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tarheel91 on 01 April 2011
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Viper1 said:
tarheel91 said:
gumby_trucker said:
Joelcool7 said:

As much as I love the fact their investing so much in R&D, honestly I'd rather see 1,500 developers making games then 1,500 developing new technology. Though I did forsee this I mean Nintendo went from a 100-mill a year R&D budget during the GameCube era to 350Mill during the beginning of the Wii and last I heard they were nearing 500-mill a year R&D last year.

So since their R&D budget has been sky-rocketing in the past few years I guess they ran out of resources and now need to expand. It costs alot of money to develop new technology and even more money to beat the big boys (MS/Sony) to the punch.

I mean Nintendo makes a shit load less then Sony and MS, they can afford to spend alot more on R&D. So Nintendo needs to constantly increase thier R&D spending to keep in line with their competition. It helps that at the moment Nintendo consoles are flying off the shelves. Wii's still selling, DS is still going strong and 3DS is the fastest selling handheld in history.

But again I'd rather see Nintendo expanding software development rather then R&D. I mean I wouldn't mind seeing A WiiHD with way better graphics for a cheaper R&D price with more games from an expansion in software development. Rather then seeing something totally innovative that came from expanded R&D with fewer first party titles due to the focus going on hardware R&D!

I'm not 100% certain of this but I think R&D for Nintendo includes everything from hardware developement to software tool developement all the way down to game developement. I'm pretty sure there are Nintendo teams called "R&D something or other" that actually produce games.

You are correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_development_teams#Nintendo_Worldwide_R.26D_Divisions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_Analysis_and_Development

True they have called their internal development teams as "R&D" in the past but they are now known as EAD.  This building is for actual Research and Development.  Their current R&D facility houses actual R&D, the Super Mario Club and Intelligent Systems.  Their main office houses their main EAD development teams.


Nintendo EAD is a subgroup of Nintendo R&D.