The Future of 3rd Party Support

[Lonk]

I think it's time we talk about 3rd Party Support.  3rd Party Support's purpose is to supplement a console with games in between major exclusives for the consoles.  Recently, however, 3rd Party Publishers seem to have gained much more power in the industry than in the past if the fact that the biggest games for the consoles they have proper affiliation with are 3rd Party games.  Last year wasn't much of a good year for gaming, anyone can say.  Games such as Assassin's Creed Unity, Watch Dogs and Destiny ended up being very underwhelming despite the large amount of hype they received.  Those three games were published by Ubisoft and Activision, some of the biggest giants in the industry.

 

It wasn't also this year that this trend was happening at either.  During the last few years, THQ was forced to close down and liquidate its properties due to very poor sales, and the amount of bad practices done by Capcom (such as on-disk DLC, cancelling many big titles and releasing poorly-designed games) put them at death's door.  These two were absolutely huge AAA Publishers.

 

Then, there's Sega.  Poor Sega has just been walking itself down the crapper since its merger in 2004.  They are the epitome of the [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChristmasRushed]Christmas Rushed[/url] trope, always declaring their big releases in Q4 without any sign of Quality Assurance.  Sonic '06 and Sonic Boom come to mind.  On top of that, they have a very poor habit of not letting a majority of their titles see international release.  Even if they do make a profit, what is the cost of doing so?

 

With how this trend is going, what do you think about the future of 3rd Party Support?

[DL]

Indie Developers will become what 3rd Party devs were back in the day.

 

 

There HAVE been a lot of 3rd party GOOD support

 

Like Bayonette 2, Shantae, and many other smaller companies, for example, but I see your point. However its the problem of those specific companies have a track record of f*cking stuff up.

[Lonk]

Indie Developers will become what 3rd Party devs were back in the day.

 

 

There HAVE been a lot of 3rd party GOOD support

 

Like Bayonette 2, Shantae, and many other smaller companies, for example, but I see your point. However its the problem of those specific companies have a track record of f*cking stuff up.

 

Using Bayo 2 might be cheating, since it was published by Nintendo.

 

Indie Developers are going to be the future 3rd Party Support, and they might even have a better time of getting adjusted to the crash due to the friendliness policies of Indie Developers by other console developers.  Maybe the three consoles made these preparations because they know that the AAA Developers are going to crash and burn soon.

 

Then, there's also PC.  PC is PC, though, and will be largely unaffected by whatever fate happens to the AAA Developers.

[DL]

Published by Nintendo, but it's still a 3rd party game, NOT made by Nintendo. 

 

And yeah, PC will always have massive support regardless, from things like Steam and Origin.

[Flame Dragon]

While Ubisoft and Activision are big names, my understanding about them has always been that they have a range in the quality of games they put out. As such, them putting out some duds isn't really calls for concern. I mean we got some bad ones, but DA:I is getting TONS of game of the year awards so its not like we didn't get good stuff. GTAV also just game out.

[Agro]

In that instance Bayonetta is technically 2nd Party still.
 
 
 
Right now the large 3rd party publishers are dying, with only a handful of names left to really make note of: Take-Two, Ubisoft, EA, Sega, Activision, Bandai Namco, Konami, Capcom, Warner Bros.
Obviously, there are other big names of note, such as Atlas, 505, Xseed, etc.
 
But they won't die. Indies can't be the only third party games at any point ever. Even with production costs going through the roof, the spot the major 3rd party publishers hold is an important one that needs to be filled. Look at the PS4 right now. All they have are indies and broken 3rd party games, really, and people are very unhappy about it. If they were thinking like Nintendo, they would have filled it in with a shit ton of good first party titles, but they aren't coming until next year.
 
