Sorry, I coughed at some point during this generation, must have missed the marketing for those games in that split second.
I kid, I kid. There are games there, but in diminished quantity and there's very little behind them in promotion is the problem.
Hehe
I dont follow the japanese marketing of games in general, so i cant say how much or how little each game gets to be honest. I only know the little i pick up of info here and there. The White Knight Chronicle games sold pretty well at least, so i assume they had some marketing.
They were one of the only companies trying, and by the time Trauma Team came out, most core gamers totally gave up on their Wii and Atlus was smart enough to see the trend. There's a reason they've been in business for so long despite making mostly niche games.
It could be the reason. We'll see how it goes with the WiiU.
Bundles are just marketing, they don't do anything to nurture the developers themselves. It's done for games that were already going to sell scads and scads regardless of the bundle.
Marketing is important. Earlier you spoke how much Nintendo did to advertice Dragon Quest in west. Sure, bundles are mostly used for bigger games indeed, but it is still about 3rd party
I'm not really sure what you mean with nurturing 3rd parties when you ignore stuff like Playstation CAMP and everything else i mentioned about this. You mentioned like 5-6 games earlier where Nintendo did something for 3rd parties, and there are several of hundred 3rd party games. I could say that Nintendo hardly does anything based on this.
I'm not doubting that Nintendo is trying hard, the only thing i'm focusing on here is what you're saying about the other companies, that they dont do anything.
EDIT: Unless "they" is referring to the bundles. But bundles are something that 3rd party developers like, so it can definitelly be a "carrot".
The difference is in approach. Nintendo saw the failure of Other M, and what are they doing? Putting Ninja Gaiden 3 on all of their hardware promo materials and pushing the game in marketing, as well as publishing the Fatal Frame 2 remake in Europe.
What did Sony do with Folklore after the Genji bomb? Sent it to die.
You mean similar to when Genji bombed, Sony still hired Game Republic to make Folklore (or FolksSoul), Dark Mist and Toy Home? Giving the company more work and paychecks?
FolksSoul got TV commercial in Japan by the way, so i wouldnt said that it was sent to die. Sometimes games simply doesnt sell much because it is a niche game, or that the game isnt very good (generally speaking, not referring to Folklore). But using one game from 2006 as an example as how the situation is today doesnt seem very accurate to me.
You also have upcoming Soul Sacrifice for Vita, developed by Marvelous and SCEJ. Sony will have a big push with this game. But i'm not sure that these games (including Ninja Gaiden 3 and Fatal Frame 2) have much to do with 3rd party support. All of these games are published by Sony and Nintendo respectively, and that makes the releases 1st party in that sense. This means that the sales cut to the 3rd party developers is a lot smaller, or maybe nothing at all (besides the paychecks for working on the games of course).
By the way, i dont know if you saw my previous edit, but Game Republic made 11 games after Genji. I'm not sure if Genji was the main reason why they shut down in 2011.
Square Enix (Kitase specifically) already said
they are looking at Final Fantasy's viability on the WiiU back in 2011. If that bears any fruit, prepare for a shake-up.
And before the "bubububuBUT Agni's Philosophy" people come in, that was a Luminous tech demo. And I have suspicions Square Enix is looking to be the Epic Games of Japan and license it for next gen to any takers, so making something stunning is a marketing prerequisite.
And as for Capcom, we know Ono has a dev kit, he was talking about the system prior to E3 2012. So it's pretty clear we'll get fighters.
As for anyone or anything else, no one's opened their mouths.
This seems to be more about multiplatform games. I dont doubt that there will be multiplatforms to begin with, but what about exclusives?
We knew just as little about the Wii (then Revolution) and PS3 in 2005 as we do about the PS4 and Durango now, and Japanese developers were MUCH more talkative in 2005. Compared to deathly silence, there is something up.
The PS3 and the Wii were both announced in mid 2005, i think this is the reason. We dont have a clue about PS4 and Xbox 720 at this point. We have the rumors, but they are rumors.