Rayman Legends and Ninja Gaiden III Cause A World Of Hurt For Nintendo Fans!

I recently wrote an article about how certain games should stay Nintendo exclusive and almost on cue, this week has dropped some painful news for Nintendo fans. To kick things off, Ninja Gaiden III: Razor's Edge bit the dust as a Nintendo exclusive which was surprising considering that Nintendo published the game in two of the three major regions (North America and Europe). The game is expected to hit PS3 and 360 this April with rumored additional content. In the end though, this made a certain amount of business sense considering the failure of the original version on PS3 and 360 as well as the extreme violent content which feels right at home on those systems.

The big kicker is the news that Rayman Legends, with less than 20 days until its original Wii U release date (February 26), is not only releasing on the PS3 and 360 but it is getting delayed until September for Wii U to accommodate the process of moving it to the other two systems. Nintendo fans expected that the game would eventually jump to the competition's machines and were fine with this news because they were originally getting the best version on the Wii U for an exclusive time period. The thing that has enraged these fans is that Ubisoft waited until literally weeks before the highly anticipated launch to delay the Wii U version over half a year until the crowded month of September to supposedly accommodate fans on the other 2 systems. The fact of the matter is that Ubisoft has flat out admitted that the game was complete for Wii U and the ONLY reason for holding it back is to bring it on all systems simultaneously. The plan is to launch it in the same month that Grand Theft Auto V is expected which is going to damage the sales of this title dramatically.

Allow me to sound off on this situation for a moment. These bullshit moves are what turn Nintendo fans against these third party companies resulting in poor sales. While companies such as EA, Activision, Capcom, etc. will blame Nintendo and come up with every excuse on why a game performs poorly on Nintendo consoles, these kinds of actions are at the true heart of the problem. Let me illustrate this a bit further with just a couple of examples where these companies piss on Nintendo fans.

• When Rockstar delayed Grand Theft Auto V until this September, there has been absolutely no word of the game coming to the Wii U despite the fact that the game could make amazing use of the Wii U Gamepad. Why is this major title not coming to Wii U?
• Sega is releasing Aliens: Colonial Marines next week for PS3 and 360 while waiting for a nebulous "March 2013" release date for what is considered to be the superior Wii U version. Why not delay the PS3 and 360 versions a mere month to give the game equal sales footing across all 3 systems?

Nintendo went out of their way to build a machine that caters far more to these third party companies than they have in the past and these companies in turn spit in the face of Nintendo and their fans. While many will piss and moan about me being a fanboy, bear in mind that if PlayStation 4 and XBox720 rumors of online only and blocking used games are true, Nintendo may be the last mainstream console maker that doesn't try to completely control your playing habits. Lastly, before you claim that Wii U sales aren't as strong as the Wii, the system has been outperforming the launches of PS3 and 360 and those systems were not launched during a worldwide economic nosedive. What are your thoughts on this situation? Please comment below and follow Treon's Realm on Twitter.