On the AAA titles, I don’t see that as very much the Nintendo market. That’s Sony’s dominion, though thoroughly. Nintendo is much more about the creative and innovative games. In fact, I’d say Breath of the Wild is the only real “AAA game” Nintendo ever developed.
And as a Nintendo fan, I don’t like the dishonesty among some of the fan base trying to pretend games like Fire Emblem or Pokemon as AAA games - while it’s true that Pokemon is a lot more popular than AAA games, the “AAA” is more about the high expense of time, moneys and resources (as in staff/tools) dumped into the production of the product (A lot of time, A lot of money, A lot of resources). Generally it’s more of a Western game dev concept and Zelda doesn’t quite follow the typical formula either:
1. Spend a lot of money, resources, and time on a game.
2. If it succeedes, greenlight a series of annual sequels.
3. Have gigantic factory-style dev teams of hundreds of people, lots of money for promotion, development, and the giant QA and producer staff involved.
4. Stay in the box, any innovation must be based on what the product managers and their researches tell you will sell.
5. Keep churning out title after title, spending tens of millions per year, and have your development pipeline working like a well greased factory assembly-like.
That is not Nintendo, that is Activision, EA, and Ubisoft. And the formula works well - but Nintendo’s way of doing things also works extraordinarily well.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
