Nintendo Financial Results: Switch sales top 19.67m, Mario Tennis 1.38m, DK TF 1.4m, more

[Nautilus]

curl-6 said:

Nautilus said:

Curl, thats not how things work.A company has so much money, and they want to earn money.If you keep hiring people to develop games, you dont necessarily make them faster.After all, its a creative process, there is a lot of trial and error there.What you just end up having is higher expenses with no garanteed return.Plus, every project needs talents, and you dont simply hire or find talents with a notification on some website with something like "Talent wanted to make a 95+ game for our system".That is something that needs to be cultivated, and need a lot of luck to find someone with such singular abilities.

Then there are the developer themselves.Nintendo games are so good because the developers are doing what they love.Sure, the company surely have guidelines, and always have teams developing high profiles games, but they rotate the developer and their projects.There is a reason why the Animal Crossing teams is not always doing Animal Crossing games, why the Mario Kart team is not always doing Mario Kart games.Its because creative people cant be schackled to a single project, a single idea all the time.They need to flex their muscles to keep creative, and to keep engaged.Who the hell wants to keep doing the same thing for the rest of their lives?And with that brings my second point:You cant outsource those type of games without their main team, without the main people behind it, because then quality will suffer.Its not a coincidence all Smash games being excellent and them having all the same director/man behind the games.Same for Splatoon.Same for Zelda.Same for Mario.Even those old franchises that have been passed on foward to new talents, like Mario and Zelda, their original creators spent a loooong time with their pupils and future "directors" of said franchises so that they learn the essence of said games, so that the franchise keeps its identity and quality.

And for gods sake, dont outsource their low tier franchises.There IS a reason why Xenoblade is so good.There is a reason why Kirby is so beloved.There is a reason why FE remained to be relevant all these years and managed to find a bigger success these past few years.Its because of the talent that Nintendo has.Im fairly sure that the original Splatoon was meant to be a low tier franchise, at least it had the budget of one.It was even developed by a team of newbies.Not to mention that, according to your own standards of what defines a game as a killer app, Nintendo has so many "big titles" they can release in a period of time.If Nintendo did respect that release schedule of yours, they would burn out of big IPs in less than 3 years.So it wouldnt be doable either way.

What you are suggesting is that Nintendo do what Activision does with COD.And we all know how "great" or revolutionary COD is every year.And that is ONE game.Imagine having teams of that size for Mario, Zelda, pokemon, Smash, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Splatoon, 2D Mario, big ass new IP(which needs to eventually come), etc etc.

And I mean, not even a single company has so much output as Nintendo.Not a single one.Nintendo output is like of Capcom, Square and Sony output combined.They are already a monster in and of itself.So stop being "greedy", in thinking what you want, and start thinking of what is realisticaly possible.Oh, and they are also developing smartphone games.That also eats up their manpower and time.Movies too.God, they already do so much stuff.Im pretty sure Im forgetting more stuff, and leaving out more arguments to be made.

I'm not being "greedy" or thinking about what I want, (I don't even like Pokemon/Smash/Animal Crossing) I'm talking about what Nintendo themselves need to do if they want to hit the high Switch numbers they aspire to. (20m this FY, more than Wii lifetime)

The idea that outsourced titles would inherently suffer in quality in untrue. Many of their outsourced games in the past have turned out to be excellent, from Donkey Kong Country to F-Zero GX to Kirby's Epic Yarn to Sin & Punishment to Super Mario RPG.

Donkey Kong Country was a new spin off game and not part of an existing series(Up until that point, Donkey Kong was never a platformer like Mario was), much like Super Mario RPG(first Mario RPG ever).Same for Sin and Punishment, since it was a new IP.Ill give you the two other though.But they are more of an exception than anything.For every F Zero GX you have the horrible Mario and Zelda games that were outsourced, every Star Fox game released after 64, most Metroid games that werent Prime(in another words, that werent developed in house), and so on.Usually those outsourced games that use famous Nintendo IPs are the ones that venture outside of those IPs genres, like Mario + Rabbis(SRPG), the ones you said, and others that I cant quite remember now.Plus, you simply dont go "Ok lets outsource this" and begin developing the next day.You search for developers, they pitch their ideas, you need to approve them.And even then, you still have a team thats from Nintendo to overlooks the project so that it dosent turn to complete shit.The first part could take months, maybe more than a year, and the second part eats into Nintendo resources and manpower.

So yeah, you are being greedy.More like unreasonable really, since you think Nintendo needs to do a set amount of things, without actually reasoning if that goal is even reachable.Just because they are a videogame company dosent mean they can make a thousand games every year.Plus, that 3 years for development was an example I gave, its not unusual for games to take even more.BOTW took 5 years to make.Almost sure that Oddyssey took more than 3 years to make.Hell, even XC 2 took 3 years and a half to make.Retro is working on something for more than 4 years now, and we still havent heard a peep.Shit happens, and thats more true for products that are more creative in nature.You cant predict the unpredictable.

And many said that the Switch wouldnt be successful back when it launched.Look how that turned out.People said Zelda wasnt enough.Look how that turned out.People said that without third party support, Nintendo would be doomed.Look how that turned out(and third party are just getting better by the day).People will say, and they still do, that Smash and Pokemon wont be enough.And they will probably be wrong too.Why?Because if there is one thing more important than quantity, its quality.If Lets Go isnt as bad as people think, and if Smash is more awesome than it already looks, it will most likely carry the system, along with its evergreens and support it gets from others.

Last edited by Nautilus - on 01 August 2018