Why N's consoles lack 3rd party support but not handhelds?

It has been a persistent problem since the Nintendo 64 era, but why is it that Nintendo's home consoles seems to lack third-party support, but the other hand, Nintendo does not have problems with third-party support on the handheld side?

The absence of competition in the handheld market.

Because their handhelds are very good with respect to the market they are serving. Their consoles are usually not as good with respect to the market they are serving. Plain and simple.

Since Iwata took over, he has NoJ make all the global decision regarding 3rd-party games. NoA used to convince western 3rd parties to make games for the N64 and GC. It's no longer the case now. Nintendo thinks they're much superior than all others and so they don't care for those that are "below them"

Look at the 3DS. They have goddamn Atlus. That's it.

As good as they can be, it's fucking nothing beside the GBA or even the DS.

There really isn't much third party support on the 3DS, not like there was with the DS. Nintendo is just fucking up left and right these days.

Nintendo's third party support, when it exists, generally comes from Japanese developers. Most software on handhelds are produced by Japanese developers. That aside, Nintendo has almost complete domination of the handheld industry at the moment yet doesn't have a ton of third party software to show for it. On the other hand, Vita has had a disproportionate amount of third party support considering its poor sales and near abandonment by Sony.

The vita doesn't compete with the 3DS, basically making it the only handheld device to make your games on.

The WiiU is a gen behind in hardware and online compared to competition.

Nintendo knew how the dedicated handheld business worked plus less competition (the PSP was the closest).

With consoles, they have no idea what they are doing and they have tougher competition.

Still the overall 3DS support isn't as strong as the overall DS support.

Reading these contradictory comments, one about how third party support on 3ds is lacking, another on how 3ds dominates vita, and yet another that says vita has disproportionate amount of 3rd party games compared to sales and near abandonment by sony, and I just feel like I'm in the freaking twilight zone. Nintendo clearly does not know what their doing these days. They start their e3 with a puppet show and proceed to screw around with what made Star Fox so great, then show a bunch of party and multiplayer games and talk about Amiibo that they don't make much of because they seem to be afraid of oversupply, and now we are hearing rumblings of what may be the end of the Wii U already. I"m in the gaming twilight zone!

NIntendo pretty much owns the handheld market, and have for 20 years. So...

Some people say that the 3DS isn't getting much 3nd party, and that the DS had much more. Apparently no one remembers the tons and tons of shovelware on the DS. It was just as bad as the Wii tbh. There was a ton of garbage and more gems on the DS, but the 3DS is more consistent.

The 3DS don't get much support either. It's pretty much all Atlus with some Square Enix helping on the side(**** them for not localizing DQVII). It's crazy that Nintendo didn't bid for Atlus when it was up for sale because P5 on the Wii U would single handily turn their fortunes around.

Capcom and Level 5 are pretty big 3DS supporters too, you know. In fact, both are far bigger than Square.

@psx_warrior: None of those statements need to be mutually exclusive. The 3DS has a terrible lack of third party support, dominates the Vita on a basic statistics level, and the Vita is basically held up by smaller third party titles and Indy games.

I'm just looking at my collection that is all I see. I own nothing from either Capcom and Level 5 aside from Monster Hunter.

Resident Evil Revelations, Ace Attorney, Monster Hunter, Street Fighter, Professor Layton, Layton vs Wright, Yokai Watch, Fantasy Life, Inazuma Eleven.

There's also Bandai Namco, with Tekken 3D Prime, Project X Zone, Project X Zone 2, Ace Combat, Tales of the Abyss, Ridge Racer, and a shit ton of their licensed nonsense.

Saying the 3DS has nothing but Atlus is simplified nonsense. It has a fairly acceptable level of third party support from the big players. Do you personally care for it? Not necessarily. Does that matter in the bigger picture? Not at all.

@charizard1605: We aren't suppose to count every trash that comes out in SW which is why the Xbox One magically got more exclusives than the PS4.

I didn't count the trash. If I had, I would have listed Mercenaries 3D, or the Pac-Man games, or the legions of pointless licensed games from Namco. I would have pointed out Warner Bros. as a major supporter for the system, since the LEGO shit comes to 3DS like once a month.

All the games I listed are major, well received games- like I said, you may not like them, but that does not change what they are. And it does make those companies major supporters of the system regardless.

@charizard1605: That's fair but to me their support are irrelevant. Obviously, I own the voice of only one.

Which is fine! I'm just saying that does not preclude them from being major third party supporters for the system.

@charizard1605: All of those Bandai Namco games are hot garbage and half of those Capcom games are goddamn puzzle games or monster hunter.

Come at me scrublord.

Opinions are awesome

@charizard1605: why are yours always wrong then?

Seriously. Was your criteria it not being a licence? I know just offhand that at least two thirds of those Namco games are horribly broken or just poor.

@charizard1605: I can't really argue with what you said at all. You win this round, Char.

Yeah. 3rd party for the 3DS isn't anything amazing either.

Its just the lack at competition in the handheld market that makes it seem like it has great 3rd party support. The best way to judge the 3DS's 3rd party support is to compare it to past Nintendo handhelds.

**** Nintendo for region locking their consoles in 2015. There's a crap ton on Japanese 3DS games I'd import in a second but can't thanks to Nintendo. Thank goodness for hackers is all I'm saying.

