Factoring in 3rd Party Titles

by Adam Lisbon

Kendra-K, in my opinion, made good points about the three major corporations, and I figured I would add my two cents about third party support for these systems. Here's a chart of third party support for the three major companies-

Sony- Excellent third party support
Nintendo- Average third party support
Sega- Extremely poor third party support for the Saturn, and average third party support for the Dreamcast.

Sony clearly dominates the realm of third party support. They have Square, and in Japan, having Square basically guarantee's success. And Sony had the $$$ to buy Square out form Nintendo, and that has been their method with other companies as well. And Sony can do this because their company doesn't just make games, it makes a lot of other electronic products, so they have a lot of cash reserves. At the same time, Sony's system also does what third part developers want it to do, and that is probably the greatest reason for the Playstation's success in terms of third party support.

Nintendo has had average success with third party developers, they don't really have any "private" third party developers (companies that only develop for them and no one else). You can often find the Playstation equivalent of an N64 game, so if you own a Playstation, you have the option of some of the N64 stuff plus the even larger selection of Playstation only titles. Basically, N64 stuck with cartridges, and cartridges were not what developers really wanted to work with at the current time (or now).

Sega had really crappy third party support for the Saturn, and as a result, they had an extremely small library of games compared to their competitors. The problem with the Saturn was that it couldn't produce enough eye candy to be very captivating to the casual gamer. And if the system does not captivate the gamer, then it will not captivate third party developers. Let's face it, eye candy can seriously help sell a game. The Dreamcast can produce serious eye candy and it has decent third party support. Sega still doesn't have Square, and that will be a major disadvantage for them. It is apparent that Sega learned from their blunders with the Saturn. Hopefully, the third party support they have now will be enough.