The Nintendo NX is scheduled to be released in March 2017 but what is slightly concerning is that some major third-party developers still don’t know what the system is. It seems as though Nintendo is keeping the system tightly under wraps as Skylanders Imaginations developer Toys for Bob and The Order 1886 studio Ready at Dawn still haven’t been briefed about the system. However, it is not all bad news as GameTrust, the GameStop subsidiary, apparently has seen or been briefed about the system, so at least someone is in the know.
According to Paul Yan, Toys for Bob’s associate creative director, Nintendo hasn’t informed the team behind the upcoming Skylanders Imaginators about the NX.
“We haven’t heard any news from Nintendo, so we don’t have any announcements,” Yan said when asked if the game will come to Nintendo’s next system.
Lou Studdert, associate producer at Toys for Bob, supported Yan’s claim, saying that Nintendo has a history of playing it safe when releasing information about consoles.
“I don’t know what [the NX] is,” Studdert joked, adding that Nintendo keeps a “very, very, very, very, very tight lid on everything.”
Ready at Dawn, the studio behind The Order: 1886 and the upcoming multiplayer arena brawler Deformers, doesn’t know much about the NX, according to the studio’s cofounder and chief creative officer Ru Weerasuriya.
“The day one plan [for Deformers] is to launch on Xbox [One], PlayStation 4, and PC… What about NX? That’s the thing. Honestly, we are waiting.”
Weerasuriya also confirmed that Ready at Dawn does not have a developer’s kit for the NX.
Mark Stanley, vice president of internal development at GameTrust, the GameStop subsidiary publishing Deformers, admitted to being in talks with Nintendo about the system.
“On the GameTrust side, we’ve seen where [Nintendo is] at and that’s a conversation that keeps going… Since they announced the NX officially, they’ve been kind of wrangling a lot of the inquiries… and, from my perspective, it seems like they’re trying to get their hands around what type of they content they want to have for their launch window.”
It seems Nintendo is rushing the NX — since a number of people have yet to became aware of what it exactly is, i.e., development kits are not properly handed to 3rd parties as of today. It’s crystal clear that the NX should be fully ready by the end of 2017 — development and softaware wise –, and not by March.
This hustle is certainly due to the extreme mismanagement the Wii U has been suffering from, and the consequent extreme drought of games and interesting features, and abysmal market- and mind-share.
Anyone here is hopeful Nintendo is going back to its good, old way — i.e., the Hiroshi Yamauchi way — of tackling the business? I’m not. At all. I hope I’m wrong, though.
Dev kits are handed to publishers that actually matter. EA, Ubisoft, Namco, Capcom, Koei and other such publishers probably have one by now.
So you think bigger devs definately have one? This article reminded me of when EA said that they’ll make games for NX “if it makes sense.” I’m hoping now that they said that because they didn’t know what the system was rather than because they simply weren’t willing to support it yet.
“If it makes sense” = if we can make a profit. That’s all there is to it. My guess is they aren’t going to rush their support. They’ll let Nintendo sell the system first before putting their games on it.
Fuck EA. The entire point of the NX is so that Nintendo can go it alone. They know this now without a fact that Western developers are more interested in handouts and the path of least resistance when porting. Nintendo will NOT compensate them nor do their marketing for them, nor should they. Ubisoft is the only company that made an exclusive that was good (ZombiU) and a timely port that was good (Rayman) and they had good success with both for the Wii U. Maybe not according to their unrealistic plans but compared to sales of Rayman everywhere else, it did best on Wii U. Even they abandoned the Wii U.
Guys, just add all the games for 3DS and Wii U and that is what you can expect for support. That is an insane amount of support for one console. Then, add indies and a handful of 3rd parties. That’s it and that is all they need. Hopefully the days of shovelware and lazy ports with poor optimization from 3rd parties are over. If EA, Ubisoft, RockSteady, etc want to make high quality games for it that come out at the same time as the competition (PS4, Xbox) than I’ll support them. If they however, plan on taking a wait and see approach and give us late/lazy ports than fuck em.
We deserve better and we’ve collectively spoken with our wallets so please stop pretending we care and/or drum up fake outrage over how Ninteno supposedly spurns 3rd parties. It’s tired, old and click bait.
