Welcome to the first instalment in a series of features in the run up to the unveiling of the NX where we look at what has and hasn’t worked for Nintendo’s last few generations, what we expect and hope from the NX and what industry-wide trends and conventions we think Nintendo may adopt, and which they may not.

The plan is to release eight articles in total and then revisit some of these ideas when the console is formally announced and released. Hopefully Nintendo won’t announce it in the middle of this series and scupper what I’ve written, but if they do I’ll try and amend any future articles accordingly.

This instalment will tackle a biggie - third parties.

Our forum members have been discussing what they want from the NX and third parties and the answers range from just needing the core crowd-pleasing games such as Call of Duty and FIFA to wanting the NX to have technical and controller parity with the PS4 and Xbox One to encourage developers to bring games out on all three of the home consoles.

Some of this of course depends on what the controller ends up being. If it’s a screen-based device with programmable buttons, as some rumours have suggested, it will take more work to get games across, depending of course on other aspects such as what’s under the hood. Some of the fake prototypes that have done the rounds featured a curved screen, which may look nice but could lead to developers having to re-jig elements such as UI which usually sit in the corners. However, if there is a screen but only the central part displays the image, with the rest dedicated to buttons, there’s a chance it won’t be such an issue - other than the fact it would mean the controller screen is quite small. We’ll get more into controllers in the next instalment though.

There’s a commonly held belief amongst some fans that as generations have gone by third parties have released games on Nintendo consoles less. With that in mind I decided to look into how many third party games have been released on each Nintendo home console.

Methodology

For the purpose of this comparison I simply went onto each of the console’s game release pages (e.g. Wii U), copied the table to Excel and did a simple count of how many games in total there were and how many of those had Nintendo as a publisher.

Of course there are a number of potential problems with this; it factors in all games regardless of release in territories (some titles may have only been released in some territories), a game may be re-released under a similar name such as the Nintendo Selects range (a quick look suggests this isn’t a case for Nintendo Selects specifically, but similar could be true for other titles) and in the case of Wii U there’s a few titles that have not yet been released and, for one reason or another, may never make it to market. A game may be published by Nintendo in one territory but by another publisher in a different territory (e.g. Rayman Legends on Wii U in Japan) so for the purpose of this analysis it just looks for the word “Nintendo” exactly. I’ve included a separate table in Appendix A which also shows any entries where the word “Nintendo” is somewhere within there, but the difference is quite small. Any unlicensed games have not been included where they are separated on Wikipedia. All Pokémon games have been classed as Nintendo (some on Wikipedia are classed as Nintendo & The Pokémon Company). The list also includes eShop titles, which obviously puts anything pre-Wii at a disadvantage.

Ultimately this is designed to be an indicative look into trends, not a definitive study. That can and may be done later, but not within this article.

All information is correct as of 29th March 2016.

Findings

All that being said, below are the findings:

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Obviously numbers alone only tell us some of the story. In a more complete analysis we would cross-reference against other aspects such as sales, ratings etc and that is somewhat coming later. The Wii was so popular that many publishers put anything and everything on it and arguably very few people cared about titles such as Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel that they would factor their console-buying decision (sorry Majesco).

There are a number of factors that would have an impact upon the numbers above. These include, but are not limited to, the following; the cost of game production generally going down (due to the increased engines that are free or more easily accessible and/or cheaper media), the rise in popularity of gaming and the at-times turbulent nature of the industry causing studios to pop up and later close. Of course there is also ‘the Wii anomaly’. The console was so popular many titles sprung up to cash in on the popularity.

Analysis

So what does this tell us?

Well, loosely speaking the number of games produced for each console has remained fairly consistent, other than the spike with the Wii and the dip with the N64. The former has been explained, the latter may well be because of the popularity of the PlayStation and their cheaper media driving publishers away from Nintendo and towards Sony at the time.

