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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Iwata Asks Reveals New Super Mario Bros. U Took Three Years To Develop

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blackstarr on 16 November 2012

Wow, this is pretty interesting. Had no idea. If I was a Japanese game developer, I'd be begging Nintendo to let me work there... Shoot.



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Cheebee on 16 November 2012
Salnax said:
...

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that Team 4 is responsible for NSMB2, NSMBU, and Pikmin 3, three games released within a year. The most likely scenario is that the team behind the original DS and Wii NSMB games was immediately put to work on NSMBU. Of course, that doesn't leave many people; on average, each team has a bit under a hundred people, and this is divided into three again for NSMBU. Even if you assume they received extra resources, I wouldn't be surprised if the core team only had 40 or so people.

So there you have it. NSMBU was likely made by a team of about 40 full-timers, plus whoever was available at any given moment.

I don't think this is entirely right, 'cos Nintendo themselves have stated (in some Iwata interview, I believe) that NSMB2 and NSMBU were both developed by different teams.

Also, around Zelda SS's release last year, they were talking about how big the team was that worked on the game, and it was humongous (by Nintendo standards). I also remember reading a while ago that the DS and console Zeldas were being made by different teams. I'm thinking a lot of people are being swapped around all the time, and a lot of teams get to work on different titles/franchises than what they maybe 'mostly' work on.



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PullusPardus on 16 November 2012

I call bullshit.



NightDragon83 on 16 November 2012

Seriously? We're getting a new Rayman game (which looks like WAY more effort went into it artistically than NSMBU, which just looks like NSMB Wii in HD) just a year after the last one, and it takes Nintendo 3 years to develop a 2D Mario platformer?

I highly doubt they were actually working on the game for that long, probably whipped it up over the last year or so after the Wii U hardware was finalized.

This is the same company that had to divert resources from Retro Studios to aid them in getting Mario Kart 7 out in time for the holidays last year because they only had like a 6 or 7 person team working on it. Just goes to show what their priorities are. How about hiring some more people, Nintendo? You're only a multi-billion dollar company, I'm sure you can spare just a LITTLE bit of dough.



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F0X on 16 November 2012
blackstarr said:

3 years does seem like a long time, but I'm guessing it was a smaller team.

I don't know how development at Nintendo works. Do they have an "AAA" team like Namco-Bandai does? Or AAA synonymous with Miyamoto/Aonuma or something?

There's a team dedicated to the Zelda franchise, and the Tokyo team made the Super Mario Galaxy games. Those are about as AAA as it gets in terms of Nintendo's internal development structure - excluding slightly more independent devs like Intelligent Systems, Retro Studios, and Monolith Soft.



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cunger on 16 November 2012
miz1q2w3e said:
Could they really be that inefficient?


The fact is that they also created New Super Mario Bros 2 at the same time. They likely didn't put serious effort into developing the game until much later.  Knaw mean?



miz1q2w3e on 16 November 2012
cunger said:
miz1q2w3e said:
Could they really be that inefficient?

The fact is that they also created New Super Mario Bros 2 at the same time. They likely didn't put serious effort into developing the game until much later.  Knaw mean?

Yeah, I just noticed in the developers list that the games come from the same team.



Salnax on 16 November 2012
Cheebee said:
Salnax said:
...

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that Team 4 is responsible for NSMB2, NSMBU, and Pikmin 3, three games released within a year. The most likely scenario is that the team behind the original DS and Wii NSMB games was immediately put to work on NSMBU. Of course, that doesn't leave many people; on average, each team has a bit under a hundred people, and this is divided into three again for NSMBU. Even if you assume they received extra resources, I wouldn't be surprised if the core team only had 40 or so people.

So there you have it. NSMBU was likely made by a team of about 40 full-timers, plus whoever was available at any given moment.

I don't think this is entirely right, 'cos Nintendo themselves have stated (in some Iwata interview, I believe) that NSMB2 and NSMBU were both developed by different teams.

Also, around Zelda SS's release last year, they were talking about how big the team was that worked on the game, and it was humongous (by Nintendo standards). I also remember reading a while ago that the DS and console Zeldas were being made by different teams. I'm thinking a lot of people are being swapped around all the time, and a lot of teams get to work on different titles/franchises than what they maybe 'mostly' work on.


I'm pretty sure he just meant something like different teams within the same development groups. And yes, there is a lot of mobility within EAD.



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