We all acknowledge Nintendo is severely lacking in this regard, but why they do is up for debate. Is the audience too different? Do they market 3rd party content poorly? What the hell is it?
After thinking (not so) hard about it, I came up with an answer.
The short version: They don't use their acquired talent to produce games that would attract 3rd party developers if they sold well. For example, making Retro work on Donkey Kong as opposed to a new Metroid.
The long version: While Nintendo produces amazing in-house titles, they don't use their other developers to branch out past 'Nintendo-style' titles, and when they do, they don't heavily promote them. Literally the only Bayonetta 2 commercial I saw was on Adult Swim. This dates back to the N64 and GameCube days especially, where titles like Eternal Darkness, Conker, and Perfect Dark were basically sent out to die, while 3rd party exclusives like Resident Evil 0 and REmake suffered the same fate. Bayonetta 2 and Metroid Prime may have sold over 1 million copies, but that's not Mario or Smash Bros. numbers, which is what Nintendo is ultimately looking for in order to keep these franchises afloat. Because of this self defeating cycle, this can be used as anecdotal evidence to not invest in future titles of this ilk.
So what can be done to fix this? Or: theoretical titles to invest heavily into.
- Metroid Prime Remastered: More like a full on remake instead of a remaster. Completely redone textures with displacement maps, lighting complete with static global illumination and PBR, image based lighting and environment maps for the various metallic materials, GPU particles and full resolution alpha, water tessellation, subsurface scattering, volumetric light shafts, per object blur and bokeh depth of field, higher polygon counts, anti-aliasing, shadows casting from stationary lights, particle lighting, screen space reflections, bloom, SSAO with capsule shadows, etc.
Bayonetta 2 Remastered: With the same tech I outlined above (minus the higher polys considering Bayonetta 2 was pushing super high polygon counts in the first place), anti-aliasing, and a consistent 60 FPS.
- Fatal Frame IV Remastered: Again, a full on remake with tons of bug fixes, 60 FPS, and a revamped control scheme.
Fatal Frame VI: A reboot taking place in modern day Japan with a focus on found footage. Whereas Silent Hill has always had Western inspirations (see RazorFist's retrospective for more info), Fatal Frame has always been grounded in Japanese lore. That aside, I feel that with visuals and production values of more Americanized horror games like Resident Evil 7, Outlast 2, and Silent Hills PT and a bigger focus on scaring the shit out of the player like those games and stealth (you don't have a power camera, you have a regular video camera) as opposed to creeping players out and fending off ghosts out would be great. Given the recent revival of horror games, I could see this taking off.
The story would be about a government military development subsidy stationed in Japan that's doing a lot of shady experiments, most notably using ghosts from dead people as a means of weapons development. You're a worker there that is attempting to expose the operation. However, in your attempt, the ghosts get loose, start killing everybody, and the company calls in their clean-up crew to erase any evidence, which includes any witnesses, and you're a witness.
Battalion Wars spin-off title: A very slow paced and strategetic tactical shooter spin-off of the Nintendo/Battalion Wars series, this is a sim in the sense of the SWAT 4: Elite Force mod or the original Rainbow Six trilogy. You can die in one or two shots, you have to collect all evidence and secure all hostages while reporting it, there's tons of squad commands, and you can plan your missions out and customize your squad to your liking in the menu, much like Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. Also includes 4 player online co-op, full fledged multiplayer and terrorist hunt.
The story is about robotic workers who go out of control and basically turn into terrorists due to developing feelings, which means a sense of oppression. The art style would be similar to a 1980s/90s sci-fi anime.
- Mach Rider: A post apocalyptic open world racing game as fast as F-Zero GX or Fast Racing Neo with a full 60 FPS framerate, loads of customization, and various game modes (drag racing, drifting, story, etc.) would have a lot of mainstream appeal. As opposed to police chases, you get chased by bandits who want to loot you.
Car/bike customization would be as in-depth as something like Midnight Club: LA.
- Zangeki no Reginleiv 2: An open world action game with colossi style boss fights and open ended character action game combat.
- Eternal Darkness 2: I was thinking it should be more inspired by The Shining and other psychological horror as opposed to Lovecraft for a sequel.
- Geist: The original had a great concept and deserves where credit is due for being an M rated Nintendo published product, but it was too linear and there was too much forced action. Reinvent it as a a Hitman style systems based open ended stealth assassin game with more flexible posessions.
- Disaster: Day of Crisis reboot: Make it a legitimate 3rd person shooter with moral ambiguity resulting in different endings, AI similar to The Last of Us' E3 demo, and a lot more replayability via multiplayer and you could have a Last of Us alternative.
The Last Story 2: Remember when I talked about that open world Golden Sun ARPG? Scrap it and apply all of the concepts I thought of to a Last Story sequel.
Pandora's Tower 2: A more focused, linear title with major combat overhauls. I was thinking that for the sequel, the story would be that you get infected with a demon virus that you need to suppress by eating demon hearts. This plays into the gameplay, as when the infection takes over, you become super powerful but your health slowly drains. The combat is more heavily inspired by Devil May Cry 3/4 and Bayonetta, but with God of War/Ninja Gaiden II style gore (I figured if the first game was already pretty gory, crank it up from 5 to 105 for the sequel). The game would have manual targeting, a free form camera, and tons of different fighting styles, weapons, and upgrades.
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