That depends. Sometimes it is easier just to convince the publishers and marketing departments to put games on your system since they're the ones with the true decision making power.
Beamdog founder Trent Oster: "We don't do Nintendo development"
- Thread starter LiK
- Start date
That depends. Sometimes it is easier just to convince the publishers and marketing departments to put games on your system since they're the ones with the true decision making power.
DragonSworne
Banned
The worst of this thread are the people trying to use this to attack the Nintendo fan base.
The comments from users here are less silly than the Dev's comments.
I don't think anyone is trying to defend Nintendo's past policy, atleast I hope not, because they did suck.
But business is business, and releasing anything on WiiWare is not smart business. This is completely Nintendo's fault,100% on the WiiWare execution.
The developer also didn't have a smart business plan. MDK2 would have sold like crap anyway if there was no size restriction, was no certification waiting period, and if there was sales threshold. Why? Because of the other consequences that title would have had to face.
Not addressing the failed business strategy by attacking Nintendo seems more like an excuse than an accurate assessment of the poor sales.
The comments from users here are less silly than the Dev's comments.
I don't think anyone is trying to defend Nintendo's past policy, atleast I hope not, because they did suck.
But business is business, and releasing anything on WiiWare is not smart business. This is completely Nintendo's fault,100% on the WiiWare execution.
The developer also didn't have a smart business plan. MDK2 would have sold like crap anyway if there was no size restriction, was no certification waiting period, and if there was sales threshold. Why? Because of the other consequences that title would have had to face.
Not addressing the failed business strategy by attacking Nintendo seems more like an excuse than an accurate assessment of the poor sales.
FieryBalrog
Member
Yeah, like 20 freaking years. Are you serious. The game he ported wasn't from 1991, maybe that's why. I can't believe this is even a serious discussion where I have to explain these things.
No one's saying it's impossible, so keep railing on that strawman. Devs like the Beamdog guy quite understandably don't want to work with it. Hence the comment. I mean really? Just because they know the shitty limitation exists doesn't mean they have to like it or refrain from comment about it.
It boggles my mind the convoluted hoops people will jump through to defend Nintendo's bad practices.
Glass Rebel
Member
Not defending the 40mb limit at all since it was clearly bs but... if he knew he didn't want to work with it... why did he?
staticneuron
Member
Lol, maybe he should have just said "nintendo IP" instead of one specific title. Looking at some of the best selling games for the wii, it makes sense for devs to not expect much. The only third party that seemed to get regular success on the wii is Ubisoft and to a much lesser extent activision.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Around 8-9 seconds, just did it.
Maybe I'm not the norm, but that's usually the amount of time it takes ( I think once was really fast)
I agree that the store is better than the Wii one, but Nintendo is playing the catch game here and they still don't see to run fast enough to make the distance shorter.
I don't know about the prices, a lot of games dosn't seem to be much deeper than the 2-3 range you can find on iOS/Android.And VC games are really overpriced.
I was mostly referring to small(indie) companies, rather than companies with publisher contracts.
Nobody's really defending it. The point is, by the time they decided to port MDK2 to WiiWare, the service had already been out for several years. The file limit constraint, stupid as it is, was well-known by then. Why decide to make a game for WiiWare, knowing the limitations, only to complain about the size limit, when you can release AND HAVE RELEASED the game on multiple other platforms?
I'm not going to say anything about Nintendo's certification nonsense, because it IS simply nonsense, but the file size thing was a known quantity. Nobody forced them to attempt a WiiWare port in the first place. Why the expectation that Nintendo would change the file size limit specifically for this port of an old game?
Even assuming everything with certification had gone smoothly, you'd still be releasing a 12 year old game that looks worse than it did on release, and charging four dollars more for it than the PC version you re-released on GOG a year beforehand. Even if Nintendo had the most awesome DD service otherwise, who the FUCK was going to buy that game?
See, that's the thing. Developers are people so they're allowed to be as biased and stupid as everyone else, but if they want to make money and get their games to the biggest number of people possible they need to let go of petty things like this and do their development and business decisions based on up to date information instead of throwing a tantrum or base all you do on outdated information. See: Edmund McMillen from Team Meat.
staticneuron
Member
You don't seem to understand the article. They were open to nintendo but since they had a bad experience with them the first time around, they are not going to be working with them again.
What makes it even worse is this....
My thing is, no one is attacking anyone but pointing out silly statements.
