Nintendo is having a serious rethink about their handling of third party developers and are hoping to build good relationships.

During E3 last week Eurogamer spoke to Nintendo UK's marketing manager Rob Lowe about the Wii U console. Mr. Lowe stated that Nintendo are having a major rethink about their relationship with third party developers and are hoping to encourage them to work on the Wii U.

While third party developers have always supported Nintendo many in the past have commented on how it is difficult for non-Nintendo titles to sell well on their consoles. While on stage at E3 Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president, spoke about the need to encourage third party development and even welcomed EA's John Ricitiello onto the stage. Addressing this Rob Lowe stated:

"It's absolutely fundamental to the success of Wii U to have better third party support than we've had in the past for our previous consoles. I think Mr. Iwata totally recognises that. And even at a local level we're doing everything we can to support third parties much more than we have done in the past. It goes all the way through the company, from Nintendo Japan, to Nintendo Europe, to Nintendo UK."

Mr. Lowe notes that Nintendo's business model has always been different from Microsoft and Sony's, as they traditionally focus on first party titles such as Zelda and Mario to push consoles, but they too are now looking to "invest in a much bigger way in third party partners because there are certain types of games that we're just not specialists at".

Nintendo hopes to have some third party exclusives on Wii U, such as Killer Freaks From Outer Space, and also hope that multiplatform titles are given unique features due to the console's unique controller: "However, the way that the controller has to make you think and make the developers think will hopefully mean that titles that are ported over will hopefully have individual features that aren't on the other systems."

Rob Lowe also spoke about how Nintendo are trying build a better relationship with western developers, specifically referencing their increasing support from EA. He notes that Nintendo has strong relationships with Japanese companies such as Capcom that have been built over many years and now they are looking to do the same with Western developers. EA took the stage during the conference and spoke about their future plans and how they relate to Nintendo. Mr. Lowe commented that in the past EA has focused on other consoles but now they will hopefully have a stronger relationship with Nintendo:

"But I think with EA in particular we recognise that we've had a very rocky relationship in terms of products and quality of their products on our systems. Sometimes its been great, sometimes they've done bespoke stuff for us and sometimes they've very much focused on the other consoles. I think with this brave new dawn with EA its great for us and it was fantastic to see a few slides with all of their key properties coming out, and I think that will be across both 3DS and Wii U as well."