It's well known that Nintendo deliberately keeps development costs for their games low enough to ensure high sales and steady release slate, while still maintaining quality. Sure, once or twice each gen you get a Breath of the Wild or Metroid Prime, but those are more the exception to the rule for them. I don't think that's a bad thing honestly, it's nice that we have a mainstream publisher who specializes in mid-range and smaller titles that many publishers have abandoned these days. I don't think you'd see EA or Sega take a chance on something as niche and risky as Astral Chain for example.

Zero plans for a sequel last checked ... 

"Doesn't really make that many AAA games" ? Are you blind or what ? 

Practically all of Nintendo's biggest franchises like Mario, Smash, Zelda, Pokemon, Splatoon, including Animal Crossing currently need a budget of at least $20M+ to attempt and I would not be surprised if some of their mid tier franchises go over that budget as well ... 

By NO means are Nintendo NOT a AAA game producer anymore since all of their notable titles are created with 100+ staff members over a 2+ year period ... 

Their AAA games are the only ones that have any real system selling power to begin with ... 

Correction, he didn't rule out a sequel, he just thought it was too early to be talking about one.

Yes, Nintendo doesn't really make AAA games in the traditional sense. Their games are typically much lower budget than most other publishers. Also it's funny how you bring Splatoon and Animal Crossing into this. Splatoon 1 was developed in only a year and a half with a lower budget than a Mario or Zelda. Spatoon 2 only had a core development staff of around 40-50 people. Animal Crossing also doesn't require as much staff to make due to its relaxed scale.

Games on the scale of BotW and Mario Odyssey are great yes, but they're not the majority of Nintendo's overall output each generation. Many of their games are much smaller in scope than you think.

Luckily, they continue to sell systems throughout the generation, thus you don't need as much of them each year.

You totally sure about those? I mean, Nintendo said at the end of their direct that they have many more games in development, but they're not far enough in development to be showcased yet. Quite possible that this applies to at least one of these.

@Italic: I wouldn't be so sure about that. Astral Chain should give an indication on that, and Bayonetta 3 certainly will push some consoles. Not Smash numbers, of course, but still...

Also, Nintendo doesn't have to churn out all by themselves. Just look at some of the games the console got or will get this year which are from publishers: Mortal Kombat 11, Doom:Ethernal, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Spyro collection, Dragon Quest XI S, Dragon Quest Builders 2... The list goes on.

Of course, these multiplats push all platforms they're on, but that also means that they're also doing so for the Switch. In fact, without those, we get Wii U sales numbers, as just Nintendo games without anything else results into that. The inverse is what XBO has: Without compelling exclusives, it's sales are only pushed by multiplats. Switch and PS4 show, that only when you got both that you get great sales. But I digressed too far already.

Nintendo will continue to bring out compelling titles over the next years. In terms of big hitters, could see a proper new Mario Kart 9, for instance. Splatoon 2 is getting it's last Splatfest, so possibly Splatoon 3 is starting to get developed. Or a successor to SMO. Or something different, who knows?

Btw, Nintendo has greatly increased it's personnel in the last 2 years. Nintendo hat about 5000 employees before the launch of the Switch, now they're scratching at the 6000 mark. So clearly they're boosting their different studios to output more and/or bigger games than was possible 2-3 years ago.

2019 peak year.

The beginning of this year we saw high switch sales due to the smash bros effect.

There will be no smash bros at the end of this year.

He never confirmed one as well so let's put aside the idea now that a sequel is coming ... 

'Typically' much lower doesn't mean that they're not AAA games! No indies that are equipped with less than $10M will be able to pull off those games with similar production quality ... 

As far as Splatoon 2 is concerned are you only counting credits ? If you are then it's practically the norm for the industry to just leave out staff who didn't see the game to completion ... 

Maybe not the majority but certainly the most important output during this generation and most likely the next one as well ... 

Only so much time that they'll keep having effect before hardware sales start sagging ... 

Never said it was. I said it sold well enough for a sequel to be possible.

Yes, Nintendo games obviously have more to work with than your average indie. But most of their games don't reach 100+ working on a single game at any moment levels. BotW was the most ambitious they've gotten at a core team of 300, and that's a rarity for Nintendo, and Zelda games are usually their biggest. Meanwhile, Ubisoft regularly has around 600 or 700 developers working on ONE Assasin's Creed game at any given moment, and those are almost annual releases.

Regarding Splatoon 2, I'm aware of the industry trend of omitting staff from the credits, but that mostly happens to games that spend an unusually long time in development, and while it's possible some people on the Splatoon 2 team left during development to work on other projects, are you going to sit here and tell me that a large portion of the Splat2 team could've left within the span of a year and a half? Not likely IMO.

And luckily Nintendo always has a lot of games in development at once. Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they're not there yet, especially given their tendency to keep games under wraps until they're as close to release as possible.

My guess is 2022 when the Switch plus hits its stride

Well, I am not sure if 2020 or 2019 will be the peak, but you both are way too sure about this. This is by far not clear yet. That is why I think a wager is in order. Put your VG$ where your mouth is.

It could be this year as much as next year: depends on hardware revisions, price cut, Sinnoh Remake. I'm inclined to say 2020 due to Animal Crossing but we'll see