Similarly the percentage of third party titles has remained fairly consistent, with the N64 percentage dropping over the SNES and the Wii U percentage dropping over the Wii. This is to be expected given the boom in Wii games, but interestingly it is by a smaller percentage than the N64’s drop. For the criticisms it has faced about lower third party support, the Wii U has had better support (as a percentage of overall games) than the N64, which remains a beloved console by many fans who have criticised the Wii U.

Handhelds

I then repeated this check with Nintendo’s handhelds to compare. As the Game Boy Color games do not include publisher information on Wikipedia they have not been included. All console names refer to the “family” (e.g. Game Boy Advance includes SP and Micro, 3DS includes 2DS etc).

Once again, the table below only counts Nintendo titles where Nintendo is the sole publisher, but Appendix B shows the difference if Nintendo published it in conjunction with another publisher. Pokémon titles have also been changed to Nintendo rather than The Pokémon Company.

As with the Wii U, the 3DS is still an active console and that may mean some consoles never get released and other unannounced ones will be released before the console’s life is over.

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Once again we end up with a console that had a lot more titles released than the others (DS). Interestingly, unlike the home consoles the third party support as a percentage of console releases has gradually declined, taking a significant drop in the 3DS.

Of course the handheld console market is completely different from the home one. While Nintendo has faced continued competition since their early days in the home console market, the handheld one has been pretty much theirs for the taking. They’ve had some competition, but none that have had an impact like they have had on the home console.  Recently they have faced competition in a different way - smartphones and tablets.  This may account for the recent drop in third party support, particularly as many Japanese publishers have been courting the mobile market lately.

This may be one of the reasons why the number of titles is significantly greater on handhelds over home consoles, although the fact that third party titles as a percentage of console releases is in the same range for both home and handheld consoles is interesting in itself.

Nintendo Conclusions

In spite of changing markets and industry trends Nintendo has consistently supplied around 5-10% of their consoles’ titles. Thus, each generation has not radically changed when it comes to third party support as a percentage of overall titles available. So why is it then that there is a perception that support has decreased?

As I mentioned previously, this may well be because of other factors influencing perception such as sales figures or average review score. To try and get a better understanding, let’s turn to the other consoles on the next page.

Other Consoles

The data collection has been done in the same way as with the other consoles. In order to focus this study I am only looking at sixth (GameCube, PS2 and Xbox) and seventh (Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360) generations as they are complete generations and will account for the fact that the Wii is a statistical outlier and the Xbox was the first Microsoft console.

As Sony releases titles under various studio names all publishers that contain the words ‘Sony’ have been included as well as SCE (Sony Computer Entertainment) and its variations. However, if they published a title in conjunction with another studio it is not included in the same way it wasn’t for Nintendo. The same is true for Microsoft.

As PS3 games on Wikipedia are separated by download and retail units the lists have been merged but any title that was duplicated was suitably removed so it is only counted once. The PS3 games are listed as developer rather than publisher on Wikipedia but have been classed as publishers for the purpose of this analysis.

6th Generation

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7th Generation

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As you can see, Nintendo’s first party offerings as a percentage of total titles released outweigh that of both Sony and Microsoft. Interestingly they all decreased their support as a percentage in the seventh generation. 

Of course there could be a variety of reasons for this. The Xbox 360 was Microsoft’s second console and they had proved themselves as contenders that would stick around. During the console’s lifespan it’s popularity soared and publishers may have been more keen to release their games on the Xbox 360, allowing Microsoft to not have to ‘plug the gap’.

Sony started the PS3’s life badly, with an expensive machine and a European launch that was over a year after the Japanese one (crucially missing out on two Christmases). This doesn’t seem to have impacted the amount of third party releases as a percentage however. This could be for various reasons, least not the fact they built up goodwill with the PS2 (which was a huge success) and the fact Sony made up for a lot of their early mistakes during the life of the PS3 that may have encouraged publishers to continue supporting the consoles.

