Update: Thomas Mahler, developer of Ori and the Blind Forest, has now spoken out against Nintendo’s secrecy surrounding the NX and the lack of devkits the company has sent out. Read more right here.
Original story: Since the Nintendo 64, every console Nintendo has released has suffered from a lack of third-party support. While the company’s games and those released by their first-party developers have consistently been of a high quality, consumer interest in their hardware routinely dwindles much quicker than it does with their rivals as a result of this issue. But while many were hoping that Nintendo’s approach to courting third-party developers would change with the upcoming Nintendo NX console, an indie developer has stated that Nintendo is still being incredibly secretive regarding the system, suggesting that history could repeat itself once again.
In an interview with Coldwood Interactive’s Martin Sahlin, a developer behind the recent platformer Unravel, GamingBolt asked whether he was interested in producing a version of the game for the NX. After Sahlin had stated that he would be interested, he was then asked if he knew of any information about the console, to which he replied:
“I wish I did- but they’re really secretive about it! About the NX, it’s funny, really. I wish I knew more about it, but they’re really secretive about it. I actually had a really fun discussion with a person from Nintendo a while back. It was basically ‘I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours’ (laughs). So he wanted me to pitch something for the NX, and then he could tell me more about what it was. But basically, it’s kind of hard to pitch something when you don’t even know what it is! So if you manage to guess it right, we’ll tell you what it is. So, I don’t know. But I am just as curious as everybody else to see what they’ve been making.”
Considering that the NX is expected to be unveiled at some point this year, Nintendo continuing to hide it away from third-party developers is concerning. While it is understandable that the company would want to reduce the risk of details regarding the upcoming console being leaked on the Internet, courting third-party support should surely be a more pressing issue considering the problems faced by the Wii U as a result of its lack of software.
Nintendo should be looking to convince gamers that the NX will have a lengthier shelf life than the Wii U, and one surefire way to showcase this would be to highlight a renewed interest in games created by external developers. However, if Coldwood Interactive’s experiences with Nintendo is echoed by other developers in the industry, it suggests that Nintendo is once again not as concerned with housing multi-platform games as they perhaps should be.
