on our 3DS platform and Wii U.
“It’s just my interpretation of the market, but it seems like there has been a shift in development resources away from smart devices, which is a very crowded space right now, to the types of e-shops where discoverability is less of an issue and we can work together to make games like Shovel Knight and one of my favourites Guacamelee! to eventually become huge games.
“I’m not sure I have any data to back that up, that’s just my sense. Speaking with friends in the industry, it feels like a few years ago there was such a move by indie developers to build apps and put them up in the smart device stores. But I think now there’s a sense that it’s a really crowded space and discoverability is a challenge. Then again, we’re about to jump into that world.”
