sethsez wrote:Ugh, I didn't say that. At all.
Their target audience is different from other companies, yes. However, Nintendo is not in any way trying to make that their only audience, to the exclusion of others. They haven't done that for an extremely long time.
Nintendo themselves will mostly make games the entire family can enjoy. They will, however, not not not turn away or refuse violent games, and will quite happily promote them if they look like they have the potential to be system sellers (Eternal Darkness got a pretty decent marketing push). The idea has no basis in reality. None. At all. Anywhere. Period. If it did, we wouldn't be seeing violent games announced for the system, but as I've already pointed out, we have. Because, as bears repeating, "target audience" for something as generic as a game console does not mean "exclusive audience."
And for the record, when they say "this is a console everyone can play" they're talking about the controller, guys. The concept is that it's more natural to use so people who've never played a game before can pick it up and play without being baffled by two analog sticks, a dpad and a plethora of buttons. Whether this will work in reality or not doesn't matter: they're not talking about the game content when they say "system for everyone."
I know "pessimism at any cost" is a popular motto 'round these parts, but at least bitch about the controller or the weak technology or something. The "Nintendo censors everything" train left the station over a decade ago, and if you're still worried that they won't allow "offensive" material then I suggest you go play Killer 7 on the Gamecube for a while. Somewhere between the pedo-rape jokes, the excessive swearing and the woman slicing her wrists to spray blood everywhere, hopefully it'll become obvious that Nintendo has changed since editing Castlevania.
You said:
"What gets me is when people think that's all Nintendo will get and that they'll try to block all violent content, as if this were still the early days of the SNES."
Well, I didn't talk about censorship in fact - it's more subtler than that. Indeed, I agree with what you said this far. The problem however is not explicit censorship, but rather - how to say it - the image of Nintendo's brand among consumers
and developers.
I'm not saying Nintendo is actively blocking it, no sir. But when you said:
"Because Rockstar and Take Two didn't think it would be profitable for them to spend the money on a [GTA] port"
I don't think that's entirely honest. Anyway, the question is - why? - why Rockstar, to stick with the example, decided an NGC port (of the major blockbuster these days, nonetheless) wasn't profitable, while an xbox one yes? Disc size, you say. A console which is released in f°?+*!ç orange and violet shades, I say.
Not that there's anything wrong with giving gamecube a very distinguished cartoony image - not at all. But when companies see that Nintendo's killer application for their system is a carrot-growing simulator (pikmin) they react accordingly.
Now - it's a step that Nintendo doesn't vest statues in Castlevania anymore, sure. On the theoric side, we're almost there - it's too bad that on the reality level, you can't really compare N64 and Psone when it comes to "mature content" software.
On Snes days, Nintendo got Castlevania from Konami and thought "Hey, we sell this stuff to kids, let's turn blood green!" - These days it is Konami that preemptively thinks: "Hey, this Castlevania is heading to DS. Let's get rid of those gothic illustrations and hire some crappy animator to make it more similar to Dragonball Z - kids love dragonball z". So yeah, Nintendo is less responsible for this, but in the consumer pow it changes little.
P.S. And yeah, GTA and Silent Hill did make their appearance on GBA, but that's a different market - owned by nintendo, pretty much.
Edit =
to recap:
-I said that I'm worried about the rom selection being limited, which is what we do know so far;
-you replied that any rom would make profit anyway;
-I replied that there might be other factors, like copyright holders and "questionable content" that might limit the selection;
-you said this cannot be due Nintendo's change since MK2;
-I'm not entirely convinced by that, and besides, the initial objection remains. I may be pessimistic, but I didn't jump on any "omg nintendo is teh censor!" train. Just wanted to make that clear