So you think that Nintendo wants to completely ignore the big 3rd party devs and just publish their own stuff? Yeah because that’s worked so well for them the past few years.
That won’t even do anything. Ignoring EA is just going to make Nintendo fans miss out on games. Again.
I never understood why is getting a late port such a huge problem? I mean I am relatively casual type of user, and am happy to even purchase the game, regardless of when it was released. Why is getting a port at the exact same time as the other platforms are recieving it such a must? Is playing a certain title related to the defined period of time and after that it is worthless? I don’t get it.
Because, believe it or not, people buy consoles for third-party games. If the game is originally announced for the competition, they are going to get the console that supports it at that time.
Okay, but what about the case (such as mine) where I already have the console, and don’t have time to play this new game (still playing all the uncompleted ones that I own) or money to buy it (at that moment). It is not like the game is going to disappear if I don’t get it exactly when it comes out and play it exactly when everybody is playing it fresh. Does it have to do with the need of being in some kind of ‘current zone’ thing?
It’s something like that. For a case such as yours as a casual gamer, it really wouldn’t matter. But for the core gaming audience it comes down to this. Why should I wait a few more months to get a game when I can get it now?
That (especially with multiplayer oriented games) and the fact that for some people those franchises are their favorite games ever. I think everyone has a franchise that they try to support getting every game day 1, no questions asked. Especially Nintendo fans.
Luckily Nintendo games so far that I experienced have long supporting online community. I first bought Wii in 2013 and Mario Kart Wii still had huge active online community, Brawl as well (very very active online tournaments), Last Story I could always find at least half a room full (4-6 players), even Conduit I used to find players at the time. CoD Black Ops is active to this day plus not counting Wiimmfi servers for all the already mentioned games. I don’t feel difference in online activity whether being in the current zone from day one or few months or even couple of years later, judging from Splatoon (got it maybe a few months after launch), Mario Kart 8 and Smash WiiU (got it year or more after launch). I do get however the ‘love for the franchise’ part. I try to purchase the game as soon as possible, but with my daily work schedule and budget, plus, more importantly the stack of uncompleted games I already have, sometimes it takes time for me to finally do it.
I know what you mean. In fact, there is a threshold to separate both groups. But the kind of publisher that has been supporting Nintendo lately is the “unimportant” ones. So I understand that Nintendo should hand the dev kits to as much people as they can.
The unimportant devs hardly ever make exclusive games. They do not sell systems, so they are not the priority. Simple as that.
Yet are the ones who publish most of the games — i.e, indie crapware — available on the Wii U.
That much is true, but again, that’s really not of much help to begin with when those games are also available on everything under the sun. They publish their games on Wii U because most of them need to put their games in as many platforms as possible, because it’s a less crowded market and because Nintendo’s installbase likes those games. Indie titles aren’t going to sell NXs. Skylanders won’t cut it either.
Even if they knew, they wouldn’t tell anyone.
Agree. But they categorically said “never saw it, never heard of it, never tasted it”. So it means that’s not the case.
Oh the drama
Right, we all are a bunch of drama queens.
Keep coming for more of it!
Makes sense GameTrust/GameStop would know a little but it’s still a bit odd that few others do. Either way I’m ready for some type of information, I really don’t wanna wait until the end of the year after all these other expensive devices have launched to finally find out if NX is something I need to be there for day one.
P3. So does anyone here know how long it would typically take 3rd party developers to port a game; not fully develop a brand new game, but simply port an existing one? For instance, if 3rd parties were given dev kits right now, would they have games fully ported in time for March 2017? The recent talk about NX has me seriously concerned.
Depends on the game and on what the damn thing is, obviously. Could take a few months, could take as much as two years.
Didn’t Ubisoft say Wii U port took about 6 months and $1M?
If NX were to be supposedly easier architecture, shouldn’t take that much then.
I certainly hope Nintendo is making things easier for devs this time around.
That’s a big if, considering there’s no evidence to support it.
Yeah, if the NX has comparable architecture (x86), power and control scheme to the XBOX ONE and PS4 then porting would not take much time and resources at all. Let’s say for example Activision receives a dev kit this month, they can easily have the next COD game ready for launch on the NX in March 17.
depend on the architecture of the system but on average I would say 6 months. So if the next launch in April 2017, Most of the port will be launched in November 2017 which means ready for Christmas 2017.