This

It certainly lack western third party support. It's also uncontested, and cheaper to develop for.

as mentioned i think 3rd party on the 3DS is also pretty meh at this stage. its mostly gone to mobile devices.

as for the reason....well it all boils down to 1 simple thing. 3rd party games (3rd party multiplats especially) dont sell on nintendo platforms. thats it. if they did then hardware, online etc. would be irrelevant...those games would be on nintendo paltforms. but they dont sell. in fact its so bad now on the nintendo front that linux and mac (5 and 1% of the PC market) get more 3rd party support than nitnendo platforms.

its the same now on the 3DS and the wiiu.

the real question is why they dont sell on nintendo platforms and, imho, i think all involed share the blame for this.

as a wiiu owner i would never ever buy a 3rd party multiplat for my wiiu....ever. its going to be gimped and it will still cost the same, or more than, the other versions. why on earth would i buy the wiiu version? im also not one of these 3rd party haters or anything...half my wii games were 3rd party (and i play many of the big multiplats on my PC) but i know the version on the nintendo platform is going to have problems.

some of this is nintendos fault clearly. The N64 was a pig to develop for and the playstation version of 3rd party games were just in a different league. the gamecube solved pretty much all these problems (1.5GB mini DVDs were not a problem) and it sold worse than the N64 and i think that really did a lot of damage with nintendo and 3rd parties. 3rd party games didnt sell despite the GC version looking and usually running better than the PS2 version...it certainly didnt sell GCs. the wii was clearly very successful but in terms of 3rd party sales, just dance did amazingly well, red steel 2 sold bupkis (and full credit to ubisoft on that one...RS2 is an excellent game). that was the message from the wii market to 3rd parties. the wiiu is not an easy machine to port games too either and although i would have thought that nitnendos more open policy towards online would have encouraged 3rd parties....nope. bupkis.

but 3rd parties dont get off scot free here either. can anyone explain to me why the wiiu only has ME3 and it costs full whack? meanwhile the PC, 360 and PS3 get all 3 games in a bundle for half the price. who is going to buy the wiiu version when there is a bundle containg all 3 games for half the price? was there anything special about the wiiu version? nope. so of course it sell nothing...and EA drop support. this is fairly common with 3rd party games on nintendo platforms and the blame for crap like that can not be placed at nintendos feat. going back to the GC days even...multiplats were often late for no good reason (i remember waiting 6 months for BG&E on the GC as i didnt have access to a PS2 at the time). nothing to do with nintendo...thats just 3rd parties taking the wizzz.

the people who buy nintendo platforms also share a chunk of the blame for this sorry mess though. ok multiplats on nintendo platforms=getting burned...but what about exclusives? when 3rd party developers do genuinely deliver a great game on a nintendo platform it also sells nothing. red steel 2, as i mentioned. excellent game. sold nothing. okami, a very good adaption of the PS2 version and a very good zelda like game (could teach zelda a thing or 2)...nothing. bayonetta 2, 10s accross the board. nothing. wonderful 101...101 being the number of copies sold :P. i could go on. these can only be found on nintendo platfoms (ok except okami) so there is no chance of getting burned...and they sell nothing. there is more to gaming than zelda, metroid and mario for heavens sake...try new games!!!

so the really really real question is what would it take for more people to buy their multiplats of choice for a nintendo platform? personally i dont know....i cant see myself buying the likes of witcher or batman or whatever for a nintendo platform. i buy multiplats for my PC and i cant think what would draw me away from that.

Nintendo's Handheld game Systems are very good. Since 1989 - 2015 Nintendo has been the masters of portable gaming. So third party support is plentiful.

Nintendo's home systems however have had issues of some sort or another since the Nintendo 64, Using Cartridges instead of CD ROM,The Nintendo Gamecube used mini DVD ROM's instead of Regular sized DVD Roms like everyone else. The Wii while having plenty of 3rd party games, Most were "throw a way shovelware" out of 2000 titles only 75 were excellent. The rest are trash quick cash in on motion control craze. The Wii U like the Wii before it was underpowered using last gen tech. Plus by this point third party publishers had had enough of Nintendo's Gimmicks.

Nintendo's last 4 Home consoles have sucked in some way or another. Plus Nintendo past bad treatment of third party developers have finally caught up with them. So in 2015/2016 Nintendo has basically no 3rd party support.

The Handheld division has been doing well and third parties have supported Nintendo's portable systems. The Gameboy line, The DS line and the 3DS series have generally been great systems. Unlike Nintendo's home consoles.

@charizard1605: My girlfriend's been complaining that the 3DS has a terrible lack of rpgs compared to the DS.

3ds has more install base and selling much more than Wii U.

I doubt most high end (technical) 3DS releases would have the hypothetical budget of a Wii U game unless a mere 3DS to Wii U port/re-scrap. I'm guessing a Wii U exclusive MH could be almost open-world with MHO assets so that can be more expensive than current MH games on 3DS in terms of development cost.

^ Winner.

misconception, 411 most of SW ppl are fanboys don't take much of their shit literally.

Yes above inclusive so talking about me too.

Anyway, if u look at Wii, most of its games were actually 3rd party.......so no it isn't a persistent problem. There is much support. For record, when ppl say third party when referring to Nintendo, most are using the term blindly and are really saying why doesn't Wii-U have blockbusters like COD, AssCreed, or Street Fighter cuz like those are the only 3rd Party games that exist. Persistent issue is that third party games have never sold well on Nintendo consoles because marketing sucks. What is Nintendo's marketing like? They once advertised a Sony PSP game while trying to market an exclusive Nintendo game. Other than that, if a multiplat game performs and looks better on Xbox/PS4 well the avg. consumer will buy the superior version. Nobody will pick an online game with only 100,000K in sales while the Xbox/PS4 version has 1m+

Because they've ruled the handheld market with an iron fist since the Game & Watch came out 35 years ago.

3ds has barely any western 3rd party support that isn't shovelware.