So on one hand, people wonder why we don't see more mature titles on the Nintendo platforms. First it will have to get past nintendo, then we would have to consider the demographic. Now there are some people out there who would like to enjoy a wide variety of titles on their console of choice and blame pubs and devs for not bringing them to the console. Depending on the thread though, the devs will get skewered by the "fans". Here you say that the game would have not sold and they shouldn't try it. Can you honestly speak for everyone who owns a nintendo device? I doubt it but if history is any indication, you are right. They could have looked at sale history to determine if the theme of their game was going to work on the console. If all pubs and devs started doing that though..... the library for future nintendo consoles will start to look very interesting.
Barkley's Justice
Member
Scandalous!
Especially when you consider that the console has been bundled with a game for nearly its entire lifespan. (though MS and Sony generally bundle up around holiday time, too)
Hot Coldman
Banned
So you're saying that not working with Nintendo should have been obvious even before the lesson of WiiWare MDK2 bombing?
Yeah, exactly! :lol It's like complaining about getting beaten up by a gang after you go and get up in their face
I'm not defending it, I'm just pointing out that clearly the game he made didn't suit 40MB. If he knew the limit he should have designed a game that fitted within the limitation. Team Meat started SMB for WW but found that 40MB was too small so they just stopped development for it. He was never forced to make it and there are other platforms to choose from which don't have that limit in place. It's like buying a vindaloo and then complaining because you hate spicy food.
Oh but apparently discussion isn't welcome on message boards.
Glass Rebel
Member
I completely understand the article but he's complaining about stuff that he should have known beforehand.
Shadow Hog
Member
IIRC they lost the source code.
Actually - it's rather embarrassing that they are airing their inabilities so publicly. My first WiiWare game took under 2 and a half months of lotcheck time. I did 2 other releases and each one was less lotcheck time. Lotcheck is hard. But if you actually read the guidelines and test things properly there is no way it can take 9 months.
And while the arbitrary 40 meg limit was something that needed to be worked around, it's something that was known before they decided to port the game.
It's sad to see him try to duck all responsibility for this and to turn this into some kind of fanboy argument
Relaxed Muscle
Member
I don't get this.They want money and they're other services than are a far better option to make money, until Wii U demostrates the contrary, sorry but the ball is on nintendo court, they screwed up with the Wii so now it's their job to make the Wii U service a success and make things easier for developers.
Maybe there was pressure from the publisher or they just had bigger expectations ...or something.
For example, here are two different sides of a coin:
2010:
-Beamdog announced MDK 2 was coming to WiiWare
-Shin'en released Jett Rocket on WiiWare
2011:
-Beamdog released MDK2 on WiiWare (and MDK2 HD on PC on their own)
(Wii)
(HD)
-Shin'en released FAST on WiiWare and NanoAssault on the 3DS (retail)
2012:
-Beamdog says "We dont' do Nintendo development"
-Shin'en releases a digital eShop (3DS) game with 2 more games coming this year too and announced support for the Wii U.
But goes to show that when developers commit , limit and hazzles aside they don't have problems with it. They may not be happy with said limits, but doesn't' mean that the limits were forced on them; since they chose to make those games.
So, that's why I guess the WiiWare version of MDK2 may have to do with Interplay. Since I don't' see Beamdog going and decided to port the game with said limits and sign the contract with that kinda of payment; when they released the HD version on their own digital distribution site for PC
staticneuron
Member
I see what you are saying. Yeah I would have imagined they should have known about the unit sales and the size limit. But the 9 month cert process seems like something that wouldn't be mentioned up front. That is very lengthy.
Worldwide (according to last fiscal reports, units in millions):
360 HW:65.8 360 SW :? Ratio:?
PS3 HW:62 PS3 SW:568.1 Ratio: 9.1
Wii HW:94.97 Wii SW:805.15 Ratio: 8.4
Does anyone know the 360 software?
Reverse engineer it, then. Can't be that hard.
FieryBalrog
Member
You guys are hilarious.
Glass Rebel
Member
It's selfpublished as far as I'm aware.
staticneuron said:
The certification time is definitely fucked up but someone above posted that he didn't have any issues with that. It's also the first time I've heard of such a long period. I haven't really kept up with Nintendo for quite some time though.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
It was presented in a hyperbolic unproffessional way, but there's probably a large kernel of truth behind it. Many small to midsized Japanese devs have alluded to similar problems on the DS.
Shadow Hog
Member
I speak from first-hand experience of reverse-engineering the simplest program as a homework assignment: yes it bloody well can.
