Iwata talks third-party publisher relations, doesn’t want to get involved with price wars/money-giving
Nintendo tends to maintain a much different approach to third-party publishers than Microsoft and Sony. Whereas the latter two companies sometimes look to secure an exclusive game or DLC (especially through financial means), this hasn’t been the case with the Big N.
Price wars and money-giving are two things Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is looking to avoid, which is something that could arise if the company were to adopt “the same methodology as the other manufacturers”. Instead, as recently noted by Iwata during an investors Q&A session, “We would like to take a unique approach of our own and build sustainable relationships with our third-party publishers.”
Iwata’s comments in full:
In terms of how we view our relationship with third-party publishers, I think it is natural that there is a difference between publishers who have the software development resources like Nintendo’s to build a software lineup of their own and publishers who do not. Since former President Yamauchi passed away, I have been considering what he taught us in the end, and his words that the worst thing we can do in entertainment is to follow what others are doing spoke directly to my heart. Following and imitating others is the kind of reasoning that Nintendo tries to avoid the most, and while we certainly do not have a negative attitude toward strengthening our ties with third-party publishers, employing the same methodology as the other manufacturers would only lead to the most simplistic competitive approaches, such as price wars or money-giving that would never end. We would like to take a unique approach of our own and build sustainable relationships with our third-party publishers.
