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MTZehvor on 09 March 2018
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Wyrdness said:
MTZehvor said:

Yes, I very clearly stated in my post that it does not take the whole studio to create DLC. I never said it wasn't; we're not in disagreement there. What I said is that it would make the initial phase of development for Smash 5 limited, as you would have, at the very least, Sakurai and many of the other Smash leads involved with Bandai Namco. My point is simply that the studio would not have, as you said, a full four years to develop an entirely new game. They would have one and a half full years, and then two years with key staff pulled away. That isn't something Smash has done recently. Yes, other studios, like Monolith, have been able to do it for other games. It probably would be possible, even if you ignore Sakurai's reluctance to keep working on Smash after he finished 4. But the point is that it doesn't fit Nintendo's recent history; not that it's impossible. No one can prove an impossibility, but I can demonstrate that it's unlikely given the approach that Nintendo's taken in the past.

Mario also doesn't tend to rely on having a lot of time to advertise different characters, like Smash and other fighting games do. Even then, SMO was at the very least teased in October of 2016, giving itself a full year to build hype. And that's for a game that only really needs to advertise Mario; Smash has many more characters to get to, at least assuming there's a sizable number of newcomers like there are for most games.

Again that part of your argument was countered by the XBC2 example a number of the key staff didn't join up initially because a large portion of work was not required and in case you haven't notice the last few years have deviated from Nintendo's recent history.

Smash doesn't need to advertise different character the name advertises itself at this point this is backed up by the fact the announcement was all over the internet, hype is not dictated by a minimum time period.

And again, the instance of a single counter example in a totally different game genre does not precedent set. Just because it can be done does not mean that Nintendo would be likely to pursue that same philosophy for every game. If a game tends to follow a certain precedent for a game series, that precedent is usually a much better indicator of what will happen rather than how some other totally unrelated company making a game in a different genre approached development.

As for Nintendo's history being deviated from, I'd invite you to take a look at dev time cycles for Nintendo's major games since the Gamecube era even in this age of change. Take Zelda, for instance, which had a similar dev cycle for BotW. Or Fire Emblem which, provided FE 16 still comes out this year, will have roughly the same or longer dev cycle as Shadow Dragon, Awakening, and Fates. Or Metroid, which has kept a similar dev cycle time of around 2-3 years for games since the GBA era up to last year's Samus Returns. So yeah, Nintendo's changed the way they approach things recently, especially marketing, but there's no indication that applies to development time.

And I mean sure, it doesn't need to advertise different characters, but it certainly benefits. Nintendo didn't spend money on a bunch of character trailers for Brawl and Smash 4 just because they wanted to give their animation team some practice; they did it because it generates excitement for a new game. If they got the same benefit from just announcing a new Smash game as they did designing a bunch of trailers and marketing material, they would just say "hey guys Smash is coming" and not even bother making any trailers at all. The existence of the Inklings in the latest trailer proves, however, that Nintendo is aware that announcing new characters contributes to building hype, and as such is a worthwhile investment.