However, if Sony can see an increase in third party releases despite a bungled launch with the PS3 why is it that there are less third party releases as a percentage of Wii U titles when it too suffered issues at launch? Both Wii U and PS3 came off the back of successful previous consoles, so what happened?

Of course there are many reasons this might have happened. Nintendo has (so far) released 6.95% of Wii U titles while Sony only released 2.86% of PS3 titles so that is bound to affect the third party figures. As of the end of June 2015 the Wii has sold 101.56 million units compared with the PS2’s 155 million, meaning that Sony were starting on a stronger footing with the PS3 than Nintendo did with the Wii U, although in both cases their previous consoles sold exceptionally well.  Of course we are comparing two different generations here so there will be wider implications as well (such as the global financial crises in 2008).

The PS3 has gone on to shift 80 million units, while the Wii U currently stands at 12.6 million units. Of course it is unfair to compare these two figures directly as the PS3 is an obsolete console while the Wii U is still on the market, but it is winding down.  To compare, the PS3 sold just over 50% of what its predecessor did while the Wii U (so far) has sold just 12%. The Wii U has been Nintendo’s least successful home console, continuing a general trend of reducing sales between generations (discounting the Wii which bucked that trend significantly).

Overall Conclusions

Factoring all this in (while acknowledging that we have not looked at factors such as changing markets, changes in global economy, other competition etc) we can conclude the following:

• Nintendo has consistently supported their consoles more than their competitors

• Broadly speaking the percentage of first party titles on Nintendo’s consoles has not changed between generations

• Third party releases as a percentage have increased on other consoles over time.

• Third party releases as a percentage on Nintendo consoles have varied more, but remained within a consistent band.

Looking at this we could conclude that the reason some fans are saying Nintendo is lacking third party support on the Wii U is simply because compared to their competitors the balance between first and third party releases have, broadly speaking, gone in the opposite direction to that on other consoles. That may give the perception of third party support decreasing over time, which it has somewhat but not by any significant amount.

Best Selling Games

One other big factor that may affect perception is the actual games that are released. Third party support as a percentage of console releases may remain consistent, but if one console receives the most popular games while another receives titles that don’t make a dent in the charts it is bound to affect perception of third party support.

For the purposes of the information below I have looked at the best selling games in the USA (simply because NBD data was more readily and consistently available) in the last 10 years 3 years at a time (so as to cover a range of generations). Nintendo’s games include handheld games.

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*Minecraft, which features in the top 10, was released on the Wii U on December 17th 2015, which is why it appears as 0/1 as it could be argued either way.

It is clear that recently Nintendo’s consoles have not been graced with games that became top 10 sellers in America. While other territories have not been checked, it is likely the figures will be broadly the same, although I suspect it will be healthier in Japan as the American market favours sports titles not seen on Nintendo consoles more so than Japan, but that is conjunctive speculation without checking.

2012 was a good year for Nintendo, but it was also the year the Wii U was launched and did initially see a lot of third party support (mostly in the form of ports). Sales figures combine all the console variations, so while it might be that other consoles helped get the title into the top 10 (as they saw the most sales) it was still available on a Nintendo console.

2009 also saw good support when Nintendo was still enjoying the strong success of the Wii, which itself released at the end of 2006 but didn’t start gaining strong momentum immediately at launch (but picked up not long after).

Of course Nintendo’s own titles have sold well as a percentage of potential owners (i.e. the consoles have a high attachment rating), but as the Wii U has only sold 12.6 million units so far even a game that sells to every owner would still struggle against huge selling franchises such as Call of Duty.

The fact that Nintendo’s consoles have recently featured less best-selling games are bound to have an impact on the perception of third party support as it is these titles that are likely to feature more prominantly in the media.

Critical Reception

Sales play an important part, especially for publishers when deciding which consoles to release on, but critical reception is also important. While the Wii U has sold less units than its competitors, many titles have received outstanding reviews and sold well amongst the Wii U’s audience.

