Nintendo offers development help to Ubisoft, EA

Nov. 30 5:16 AM by Lynxara

It's not unusual for the hardware company behind a console to offer a little help to developers, especially if it involves training devs in use of unfamiliar architecture (as with Sony) or using financial incentives to encourage developers to risk expensive projects (Microsoft). Nintendo typically offers assistance in these two traditional areas... but Business Week is covering a whole new form of first-party encouragement. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata is going to great lengths to help traditional publishers like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft make casual games for the DS that are comparable in quality to Nintendo's own "Brain Age" series. Here's a few delicious quotes to get you started behind the cut.

Never before has the $30 billion video game industry been so eager to attract casual gamers. In recent months, Redwood City (Calif.)-based Electronic Arts (ERTS), Los Angeles-based Vivendi Games, and Britain's Eidos have formed their own casual gaming units. Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT) are also racing to load up on easy-to-play arcade games, and Sony recently announced two titlesMyStylist, a wardrobe organizer, and Talkman Travel, which acts as both map guide and trip recorderin an attempt to make its PlayStation Portable console more appealing to ordinary consumers.
The success of the portable DS and Wii has contributed to Nintendo's credibility and made it a profit juggernaut. On Oct. 25 the company said first-half profits nearly tripled from the previous year, and it revised full-year operating earnings forecasts upward to $3.7 billion, an 86% gain from last year.
With Ubisoft, Nintendo developers were very hands-on. They advised Hascoet and Mallat to make My Word Coach's startup screens less cluttered. To brainstorm for ideas, Ubisoft programmers studied how people use appliances like refrigerators and ovens. They whittled down the game's prestart options so users could get to the game play in just a couple of clicks and ended up making a menu list resembling those of Apple's () iPods. One of the game's opening scenes, a school map, was deemed too confusing and was scrapped.

For the record, typical review scores for My Word Coach as published hover in the 6.5 to 7.0 range. This is actually something of a success. It's just a bit below the 7.7 metacritic aggregate score that currently stands for Brain Age and Brain Age 2. Makes you wonder how bad the game was before Nintendo stepped in, doesn't it?