In general, you pick a system to play games on it, and the system that has more games you want to play is the one you're going to get. When you talk about this, usually you think about first party games, after all, that's how first parties try to differentiate themselves from each other. That doubly applies to Nintendo, who needs their first parties to go up against not only Microsoft and Sony's first party games, but also the third party games because they aren't being made for the Wii U. Many would argue they don't do that well enough (even if they do well with many happy Wii U owners). But the fact remains that many don't even consider the Wii U because of how many games won't come to Wii U, even if they're not exclusive to other systems. Obviously Wii U doesn't need them, as their goal is simply to make enough first and second party games that you NEED that you can't afford not to buy their system. Of course, that does lead to several times a year where there is a thin stream of games for their system.
 
So let's talk about Nintendo's strategy. In the foreseeable future Nintendo has barely any 3rd party support outside of Japan. Obviously that's not the worst place to have support from, although of the 4 biggest 3rd party publishers in Japan, only 1, Sega, can be considered a major publisher. Question is: how many of those exclusives from those publishers are going to come to Wii U? We know that there will be quite a few games from companies like Square Enix, Level 5, Sega, and Capcom for the 3DS, but the Wii U isn't as fortunate, mainly due to lacking sales in the region. At least it still has Skylanders. This is where Indies come in, however. Nintendo, like the other two console manufacturers, has been pushing for Indies more recently, and to their pleasant surprise, everyone loves Nintendo– damn, nostalgia, you're such a good friend. Indies are 3rd parties for Nintendo, imo. They're like sprinkling on Microsoft and Sony's cupcakes, but they're the icing for Nintendo. Shovel Knight OP. Good indie titles are cheap and easy for Nintendo to publish and support in mass, meaning that in between their numerous big titles, they'll have small doses of games for everyone to play– many of which feel right at home on Nintendo consoles considering the recent run of pixel-graphics taking the scene reminding us all of the 16-bit days Nintendo dominated.
 
Of course, I'd love to see Nintendo pick up more indie exclusives and publish more 3rd party games (technically 2nd party) on their console using their great warchest (Bayonetta 2 was a great experiment (although criminally not selling well), and Devil's Third will probably not be, but let's hope they remember the prior more (sans the bad sales) when they consider doing it again). At the very least the indie exclusive games are on the way. Take a look through Kickstarter's games page and you'll find a ridiculous number of funded games that already have Wii U in their sights AND NOTHING ELSE (well, PC).
 
Sony is the closest to Nintendo in design, though they're maintaining control of 3rd party support with the PS4's ease of development and powerful processor. They have a lot of good 1st party developers and once they get going they won't have to worry about the failures of 3rd party support. They'll only have the comfort knowing it's there to make their available library look nice. Indies to them are more: look at ALL of these games on our system you can play if you get bored with the AAA games! (like I said, sprinkles)
 
Microsoft is fucking weird. Like they spent the better part of the past system cycle getting rid of more 1st party developers than anything else. And they didn't need to. As the easier system to develop for, most 3rd party games were better on their system. They didn't care if Sony had all the exclusives because they had that. And Halo. That basically flipped going into this gen and they've been trying to develop more first party titles. They still have Halo, Gears, etc. (I say etc, even though that's basically all there was) but now they're paying more to get publishers back on with them like Swery and Platinum Games, as well as stuff no one thought would need to be exclusive to survive, like Tomb Raider (seriously, what?). They're even putting out money to make games like Phantom Dust. WHICH IS INSANE BY THE WAY. Anyway, like Sony, they're going to rely on third party titles to pave the way for them, especially through the bro-games made by EA (EA Sports), Activision (Call of Duty, Destiny), and Take-Two (GTA), who, as I mentioned are the top-3 publishers.
 
All in all, they'll remain important parts of the industry. They good. Ubisoft's really the only one that fucked up big this year, and even they put out great games like Far Cry 4 and Child of Light.

[Lonk]

While Ubisoft and Activision are big names, my understanding about them has always been that they have a range in the quality of games they put out. As such, them putting out some duds isn't really calls for concern. I mean we got some bad ones, but DA:I is getting TONS of game of the year awards so its not like we didn't get good stuff. GTAV also just game out.

