It suddenly hit me today like a ton of bricks. Nintendo launching the 3DS this fall or early next year will be amazing but it will have a toll on Nintendo's ability to provide us with fresh Wii software. At the moment Nintendo has various handheld studios working on handheld software alongside several home platform studios and some studios that do both.

But with the 3DS coming out soon and the best estimates say that the 3DS will have similiar processing power to the Wii. This will be the first time in Nintendo's history that a handheld actually has the same quality of visuals as the home platform. So these smaller dev teams that are working on DS software will have to be increased in size to create 3DS software.

Then another thing to consider is Nintendo will also have to support the DS. In the end Nintendo will have to divert resources from the current platforms and focus heavily on the 3DS. How many launch titles can we expect I wonder? If Nintendo launches the console with 5 titles like the origional DS how many of these titles will be Nintendo first party?

So will Nintendo divert teams from Wii games and DS games and put them hard at work working on the 3DS? If so how much of an effect do you think it will have on Nintendo's software line-ups? With 2010 supposed to be the peak of the Wii could we see Nintendo divert a large amount of their software teams over to the 3DS?

How much resources do you think Nintendo will have to divert? Will 3DS effect the Wii much or do you think Nintendo will just enlarge their handheld teams?

I don't know. But they sound like good questions.

or instead of living in fantasy land you could realize that whats most likely going to happen is A. Nintendo will hire more devs.... or B. Nintendo will outsource to 2nd party devs

If I'm not wrong Nintendo just last year had an healthy growth...with all the money they've made these gen there'll be no problem to increase in size or hire new 2nd parties. But good question, I hope they'll cut DS games instead of Wii games, Wii needs software to sell well!

i think they will concentrate on the 3ds when it comes out, so that pretty much means after this year there will not be as many big hitters like SMG2 and zelda on the wii.

also they will probably stop ds support eventually.

they will leave DS support to 3rd party developers an concentrate on Wii and 3Ds until the next home console comes out and then shift focus from Wii 3ds to 3DS and the new home console

for DS I think that pokemon and golden sun will be some of the last 1st party games released for it and that they will then move onto the 3DS


internally you've got:


EAD Tokyo, Retro studios, monolith soft, EAD 2, EAD 3, EAD 4, HAL and Project Sora to keep the wii going


so for 3DS you can utilise EAD1, brownie brown, intelligent systems and creatures inc.


Of course, some of those like intelligent systems and monolith will probably work on both systems at once and others like EAD 3 and EAD4 can move over to 3DS (and probably will) once they've completed their wii games.


Once you add outsourcing, which nintendo does a lot, they should be fine

3DS will be the first Nintendo hardware since the snes to have strong 3rd party support from launch. For once, Nintendo won't have to do it all alone.

You're talking as though Nintendo is a very disorganized company. They're not going to short change either platform, they'll hire more people if they need them.

Nintendo has increased in budget internal development as that VG Chart artical said. But The 3DS will launch with a lot of 3rd party support. So I don't really see a problem.