If somebody could reverse engineer the PC version so I can use WASD to move myself during the falling segments instead of WS and left/right, or so that pushing W and S when in Sniper mode actually moved me instead of moving my aim up/down, though... I'd be all for that.
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
That's the thing though. Of that roughly 8 games per user, how many of those are third party games on average? These numbers would be really interesting. In my own case that would be 1 vs 7 Nintendo games or something but that's just anecdotal.
His medium of choice here was Twitter, which lends itself to short and often highly hyperbolic messages to get the point across.
This. I've not had first-hand experiences with the Wii lotcheck, but I *have* had first-hand experiences with Xbox TCRs and PS TRCs. If nothing else, I'm fairly sure that if he took 9 months to get through lotcheck, he wouldn't have found things easier on the other consoles.
It is, and it's not normal. It'd only be that long if it kept failing.
I suspect what we have here is a developer who isn't used to fairly stringent certification requirements on consoles - all consoles - and developed a game without them in mind. Implementing the requirements *after* developing the game is an unpleasant process, you'll find you have to unpick lots of code.
One example from my own experience: The (original) Xbox requires that whichever controller is picked up and used first is explicitly tagged as player 1's controller, no matter which socket it's in. I had to implement that in an engine originally designed for the PS2 where player 1's controller was always socket 1's controller. Adding in sensible behaviour for unplugging, reinserting and swapping controllers on top of that was an utter nightmare - but fortunately I found out it was necessary before we were anywhere near certification and was able to flag it up as something that needed development time straight away. Having to plug that code into the game when it was *completely* finished would have been a nightmare.
staticneuron
Member
The one for the wii was published by Interplay.
It is certainly odd that they chose the Wii first to do this. Maybe they are planning to port the HD version to the other consoles at a a later date.
EDIT: BTW Shin'en seems to only develop for nintendo consoles. Not really an even comparison when talking about commitment.
I hope that, by "certification" he means getting approved to buy a dev kit and not the game approval, because I cannot imagine how badly managed a team can be to fail lot-checks for 9-months straight. I remember reading devs complaining about lotchecks and how terrible they were... but when I finally got to work on a DS game there was nothing special about it, unless you completely ignore the guidelines and only worry about them a week before submission. We got our game through on the first try.
Glass Rebel
Member
Ah, the more you know. That's really the pubs fault then.
That's the best part. Wii owners and Nintendo fans that would actually get upset over this are not gonna buy a remake of an old D&D game anyway, since most of them weren't even born when the original came out.
Ok, mentally 13 years old then. Better?
PairOfFilthySocks
Member
"You raised an understandable issue with my favourite company but then you bad-mouthed them so I'm going to ignore the valid complaints you made and not buy your games."
I just wanna know how they managed to have a nine month lotcheck! That's genuinely insane.
Catchpenny
Member
Yes, this is a quality unique to the Nintendo fanbase. *logs into Call Of Duty*
DCharlie
And even i am moderately surprised
I'm confused about one thing in all this hoo-haa.
Why are people defending the 40mb limit? Surely given the number of different dev platfom options available the absolute last thing you want is a limit - especially one as low as 40mb (assuming that that limit is still at that level)
Am i missing something?
Why are people defending the 40mb limit? Surely given the number of different dev platfom options available the absolute last thing you want is a limit - especially one as low as 40mb (assuming that that limit is still at that level)
Am i missing something?
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
Baldur's Gate is the shit. You will all buy it.
Not on a Nintendo console they won't.
I seen, at best, 2 users who fit that description, most people haven't said anything close to that.
And I definitely seen 2 or more people who took this thread as an excuse to come and point/laugh at them supposed "Nintendo fanboys".
That's... not what I'm saying at all. I'm not advocating Nintendo's or anyone else's service, I'm saying that a developer should rely on logic instead of sulking, spouting petty remarks and burning bridges. There's nothing intelligent about what he said, regardless of the fact that Nintendo did a terrible job with WiiWare.
I think I have the first edition CD somewhere, and if I remember correctly, the game script is on there in human readable form (LUA I think). The assets aren't encrypted, either. It should be possible to move the whole game to a different engine, even if the source is lost. Should.
Pachterballs
Banned
Glass Rebel
Member
You might as well drop "Nintendo" altogether.
As I see it, no one is actally defending it. More they are wondering how a developer makes a problem out of it when it was pretty wel documented beforehand that the limit was in place.
Are you calling me a 3rd party?