 

It's the fact that their duds are appearing more consistently than normal that has me worried.  I'm not saying that all 3rd Party Publishers are following in suit (Stick of Truth and Shadows of Mordor stick out), but the giants of the industry are gradually worsening with their quality and practices, such as putting out practically unfinished games and practically abusing their fanbases. 

[DL]

It's the fact that their duds are appearing more consistently than normal that has me worried.  I'm not saying that all 3rd Party Publishers are following in suit (Stick of Truth and Shadows of Mordor stick out), but the giants of the industry are gradually worsening with their quality and practices, such as putting out practically unfinished games and practically abusing their fanbases. 

Something tells me you agree with ReviewtechUSA

[Agro]

The only companies really devolving are EA and Ubisoft though.

Virtually everything Take-Two, the biggest 3rd party publisher, has put out has been gold. 2k sports games, Civ, Borderlands, XCOM, GTA, Spec Ops: The Line, Max Payne, BioShock... etc.

It was just a bad year, really. First Parties had just as many problems as 3rd parties too, considering the Master Chief collection and Driveclub

[Flame Dragon]

Since Nintendo and its state of 3rd part support was brought up, I'll just say a lot of games are on PC. Yes, you still miss some, but between the PC and Nintendo system you get a TON of good games. Personally, I'm happy with just my Wii U + PC. Wii U + PS3/4 is also fair.
 

It's the fact that their duds are appearing more consistently than normal that has me worried.  I'm not saying that all 3rd Party Publishers are following in suit (Stick of Truth and Shadows of Mordor stick out), but the giants of the industry are gradually worsening with their quality and practices, such as putting out practically unfinished games and practically abusing their fanbases.

My understanding is that this is just kind of an trend as a whole, though part of that may just be the ease in putting out games thanks to steam. They focus on the money and because they can just patch after release they would rather ship something half done and get paid now then wait to put out the finish game. I also feel a lot of this comes from the train wreck that was this years AC which is them pushing the limit of what they can get away with WAY to far.
 

The only companies really devolving are EA and Ubisoft though.

Virtually everything Take-Two, the biggest 3rd party publisher, has put out has been gold. 2k sports games, Civ, Borderlands, XCOM, GTA, Spec Ops: The Line, Max Payne, BioShock... etc.

It was just a bad year, really. First Parties had just as many problems as 3rd parties too, considering the Master Chief collection and Driveclub

Yea, those are the main two I've heard called out in terms of big companies doing this. Though I've heard loads of crap about EA for ages.

[Agro]

Since Nintendo and its state of 3rd part support was brought up, I'll just say a lot of games are on PC. Yes, you still miss some, but between the PC and Nintendo system you get a TON of good games. Personally, I'm happy with just my Wii U + PC. Wii U + PS3/4 is also fair.

This is what I've suggested. If you want Sony's games, go PS4, if not, go PC. Xbox's 1st party support sounds cool, but they've yet to prove to me that any of it isn't coming out on PC as well.

And if you want Nintendo, buy Nintendo too. I'm just waiting for them to finally drop it to $250 and start selling dem hotcakes.

[Flame Dragon]

This is what I've suggested. If you want Sony's games, go PS4, if not, go PC. Xbox's 1st party support sounds cool, but they've yet to prove to me that any of it isn't coming out on PC as well.

I honestly don't gett eh Xbox. Like, I try to think about what it offers that they others don't, and I can never think of anything major. I've heard people site them having the best online in the past, but that was years ago. Now all I can think of is KI and Halo. Side from that all they have is the stuff you can get on the PS3/4

[Agro]

Their games ran better and the online was better. Actually, Live still is more consistent (look at how PSN went down today), but PS+ free games are just so much better.

To their credit, they've had quite a few great exclusives recently like Sunset Overdrive, and they always nail down really cool indies like Limbo and Braid (for a time). Even now they're getting Inside and Cuphead which look amazing.

Only thing about the exclusives is still that I think most if not all are going to be on PC at some point (even Dead Rising 3 is after a long time of saying it wasn't) so until they start constently not doing so, there's no incentive not to get a PC instead.