On a side note, its baffling to still see people making the mistake of thinking that Monolithsoft is not a first party studio(Usually thinking they are second party).Reading things like "the frequent Nintendo collaborator" on famous news sites like IGN is headscratching.

I can't count the number of times I've had to point this out on forums, that Monolith Soft is a first party studio since 2007. A lot people seem to (mistakenly) think that only EAD counts as first party.

Well to be fair, given how short the gap since XCX was, the fact that most big Nintendo projects over the last few years have been delayed, and how unfinished it looked at E3, there was ample reason to suspect a delay might be on the cards.

I do believe he meant *is* going smoothly.  Not isn't.  Just going by the fact his statement makes no logical sense the other way round.  Seriously, if you are having dev problems with one project, the solution is not to start *another* project to divide your resources :P
And I would hardly say the game looked very unfinished at E3.  World seemed well detailed, it was running smooth, nearly all gameply features seemed implemented, voice acting was implemented.  The only unfinished looking bits seem to be graphical settings which they seem to be tinkering with.  We'll see in probably the next few days.  

I was just answering the "some people said the game would be pushed back to 2018" thing. At E3 the draw distance was really, really short with grass, shadows and such popping in mere feet from the player. While that can be adjusted, one would assume the reason its set so low in the first place was to ensure stable performance for the E3 showing, so its not just a matter of turning up draw distance but also optimizing so that doing so doesn't cause the framerate to collapse.

I do believe he meant *is* going smoothly.  Not isn't.  Just going by the fact his statement makes no logical sense the other way round.  Seriously, if you are having dev problems with one project, the solution is not to start *another* project to divide your resources :P
And I would hardly say the game looked very unfinished at E3.  World seemed well detailed, it was running smooth, nearly all gameply features seemed implemented, voice acting was implemented.  The only unfinished looking bits seem to be graphical settings which they seem to be tinkering with.  We'll see in probably the next few days.  

I was just answering the "some people said the game would be pushed back to 2018" thing. At E3 the draw distance was really, really short with grass, shadows and such popping in mere feet from the player. While that can be adjusted, one would assume the reason its set so low in the first place was to ensure stable performance for the E3 showing, so its not just a matter of turning up draw distance but also optimizing so that doing so doesn't cause the framerate to collapse.

Actually, shadow draw distance was a curiosity because some shadows drew way out in the distance and others didn't, namely the gigantic landmass shadows.  Grass is probably because this is the first time they're using meshes for grass vs billboards.  So I imagine all of these are things they are tinkering with.  They probably did err on the side of caution to ensure no frame drops though.  They are probably contemplating the usual tradeoffs: grass density vs draw distance, shadow quality vs draw distance.  They're current attitude seems to point towards having it in tiers so that some shadows draw farther than others, farther ones off are lower quality, grass will fade in at one density in the distance and get more dense when you get close.  That last one was originally a thing in Xenoblade Chronicles X's first trailer but they dropped it.  But with meshes taking more resources up, they may go with that approach for maximum graphical quality overall.