Viper1 said:
Time is also relative to how big your development staff is. Nintendo doesn't often work with huge teams like 3rd parties do. |
I would also argue that "working on" probably has a different meaning within Nintendo as it does third party publishers, especially when it comes to games like New Super Mario Bros.
Nintendo games are often (very) gameplay mechanic driven, and I would expect that Nintendo could spend years with a tiny development team creating new gameplay mechanics and small test levels; and after the gameplay mechanics have (mostly) been worked out, their development team can (more or less) rapidly produce a game around them. While I could be wrong, I wouldn't be surprised if one of Mario's power ups was developed by one person over time and had several revisions, and they tweaked how everything in the game reacted to this power up until they were happy with it; and it might take 6 months for their designer to be happy with a power-up they're working on, they may have mutiple being worked on at the same time, and it could take 18 to 24 months before they have enough new power-ups to make a new Mario game.
In contrast, most third party developed games are really based on the creation of new environments and adding onto an established story with the gameplay mechanics (mostly) remaining intact; so beginning work on a game (probably) means development of most of this new content.
