Nintendo keen to help out third-party developers

Nintendo has outlined its desire to increase in collaborative efforts with external developers on Wii and DS titles.

In a Q&A session following Nintendo’s recent financial results briefing, Nintendo’s general manager of marketing, Shinji Hatano, explained that Nintendo was being approached with requests on how to best utilise the DS’s touch screen and the Wii’s motion-sensing controller, and how the company is using its internal development teams to help external studios.

“Since we should not be telling these third party developers what they should do in terms of the game content per se, we are offering advice and cooperation in order to produce software which is accessible to users with the least possible stress,” he said.

“Of course, we can not assign too many of our internal developers for all these projects, so we are asking the third party developers to create their own internal team which can work closely with our developers.”

This joint-working relationship has just been demonstrated with the first-party title Flash Focus, the development of which involved Bandai Namco, and will similarly be shown in the forthcoming Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, which is a joint effort between Nintendo and Sega.

“By doing this, we are also collaborating with other companies to maintain the level of quality. We will continue to work with software makers in these and other ways,” he added.