Has Monolith surpassed Retro Studio as new Nintendo elite studio?

[Jon-Erich]

Lucas-Rio said:

Retro Studio earned worldwide recognition for their reboot of the Metroid serie on gamecube and then Wii. After that , they released the great DKCR on Wii, relaunching anoter old Nintendo serie.

On Wii U thought their output has decreased to only one game, a straight sequel to DKCR, a 2D platformers. One 2D platformer as the only game of a generation of console is rather weak. I have seen a lot of people praising DKTF and it's probably a great game seeing how good was DKCR. But I did not buy it, not feeling the need to play more 2D DK right after DKCR... I don't know if they have scaled down their staff...

Monolith on the other hand, after trying a new genre with Disaster on Wii, went back to what they know the best : RPG. Xenoblade was an amazing game, easily one of the best of the Wii, with great strory, great fight system,a nd a great world to explore.

I am now playing Xenoblade X and I am just amazed by the scope of this game, by all this beautiful and huge landscape. All the works put in there is astonishing really. It seems you could fit 5 DK games inside for all the work they did.

So here is my question, do you think now that Monolith is now the best Nintendo studio (not counting the internal teams like EAD) and has taken the spot of Retro Studio?

I don't know when you personally played DKCR, but the sequel didn't come out until more than 3 years after the original game. That's actually a considerable amount of time. They've also been quite busy this gen. After the 3DS launched, they assisted in the development of Mario Kart 7. They then assisted in the development of the 3DS port of DKCR Then there was Tropical Freeze. Then they started devlelpment on a new game in early 2014, a game that was announced for Wii U.

Like Retro, Monolith Soft also assists with development of Nintendo's in-house games. Given that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was their last 7th generation game, they co-developed Project X Zone, developed Xenoblade Chronicles X with assistance from the now-defunct Nintendo EAD Group 2, co-developed Project X Zone 2 and if Wikipedia is anything to go by (which it may or may not be), they're currently working for an untitled game for an unspecified platform with no immediate release date. Unless this is some Wii U or 3DS game that has been kept in the dark and will be announced this year, this game will likely launch on NX, making it their first 9th generation game.

 

I understand that Xenoblade Chronicles X is this epic RPG that we don't see very often on Wii U (or anywhere else for that matter) and everybody got excited for it, but I have to give Retro Studios the nod on this one. Monolith is more or less an RPG developer. Not everything they made is an RPG but still. Retro has proven that they can make master anything they touch and Retro seems to be more like Nintendo in the senese that they have more of a focus on gameplay and mastering game mechanics.

However, I think it is premature to pass judgement now. Retro Studios has had a Wii U game in development for a few years now and unitl we hear that neither company is no longer making or assisting with the development of anymore 3DS and Wii U games, I don't think we can judge yet.