In this section I have compared the amount of titles in the top 10 critically acclaimed games of each year (based on Metacritic average) over the last 10 years, taken every 3 years.

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Interestingly in each of the years chosen only one of the top 10 critically acclaimed games has been released on a Nintendo console. Of course the years in between could tell a different story.

Further analysis could be done to look at the broader picture. For example, you could look at the top 50 most critically acclaimed games in each year and then look at them as a percentage of console releases but that is out of the scope of this report.

Many people have rightly pointed out that Nintendo's games may not sell as well as other publishers, but they are highly rated.  This is true and Metacritic does very well show this, but this brief analysis suggests that they are not alone in receiving high praise.  

Statistical Conclusions

Looking at all the above the following has become clear:

• As a percentage of releases, third party support has not dropped significantly enough for that to be the primary factor into why some fans feel the Wii U has lacked support.

• Recently the top selling video games (in America) are not being released on Nintendo’s consoles.

• The amount of titles on Nintendo consoles in the most critically acclaimed titles of each year has remained consistent in the years studied.

Of course this is all considering the points raised earlier about the limited scope of the survey, both in terms of data looked at and factors considered (e.g. things such as the global financial crash of 2008 has not been included).

What happens NX?

So where does this leave Nintendo and third parties going into the release of the NX?

You can draw a correlation between the availability of big selling third party titles and a console’s success, but it is not a direct correlation as many other factors influence it. However, it is clear that the more third party support, particularly the big selling and acclaimed franchises, a console receives the more impact it is going to have on the console’s sales.

Nintendo continues to support their consoles more than their competitors, but this is not resulting in an impact on hardware and software sales in a significant manner in order to negate the impact of weakened third party support. Their titles also remain consistently well received, but once again this is not impacting sales as well as Nintendo may like.

It doesn’t take all the above research to say “Nintendo would benefit from stronger third party support”, but it does help to paint a clearer picture of where we’re at.

Some have accused Nintendo of being inward-focused and they don’t make the same efforts to entice third parties that Sony and Microsoft do, whether that is through providing similar hardware to make porting titles easier or throwing money at them. This is all of course based on hearsay as we’re not privy to what goes on between Nintendo and third parties.

Nintendo’s console launches have always had strong third party support in recent generations, but after a while this support dies off. It will be interesting to see if the NX gets third party support at the start, or if they’re reluctant due to the Wii U’s low sales. Furthermore, whether it stays around is another question.  Publishers are always driven by money, which is why we tend to see a flurry of support at the start that then evolves depending on the console's success.

Of course the one big unknown that will play a part is the NX itself. Depending on its hardware, controller, unique features etc publishers that have turned away from the Wii U may return to the NX to try again. Likewise, if the console offers similar power to the PS4 and Xbox One and get the same kind of releases, with Nintendo’s own games on top, it may encourage people to pick up the NX. Furthermore, recent talk of cross-console online play by Sony and Microsoft (with Nintendo confirming they would support this) could mean that three similar consoles with one with Nintendo exclusive games might encourage even more people on board.

Suffice to say Nintendo needs third party support in a different manner than they currently do to be level with Sony and Microsoft, if that is their desire.  Publishers tend to support them pretty consistently, but it seems that they don't necessarily release the crowd-pleasing titles on Nintendo's consoles.  The role of independent developers will also play a bigger pat in the next generation.  Over the last two generation indie titles have increased in popularity and Nintendo would be wise to court them.  They have done so with the Wii and Wii U and hopefully shall continue to do so.

References and Appendices

Appendix A

Table to show third party releases on Nintendo’s home consoles where the publisher on Wikipedia has the word ‘Nintendo’ in it anywhere, thus factoring in any titles which may have been released by Nintendo in one territory and another publisher in other territories.

Appendix B

Table to show third party releases on Nintendo’s handheld consoles where the publisher on Wikipedia has the word ‘Nintendo’ in it anywhere, thus factoring in any titles which may have been released by Nintendo in one territory and another publisher in other territories.