Other publishers are guilty too, he says
Thomas Mahler of Moon Studios (of Ori and the Blind Forest fame) is known for being candid, which is a wonderful juxtaposition to this industry full of canned PR responses. This time he’s sounding off on Nintendo, who he is kind of frustrated with at the moment. After talking to the publisher, he states that they haven’t even responded to his queries regarding the NX, even going so far as to not release specifications for it.
While this seems logical and par for the course for Nintendo, keeping a secret (as it often does), Mahler notes that this doesn’t bode well for the system’s future in terms of third-party support. He explains, “What’s needed to sell hardware is goddamn good software. With Nintendo not having any devkits out there at this point and probably even wanting to sell it in 2016, I can already guarantee that they’ll just not have any software support, since nobody can just jumble games together in less than a year. I mean, you can, but it’ll be garbage.”
He explains that this isn’t just an issue with Nintendo, but with everyone, “treating their devkits and their unreleased consoles like they’re the second coming,” but for now, the issue is with the NX. Ideally, Mahler notes that getting devkits or proper hardware specs “two years” in advance would be his best case scenario, but that’s probably not in the cards.
I can definitely see both sides, but on Nintendo’s end, it really needs to start thinking about pumping up third-party support as much as possible given the complete pull-out that the Wii U had. The secrecy worked out for the Wii, but not so much for the Wii U.
Tomas Mahler [NeoGAF]
