Activision recently spoke in their quarterly conference call that the reason why third parties have often failed to find success on Nintendo platforms was often two-fold. Clearly, what’s kept them away in recent years but causing them all the come back to Nintendo by the dozens is the fact that Nintendo consoles haven’t sold too well the last couple of generations. Simple math says less systems out there means less people to buy your games.

In addition, third parties have always had trouble competing with Nintendo products. While most of the focus was on the PlayStation brand in the last decade, the fact that the Wii and DS are selling like hotcakes means those developers can put more money into making games for Nintendo platforms, and in turn they can focus on making high quality games. In fact, Activision thinks it’s in a position to take Nintendo’s software titles head on.

“For a few generations, Nintendo software was better than third-party software. When you look at where we are today…we think we’re actually in the best position and probably even in a better position than the first-party to leverage our development dollars….We’re reinvesting against the Nintendo platform in a way that in the last cycle we really did not….There probably is no better product to take advantage of the capabilities of the Wii than Guitar Hero.”

On a side note, Activision in the same conference call categorized Harmonix’s Rock Band game to be a Guitar Hero imitator. I’ll let you think that one over.

Next-Generation

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