| sethnintendo said: Is it just me or does anyone else believe that they can push out more titles per year than their current rate? How come Nintendo can't match their output during the Wii/DS era when their teams were split up between two systems. They pushed out so many new IPs during that era along with their main IPs that it just doesn't ever feel the same. Sure some of it was shovelware but decent amount of the IPs were fresh and actually decent games. How the fuck does it take 8 years to make another mainline Animal Crossing? Where are all the new IPs like they did with Endless Ocean, Battalian Wars (yea I know it was on GC first but only played 2), Excite Truck/Bots, etc? Where the fuck is Advance Wars? F-Zero? (I know F-Zero wasn't on Wii/DS but if they can make Fire Emblem a hit then surely F-Zero deserves another go) Sure they don't need Nintendo published game for every month but it seems like there should be more. I still haven't even purchased a Switch yet and might not till next spring. Is it really that difficult making a game than it was 10 years ago when you only have one system to support? edit- I'm looking for more mid tier games and not 3-5 year development time blockbuster "AAA" titles. |
Two reasons: HD and type of games.
HD development is draining a lot more resources. At least if you don't want to have your game look shitty. You need higher resolution textures and much more detailed models. This incredibly increases the need of work. So you need more staff or more time (or both). And increasing staff fast can dilute quality. Teams grow best slowly, integrating new workers at a smaller percentage to ingrain design philosophy. You could see the additional resource drain of HD-development in the first years of XB360, PS3 and WiiU.
The other is the type of games. A game like Brain Age or Nintendogs is nice, but not that much of a resource drain like games as Luigi's Mansion, Mario Maker or Splatoon. Basically bigger 3D-worlds (3D worlds at all) and more characters all need to be designed. Even games that were also on Wii, are usually with much more content on Switch. See Smash Ultimate, which deserves the title. Or even Ring Fit Adventure. WiiFit had basically an animated character model of the trainer and some stuff around. For Ring Fit Nintendo designed a whole 3D-world and different types of enemies. This all takes so much more effort, meaning work of people employed by Nintendo.
Nevertheless, even with fewer Nintendo releases the Switch has overall more releases. Third parties and especially Indies fill this time around the release schedule pretty well.
