Lol

 

Kirby. That is all.

(OK, that and Advance Wars and Chrono Cross.)

 

Ironically one of the biggest highlights for me was SD Gundam Battle Alliance, which isn't even a Nintendo exclusive. Reminds me of SD Gundam Capsule Fighter, an old free-to-play game I used to spend way too much time on. Hope there's paint customization.

 

Advance Wars on Switch!? Aye....I think I'll be buying a Switch for that  

 

Nintendo doesn’t really interfere with 3rd party devs. Especially when can’t actually blame Nintendo for certain things they do  

 

If Nintendo is picking up at least part of the bill for Bayonetta 3, it becomes a 2nd party project; so they're going to have somebody from EPD baby sitting it, as well as somebody from developer support assigned as their technical contact rather than going through the normal support channels. They may be involved in design decisions and they might not be - it depends what sort of agreement is in place.

If it's wholly funded by Sega, then there may still be a business and technical presence but their involvement is going to be a lot less invasive.

 

Wouldn't 2nd party technically be the end user?

 

Nope, these terms only deal with the relationship Nintendo has with the development team.

1st Party - Developed by Nintendo
2nd Party - Developed in some sort of cooperation with Nintendo.
3rd Party - Anybody else making a game on Nintendo hardware.

 

That's true as a colloquialism, but as a business term (and legal, and even grammatical if memory serves) second party refers to the consumer when first party refers to the console manufacturer.

 

That was my understanding of the terms as well, and part of why I hate the fandoms use of "4th" party to refer to knockoffs

 

All I can tell you is that those are the terms that are used internally to describe the different B2B relationships with Nintendo and external studios when it comes to development. How the terms are used outside of that, is another thing altogether.

Those are the terms we used internally whilst I was there. We never mixed it up with the legal use of 1st or 2nd party. But when discussing projects in development, the stuff we were working on; we used those terms. I even made presentations for meetings at NCL with those terms - everybody understood what they meant.

 

I'm not arguing against the colloquial use, and it wouldn't be the first time authoritative figures (in this case, employees of a game company, yourself included) used colloquial terms rather than the technical terms internally (I believe it's a known fact that Hasbro employees use fan-coined TF terms like "kibble", for instance), but strictly speaking the original question seemed to be regarding the technical usage. Additionally, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, to my knowledge Nintendo in public statements prefers the phrase "third party partners" rather than "second party developers" if they have a qualifier at all.

 

Based on this week's news, a little celebration seems to be in order (spoilers for those that never played Earthbound before)

Of course, from the other side of YouTube

 

For the (1? 2?) others here who are as stoked as me about a new Xenoblade, some analysis and hypothesizing based on what we know so far from a couple of YouTubers who are big fans. Includes a Takahashi interview as well. (Readable here: An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi - Nintendo - Official Site )

Note that these videos contain spoilers from XC 1 and 2, as well as the older Xeno series games, just in case anyone might be planning to play any of those sometime before 3 lands.

(For the record though, I disagree with the latter video maker's assertion that the footage shown is not running on base Switch hardware or that it looks impossibly good for the system. I think it lines up perfectly well with the Switch's capabilities, and with rumors of more powerful Switch hardware repeatedly failing to come to fruition, newer indications that Nintendo plans to wait at least a year or two for a successor system, and things like the MK8 Deluxe DLC lasting until end of 2023, I think it's more than safe to say we are going to be seeing the existing Switch hardware continue to be sold for at least that long, and probably longer. I find the analysis and inferences pertaining to lore and setting and characters for XC3 really interesting and compelling, though.)

You can expect me to be annoyingly verbose and cloyingly, irrationally excited about this game in coming months. I apologize in advance.   I'm a dork, I just love these games.

 

It's not really colloquial at all - at least from my point of view and in respect to the entire industry. It's not really specific to any one company, although the terms may have become common because of Nintendo. But these are terms that most, if not all of us understand. It's a bit weird to be having a discussion over such a minor thing tbh.

As for PR wording - I wouldn't be surprised that different wording is used. Those things go through several departments before going out - one of them is usually legal. So they're going to be framing it with a legal wording in mind.

Anyhow...all I wanted to do was to explain where Nintendo might interfere with the development of a title, which was usually based on their B2B relationship. Bayonetta 3 may not be a 3rd party project / title in this particular instance, as it could be that Nintendo are funding development. So it's not unrealistic to think that they (Nintendo) are interfering and asking for specific things.

If you guys want to use different terms for that all of that, then be my guest.

** edit **

I also think it's worth pointing out that there's also a difference between 1st, 2nd and 3rd party development / projects and being a 1st, 2nd or 3rd party developer. In this instance, Platinum are still a 3rd party developer completely separate from from Nintendo, but the project they are working on, if Nintendo are funding it, would be considered 2nd party and managed by one of the project groups in EPD. Just like Mercury Steam and Metroid or TT Games and the Wii U exclusive for Lego City Undercover.

 

Nintendo can work black magic to make visually gorgeous games on their consoles for obvious reasons, lol.

Not releasing a new console or even a more powerful switch seems like a good idea long term. Even without the pandemic, it looks like Nintendo doesn’t want to ruin their best selling console’s momentum.

 

Didn't Nintendo also recently state that the Switch has only reached it's half life? Meaning that the console will be produced and sold for another 5 years at least

 

That was really well done. Though I never understood the eldritch Garfield thing.

 

Well, I said I'd reserve judgment until more details pertaining to Chocobo GP's progression and unlock systems emerged, and...

Final Fantasy's Cloud Strife Will Be A Season Pass Exclusive In Chocobo GP

Season pass as in, time gated FOMO-based "make sure you play during this one or two month time window of you'll miss out," not season pass as in, "pre-purchase all future DLC in a single transaction" as in other games. E.g. less MK8 Deluxe DLC pass or BotW DLC pass or Smash Bros. DLC pass, and more the increasingly popular Battle Pass style systems games use.

So, assuming I'm reading that right, unless it never expires (ala Halo Infinite, which at least doesn't expire, but I'm still not a fan) ... *Removes Chocobo GP from list of games I will ever play* Good to have clarity on that finally.

 

They're also more or less giving him away for free

"We'll be giving away 800 Mythril (the equivalent of a Prize, or Season, Pass) to all #ChocoboGP players as a login bonus for Season 1, that should be enough to get a certain spiky haired character to join you..."