Iwata: Wii U game delays, "projects were understaffed"

[DaRev]

mjk45 said:

DaRev said:

_crazy_man_ said:

DaRev said:
It's funny how people in here claiming that Nintendo has misunderstood or underestimated time and budget needed to develop HD games. But isn't this one of the reason why Nintendo didn't make the Wii HD in the first place, i.e. that they felt that HD game development would be too expensive?

Too expensive at the time, tho its years later.  Now its just a thing of adjusting staff and time (still more money but not as much as it used to be).

Maybe, but, if I understand you correctly, I think development could be more expensive now, especially for Nintendo, than it was 6 years ago - considering that its all new to them. Some developers like Ubisoft that have already been developing HD games it should be a norm by now for them. Plus I think Iwata is right in that this HD age calls for higher game sales in order for you to stay in business - just look at the fallout regarding the latest Square and other 3rd party games.  I think Iwata's right in that it costs more today to be sucessful at game development, from begining to end.

If I recall correctly Iwata stated that the main reason not to go HD at the time was the same used for not investing more in online they felt it was to early and it was best to wait till the adoption rate reached a point where it made sense to them that thinking can help you short term but may hinder you longer term especially if the pick up rate is faster than you anticipated and instead of entering the market at what should be seen as the right time with the advantage of having your rivals do a lot of the early work , you are seen as being behind and playing catch up.

about the  cost aspect Iwata is right you have higher costs but you also have larger sales especially on your big games , another factor is increased dlc and digital sales , the thing about Square and the subsequent fallout  is to me more about greed , you take a game that historically and especially lately sells around the 1.5 - 2 mill mark average , one that's happens to be a second reboot and then you estimate it to sell 5 mill plus even though Uncharted  with the full weight of Sony behind it plus bundling takes several years to get to 5 mill and beyond,  it doesn't mean it wasn't very profitable it just means they got greedy.

It reminds me of the damage done to healthy company's when unrealistic growth estimates  by bonus hungry execs where  pushed even if it was unsustainable and  afterwards despite a nice growth rate being achieved it was seen as poor in the chase for more and more growth.

Agreed.

With regard to you second paragraph, yeah I totally agree – some of these companies are just too greedy. So far as Nintendo is concerned, I think they always overshooting the mark in terms of expected sales. For example, I think they expected 5 million WiiUs by April? - which was just a bit behind the phenomenal (lightning in a bottle) Wii sales at the same time during its launch. I think Nintendo quite often overestimates the sale of its hardware and I think that’s why they often report lower profits at the end of the year. Not that they didn’t make tone loads of money or not that the hardware didn’t sell well, (3DS launch), just that they greatly overestimated how well the hardware would sell.

I think doing this makes Nintendo look a bit foolish and like they are always missing the mark or the estimated sales figures (which gives the haters a voice, even though the hardware sold well). Maybe there is a good financial reason for overestimating sales/profits, which is why companies like Square and Nintendo often do it. I just can’t figure out why they do it, especially since any shortfall in sales makes them look a bit foolish.