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Post by The Almighty Narf on Jun 25, 2004 23:00:00 GMT -5
I've talked with a few peaple about and no one seems to know for sure.... who exactly are Nintendo's 2nd party developers? There's a a few I know of for sure (like HAL, Inteligent Systems, Game Freak, and Retro) but, by my count they're publishing for alot more developers then that.
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Post by barryh on Jun 26, 2004 7:52:02 GMT -5
Retro are 1st party.
From what I can make out, Brownie Brown, Genius Sonority, Nd Cube, Alphadream, Fuse, Flagship, Camelot, Marigul, Jupiter and Suzac might also be 2nd party.
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Post by The Almighty Narf on Jun 26, 2004 7:55:30 GMT -5
What makes Retro 1st party?
And Flagship is owned by Capcom, so I don't think they're 2nd party.
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Post by The Almighty Narf on Jun 26, 2004 13:57:32 GMT -5
Uhh... NOA is in Washington. Retro is in Texas. I'd hardly call that "internal".
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Post by Fryguy64 on Jun 26, 2004 14:33:57 GMT -5
Right... I'll try and clear this up... Apparently Nintendo created these categories back in the NES days, but weren't wholly helpful in explaining them. A first-party developer is a development studio who works under the name of the console company. We should all know Nintendo's internal developers by now... RD1, RD2, IRD and EAD (as well as a couple of smaller ones). NST Corp. also counts because it is a branch of Nintendo of America. A second-party developer is a development studio who is in a financial partnership with the console company. There are three kinds: - Partial Ownership (less than 50%) - Majority Ownership (over 50%) - Wholly Owned Subsidiaries (100%) Nintendo's second parties fall under these categories with the exception of one... HAL Laboratory. They are not in financial partnership with Nintendo - they are there out of sheer devotion. Also, Nintendo partially owns some companies that are not considered second-parties (eg. Bandai). Wholly owned subsidiaries that I am aware of include Retro Studios and Brownie Brown. Intelligent Systems may well fall under this category these days as well. As for why Nintendo publishes a lot of games outside of these two groups - well, that's down to Nintendo's extensive licensing wing. Nintendo wants a lot of games that use its licenses, but they don't have the development strength to pull it off alone. They now have a team that licenses and monitors third-party development of Nintendo franchises. This team used to include Shigeru Miyamoto until his recent heart-attack... now Miyamoto is back where he belongs... concentrating on first-party games  Third-parties are simply companies that aren't owned by Nintendo. No confusion there (except for HAL)... |
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Post by The Almighty Narf on Jun 26, 2004 22:29:51 GMT -5
Yea, but that doesn't answere who the 2nd party developers are.
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Post by Fryguy64 on Jun 27, 2004 9:06:25 GMT -5
Well, I'll try and provide a list...
Consolidated Developers:
Nd Cube, Brownie Brown, Nintendo Software Technology Corporation, Retro Studios, Inc., A/N Software Inc., WarpStar, Ape
Exclusive Developers:
HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems
Management/Publishing:
Marigul Management, The Pokemon Company, Pokemon USA, Inc., iQue Ltd., Nintendo Technology Development Inc., Nintendo Services USA, Inc.
Not a clue...
NHR Inc., HFI Inc., SiRAS.com Inc., Rare Acquisition Inc. (not Rare, but still odd), Nintendo Phuten Co., Ltd., iKuni Inc., NES Merchandising Inc.
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Post by The Almighty Narf on Jun 27, 2004 9:58:54 GMT -5
Haven't heard of a few of those...
And Game Freak isn't?
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Post by Fryguy64 on Jun 27, 2004 12:12:01 GMT -5
I dunno. I was going from the 2003 Annual Report - HAL and IntSys weren't mentioned, but are clearly 2nd party companies in that they all live off each other and share many properties (and that a former HAL employee is now president of Nintendo... quite a close connection).
Though you have to remember, Game Freak was making games for "rival" consoles as lately as 1999, and apparently worked on Pac-Land on all consoles in 2002. So they're not exclusive (but Pokemon is).
To be honest, I have no idea what Creatures actually does. Game Freak develops Pokemon, and Nintendo publishes it... but Creatures seem to have their thumb in the pie and I can't work out why. Do they just do design? Because they also seem to supply 3D models to second-/third-parties using Nintendo licenses, and did a lot of the modelling on SSBM's trophies.
Jupiter have their games published by a lot of different companies, in fact a very small number of them are published by Nintendo... even though all but one are on Nintendo consoles. They're not really second-party either.
I guess it's just the case that Nintendo has entire companies following their dream, and not just fans.
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Post by The Almighty Narf on Jun 27, 2004 12:15:20 GMT -5
Creatures Inc. does the card game.
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Post by Fryguy64 on Jun 27, 2004 12:22:30 GMT -5
Yeah, but why are they credited in every Pokemon game. Besides, I thought the card game was done by Wizards of the Coast?
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Post by The Almighty Narf on Jun 27, 2004 12:25:58 GMT -5
Wizard only distributed it. And that was only until Pokemon-e came out. Now Nintendo handles it.
Anyway, from what I understand (and I'm not sure) Game Freak and Creatures Inc. colaberated on Pokemon. TCG wasn't just a tie in to make money, but part of the original concept.
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Post by FoetusExMachina on Jun 27, 2004 20:34:08 GMT -5
I like this thread. Maybe with some work it can be a special feature for the database. There was some ign article detailing the various developers that are close to Nintendo, so that might be a good place to start.
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Post by Fryguy64 on Jun 28, 2004 3:58:39 GMT -5
NinDB used to have lists of games by developer. Following the last site reshuffle it never got added again. I've been working on getting them back up though, and currently have a huge folder packed with games by each developer.
Thing is, now Nintendo's going big on finding third-parties to develop a million Mario games, there's no end to how many pages I'll end up with. And what do I do with Square AND Enix AND Square Enix? Nintendo published games by all of them!
Bah.
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Post by The Almighty Narf on Jun 28, 2004 9:03:35 GMT -5
And what do I do with Square AND Enix AND Square Enix? Nintendo published games by all of them! .... Three seperate pages I guess. |
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