| Nogamez said: I honestly believe nintendo is in a development hell hole right now, itz like thsy are still struggling with HD. It was pretty bad. Where are all the gamea and new IPs. Whatbhas retro been doing for 7 years??. |
In regards to what's developing under Nintendo's umbrella of developers, its interesting. They released so much in 2017 and 2019. Though some would argue that the big games released in 2017 were probably Wii U projects initially before transitioning to the Switch (with BotW being the only exception in which it was both a Wii U and Switch game) once the reality set in that the Wii U was not gonna go anywhere and the sales projections were gonna remain weak with no light in the end of the tunnel. Once the developers are finished with certain projects, they'll need to start back on square one (or whatever next square if they want to reuse assets for a new game). I guess some studios like Retro tried to create new projects, but things apparently fell through for one reason or another.
I mean, if you don't count Uncharted Lost Legacy (which was likely made under a smaller budget), Uncharted 4 and TLoU2 are separated by four years in terms of release dates. Unless Naughty Dog is planning a smaller title within the next couple of years, do you really expect them to just churn out AAA game after AAA game like its nothing? Insomniac Games are going to release Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, 3 years after Spider-Man (with Miles Morales, released last year, building off of what the original game established, so costs were not as high). Hell, it may take a while for the most noteworthy Xbox Game Studios projects to release on Xbox Series S/X (~2-3 years, maybe).
Meanwhile, Nintendo developed/published the following Switch games from 2017-19:
2017:
- Zelda: BotW (with an expansion pass)*
- Super Mario Odyssey*
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
- ARMS*
- Splatoon 2 (with the Octo Expansion released the following year)*
- Pokken Tournament DX (Bandai Namco)
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Monolith Soft; with Torna: The Golden Country expansion the following year)*
- 1-2 Switch*
- Fire Emblem Warriors (Koei Tecmo)*
- Snipperclips (collab with an indie studio)*
2018:
- Smash Bros. Ultimate (Sora, Ltd. and Bandai Namco; has 2 Fighter's Passes at this point)*
- Super Mario Party (ND Cube)*
- Kirby Star Allies (HAL)*
- Mario Tennis Aces (Camelot)*
- Nintendo Labo*
- Bayonetta 1 and 2 (Platinum Games)
- DKC: TF
- Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee (Game Freak)*
- Sushi Striker (collab with indieszero)*
- Captain Toad Treasure Tracker
- Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition (Koei Tecmo)
2019:
- Luigi's Mansion 3 (Next Level Games)*
- Fire Emblem Three Houses (Koei Tecmo and Intelligent Systems; with the expansion pass)*
- Pokemon Sword and Shield (Game Freak; expansion pass the following year)*
- Tetris 99 (Akira)*
- Yoshi's Crafted World (Good Feel)*
- Super Mario Maker 2*
- New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
- BOXBOY! + BOXGIRL! (HAL)*
- The Stretchers*
- Astral Chain (Platinum Games)*
- Other Nintendo Labo projects*
- Ring Fit Adventure*
- Zelda: Link's Awakening remake (Grezzo)*
All in all, that's a lot of games Nintendo has been involved with. The ones with an asterisk are noted as new games (or games that are not considered ports). I probably missed some, but in the end, when you look at the big picture here, you can see there's a lot of original content that have been released during this span of time. Not to mention, there were the remaining 3DS games released within this period such as Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Metroid: Samus' Returns, Hey! Pikmin, and two Mario and Luigi remakes.
If BotW 2 is going to have considerable amount of content that makes it completely different to the original, then I can see why its taking them longer to develop it, unlike Majora's Mask, which released 2 years after Ocarina of Time, in which apparently Aonuma did not want to go through such a short dev cycle again. Metroid Prime 4, unfortunately, hit a snag with the original developer (rumored to be Bandai Namco and its studios) providing an unsatisfactory build that Nintendo scrapped and restarted the project under Retro Studios. Bayonetta 3 is developed by Platinum Games, but funded by Nintendo. Whether Nintendo wants to show more I guess depends on what they think of Bayonetta 3's progress under Platinum Games. Other than that, I think the pandemic really affected their development and scheduling process. If Mario's 35th anniversary was supposed to be revealed much earlier in 2020 than it did, then you can definitely put blame on COVID.
Besides that, I think people just forget that games take time to develop with the quality fans hope for. Things can happen with studios that affect their upcoming projects. It took CD Projekt Red almost 7 years to "complete" and release Cyberpunk 2077, and look how that turned out. If games were much easier to develop now, why did it take a while for the PS4 to get its big first party exclusives? It basically rode 1-2 years of hype (and AA, budget first party titles) before Bloodborne came out (unless you want to counter with Killzone Shadow Fall, Infamous Red Son, and The Order: 1886).
