The Wednesday of E3 there was a Nintendo developer roundtable, in fact it was the second the company had held during E3. The first was about the Wii, and 3DS. The second roundtable focused on "third parties". In reality it only focused on one third party company: Ubisoft. Now originally I groaned at this, thinking it was going to be about more Raving Rabbids and so on kind of titles (and it was, don't get me wrong). But when the roundtable began, Iwata took the stage and said "I bet you're all wondering why I'm here right now, introducing Ubisoft." and I went nuts. I thought - for a moment - that Nintendo was going to announce that they had bought Ubisoft and that all their titles would be exclusive to Nintendo systems only.
Could you imagine what a coup that would be for Nintendo? Sure, most Nintendo based Ubisoft titles are awful, quick cash ins. But with this new system's hardware and capabilities, Nintendo would be able to support the hardcore games such as Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, etc etc. Yes, the games will probably be coming to the Wii U anyway, but as third party games. Imagine if they came to the Wii U as first-party games. Suddenly the amount of games that Nintendo has to its system alone skyrockets.
Not only that, Nintendo would finally have a way to draw people in beyond their own staple franchises. This is assuming of course that Nintendo has something resembling an online service, but for argument's sake we'll say the Wii U does. Of course if they owned Ubisoft, maybe they would do the online thing. Either way, such a move would certainly change the landscape of the industry.
Now whether such a move is possible, I have no idea. Ubisoft is publicly traded and all that, so I'm not entirely sure how that would work out. Plus since neither company is American, certain trade laws don't apply. Again, I know nothing of international trade laws and stuff. But we can all dream can't we?
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think Nintendo needs to take a step like this? Or are they perfectly fine how they are?
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