Nintendo lowers royalty rates

[Great Rumbler]

Nintendo announced today that in March they cut the royalty rates for GameCube development charged to outside developers. Nintendo stated their previous rates were a little too aggressive, and many developers were reluctant to pay them. The new rates make Nintendo more competitive with Sony and Microsoft.

Nintendo cited the success of titles like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as their reasoning behind the move. "The biggest games of the year last year were games like GTA and they came from an independent publisher," said Nintendo's George Harrison. "We need to make sure that we have good relationships with all the independent publishers, because you never know where the next big hit game is going to come from."

Earlier this week Nintendo announced that they had not met their yearly sales goal of 10 million GameCube consoles. In fact, they fell well short of the goal selling only 5.6 million consoles during their fiscal year. Nintendo wants to convince game developers that Nintendo's GameCube is a viable platform, and worth the time and money it takes for them to develop games for it. At this year's E3 show in Los Angeles, Nintendo plans to place more emphasis on third-party titles in an effort to convince developers of this. "Games from Namco, Sega, and Capcom...we think are going to be just as important in helping to sell our hardware system this year as much as our own games," Harrison said. "We are going to sell a lot of GameCube and its our job to convince them that we are."

Well, it's a step in the right direction.

Nintendophiles

[OB1]

It's about damn time. This should have been done years ago, however. Are they as low as Sony and MS's royalty rates?

[CartoonDevil]

Yeah, IGN had a story on that in March. Nintendo doesn't have the best loyalty rates, but they're definately cheaper.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, very good idea... its good to see Nintendo do something right, even if its not that much... its a bit late to try to help the Cube, in many ways...

[Dark Jaguar]

"loyalty" rates eh Cartoon Devil? That's funny and I don't know why...

I never even thought about the possibility that Nintendo was still charging higher royalties than the other guys. What idiocy...

[A Black Falcon]

You didn't know that? Uh, where have you been?

[OB1]

Yup, and only recently have they lowered the cost per GCD (gamecube disc) for bidget titles. Before, if any third-party wanted to release a $30 game they'd have to pay the exact same price per disc as if they were full priced.

I really love how aggresively Nintendo competes with their competition. Sony releases a huge line of $20 Greatest Hits games, then Microsoft follows suit with a dozen or so of their own $20 games. Nintendo still has yet to release any GH games, but when they do there will only be a handful of them and they're going to be $30 instead of $20.

And we wonder why Nintendo is in third place?

[A Black Falcon]

The $30 price really isn't that bad... given how most NGC (and N64 games before them) almost never drop in price, its in many ways a bargain... I know I've STILL never seen Mario Kart 64 for less than $25, including used! I do wish the number of games in that line would be a lot bigger, though. Three just isn't enough...

[OB1]

Nintendo is not competiting with their past selves; they're competing with Sony and Microsoft! If you take the whole "well it's better than before" attitude like Nintendo is then there is no hope for the future of the company.

[Sacred Jellybean]

Before GameCube's launch, I read at IGN that its loyalty fees were supposed to be the same as Microsoft's (circa $9 a disc, I think...?), but still higher than Sony's. Either Microsoft lowered theirs, or Nintendo jacked up their price.

Either way, Nintendo's too passive and conservative when it comes to competing...

[Smoke]

Good first step, but they still got a few miles to walk...