Fascinating. There's been lots of recent discussion about problems with the Wii U launch by Nintendo. One of the interesting things to come out of it:
Pre-launch American third party companies kept asking Nintendo about how the networking system would work, referencing XBOX Live and Sony's offerings as examples. Would it be on-par, or similar in features, or totally different?
Nintendo responded by asking the third party developers to please stop referencing the other company's on-line systems because nobody at Nintendo had any experience with them.
"This was surprising to hear, as we would have thought that they had plenty of time to work on these features as it had been announced months before, so we probed a little deeper and asked how certain scenarios might work with the Mii friends and networking, all the time referencing how Xbox Live and PSN achieve the same thing. At some point in this conversation we were informed that it was no good referencing Live and PSN as nobody in their development teams used those systems (!) so could we provide more detailed explanations for them? My only thought after this call was that they were struggling - badly - with the networking side as it was far more complicated than they anticipated. They were trying to play catch-up with the rival systems, but without the years of experience to back it up."
I remember reading that. I love Nintendo, but not only was that line incredibly sad, but it spoke volumes about my experience with Nintendo's software in recent years (outside single player games). It rang too true.
Pre-launch American third party companies kept asking Nintendo about how the networking system would work, referencing XBOX Live and Sony's offerings as examples. Would it be on-par, or similar in features, or totally different?
Nintendo responded by asking the third party developers to please stop referencing the other company's on-line systems because nobody at Nintendo had any experience with them.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-secret...
"This was surprising to hear, as we would have thought that they had plenty of time to work on these features as it had been announced months before, so we probed a little deeper and asked how certain scenarios might work with the Mii friends and networking, all the time referencing how Xbox Live and PSN achieve the same thing. At some point in this conversation we were informed that it was no good referencing Live and PSN as nobody in their development teams used those systems (!) so could we provide more detailed explanations for them? My only thought after this call was that they were struggling - badly - with the networking side as it was far more complicated than they anticipated. They were trying to play catch-up with the rival systems, but without the years of experience to back it up."