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freebs2 on 05 February 2016
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curl-6 said:
freebs2 said:

I agree this was the case in the first place, but we're talking 2000. The market was different and so was Nintendo's overall strategy.

I think Retro, back in the Gamecube days, was praised by many because it represented Nintendo's flagship studio in terms of production values. Now that position can't work anymore beacuse Nintendo, as a whole, doesn't rely on high production values. Sony is the company that relies on high production values now.

In the actual situation a single adult/western oriented game every 3 years wouldn't change pretty much a thing. In terms of sales it would be condemned in the limbo, since all the audience for those games is on Ps/Xbox/PC. In terms of reception it would be overshadowed by multiplatform games with larger productions (since larger audiences justify larger investments).

In the end I believe the best solution for Nintendo is trying to tackle mainstream genres with a different original perspective that is not related to either western or eastern specific tastes. Splatoon is the perfect example. Also Pokken may be considered a different approach to classic fighting games. Even looking in the past, even games like Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Pokemon are different approaches to already existing genres.

So, while I agree Retro (as well as other studios) should bring diversity to Nintendo's catalogue, I think we should adjust our expectations for thier games. This doesn't mean we sholudn't expect great expertly crafted games, just not games that push tecnical or production boundaries like Metorid Prime did.

Retro don't need a Destiny/Grand Theft Auto 5 budget to make a conceptually and technically ambitious game though. 

I'm not saying they have to have 9-figure production values. A lot of today's AAA productions are quite wasteful with money anyhow, throwing away millions on licensed soundtracks, celebrity voice actors, and the like.

While production values certainly played a part in Prime's success, clever design did as well; using the scan visor in place of a traditional narrative, for example, was actually cheaper than having traditional cutscenes and voice acting, yet worked better for the kind of game Prime was.

Similarly, many indie games manage to be technically and/or conceptually ambitious without spending a fortune. Fast Racing Neo is one of the most graphically advanced games on Wii U, and that was made by 5 guys.

With that i can partially agree. It's true you don't need a big budget to make a conceptually ambitiuos games, also yes a great part of Prime praise was also due to its great design (that quality though wasn't lost in recent DK games). In fact I believe we should still expect Retro games to stands out for gameplay, originality, level design quality and artistic design quality.

On a technical level, on the other hand, it's quite hard to directly compete with AAA games without a comparable budget. Take Zelda U for example. It looks great because it doesn't try to mimick what a standard wrpg look like. If they opted for more realistic visuals it would have looked outdated compared to, say, The Witcher 3 or Dark Souls 3. Same goes for indie developers, they always go for exotic or artsy graphics because it's their only option to make their games visually stand out. Fast Racing Neo is not really a good example because Shinen purposely tapped a genre with no competition on a console with no competition, the same game on PC or Ps4 would have likely gone overlooked.

I remember I read some time ago someone suggesting Retro should be making a 3rd person shooting game, like Uncharted or Tomb Raider. But how can that possibly work out? When Tomb Raider (2013) was released Square Enix admitted the game failed to meet sales target at 3.4 million copies sold. How can they aim to make a game that needs to sell more than 3m copies on a single platform, only to break-even? Yes, you can cut corners, cut voice acting and all, but in the end  the more you detract the more customers will notice. Also what would be the point? Would it move consoles? I believe players on Ps4 wouldn't really care much about it since they can play Uncharted already. If ever they would downplay it - and we have already seen this happening with Rise of the Tomb Raider exclusivity on Xbox One; it was pointless. It's not nice to say it but this is one specific situation in which Nintendo should be going multiplatform in order to be successfull.