Unless Nintendo is telling companies to pretend that they know nothing about the NX, this has me concerned. I’m starting to have doubts about the NX (and Nintendo). If the NX really does release March 2017, then every game developer out there should already have dev kits and already be hard at work on some NX games. Everything Nintendo is doing with the NX is making me wonder if it’s not going to be a holiday 2017 (or early 2018) release? MAN, I could be dead by then. So I hope there’s no more delays.
Could very well not be able to discuss it per NDA limitations. They’ve been in the game long enough to know the time frame’s necessary to develop titles for launch. Unless they are truly behind, then I think it is more likely that developers can’t discuss it at all.
There’s a big difference between not discussing it and outright lying to people by telling them you don’t have a dev kit when you actually do. I think they’re being honest. If they weren’t allowed to say anything I think they would just say that.
But you don’t know that. And neither do I. An NDA’s language can differ greatly and we just don’t know what is involved with these deals at the moment. If they are fuck ups, then we can look back on it and will know. For now, while it is easy to speculate and jump to certain conclusions, and that is the fun of all this, I’d hate to say definitively that this is “bad” judging by the scant information we have.
Well I’m just saying that if these devs actually do know something about the NX, I don’t think they would come out and blatantly lie about it. They’re saying that they’ve had no information from Nintendo and have no idea what the NX is. If this was just a case of following Nintendo’s NDA don’t you think they would say something like “We’re not sure.” or “We can’t confirm anything right now.”?
Maybe, unless the language of the NDA dictated that they answer in a certain manner, like having absolutely no knowledge of the system. Strange, perhaps, but not out of the realm of possibility.
And hey, maybe they simply don’t have them yet and don’t/won’t know until a certain benchmark in development is made. Or there might be pressure from bigger developers to get their titles at launch while others have to wait and that may all be part of the negotiations with those 3rd parties.
I just can’t see it as a negative at this point. I do understand your point though.
I suppose that could be the case. I mean I would rather that not be the case, but it’s possible. I try to stay hopeful and not to view these things negatively, but I suppose when you care about something it’s hard not to be concerned for it.
They just want the NX presentation to be done the way they plan it and they are afraid of leaks. As soon as they show us what NX is, dev kits will go everywhere.
https://youtu.be/wclswLJgsPk
Some people are worried….I’m glad they don’t have a dev kit. XD
I’ve hated them ever since they ran Spyro into the mud.
sounds like Nintendo’s consistent plan of shooting themselves in the foot with simply ignoring Western developers. Par for the course
It’s looking like Wii U all over again. Won’t get third party support. Losing hope for this thing.
The Wii U has Skylanders and the 3DS too, just because a few minor developers did not received the devkit, that does not mean that the same Wii U situation will be replicated.
It’s a bit too soon to say that. Ready at Dawn and Toys for Bob wouldn’t be first picks for early NX dev kits.
I just hate how secretive Nintendo is being about the NX. They don’t want to show it at E3, but it’s expected to launch early next year which makes no sense at all.
Multiple major companies are in on it. Because skylanders isn’t means it’s looking like the wiiu?
They were in on the Wii U too, but look how that turned out. I’ll believe it when I see it.
If you’ll believe it when you see it, then why are you making ridiculous claims now?
Because Nintendo tricked me. It was all part of their master plan. They lured me in with the Wii U promising greatness. Aiming to take back hardcore gamers. They had me tied up and locked into a game drought. Stabbed me in the back! And it hurt missing out on all those cool third party games. It all seemed hopeless. Until my hero Sony arrived with the PlayStation 4! He knocked bad guy Nintendo out and saw that I got immediate medical attention. Provided me with a comfy and not oversized tablet controller and fed me plenty of super cool third party games. Phew. Thank goodness he showed up. Nintendo tortured me. Never going to fall for that ever again!
Jk.
Who cares. Those games are simple and should be able to be ported no problem. Also, that genre is on its last legs. Much ado about nothing
||Some secrets must remain hidden…||
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“tightly under wraps”
Yeah, that has always been their way of doing things, and to be quite honest it does nothing but aggravates people.
Just give us the info already. We want to know “what” we’re going to be spending our money on.