Nintendo's employees have expanded from 1500(Non-consolidated)&4000(Consolidated) at 2009 to 2000&5200 now.
However, I agree that they need to buy or make studios out of Japan can make western style game, like Metroid Prime from Retro Studio.

I don't know what's up with Nintendo this gen. It's the strangest thing in video game history.

I mean Melee came out a few months after the GameCube was released, Brawl took about 1.5 years after the Wii, but Smash Bros. For Wii U (even the name is lazy) took 2 years! Also Zelda is taking forever. Almost 3 years later!

Nintendo either needs to hire a lot more or outsource their IPs and make some new ones.

Developing in HD needs more resources than before. Not only Nintendo, but also other companys take at least 2, the most 3 years to develop their games. Addtionly, Wii have almost same architecture with Gamecube, and it made developing Wii games easyer to Nintendo.

And you say Zelda, SS took 5 years to release, so new Zelda take 3~4 years makes sense. There is nothing strange.

I think its just Japanese companies in general that release games slowly. Their gaming industry is a hell of a lot smaller than say America's. But yes Nintendo need to acquire/expand in order to keep up releases and I for one would love if they did.

PLUS Nintendo as a whole prefer to do a lot of the things themselves AND have to work on a handheld and home console simultaneously.

If you look at Sony, their Japanese branch really hasnt done much in the past couple of years, and have been heavily reliant on Western devs. Add to the fact they have pretty much dropped focus from the Vita. So it is safe to say Nintendo has done a lot more work than Sony Japan has and is.

I'd love for them to expand. I know it's not an overnight process, but with all of them rupees I'd love to see them really pushing it.

I don't think that's possible at all, or lucrative. They absolutely should expand, though. They need to have an entire branch of studios and devs in the west dedicated to making new IP that appeal to the people here.

And they need to outsource more of their IP. Smash Bros, Nintendo's most important title of 2014, was outsourced to Capcom. They need to start pumping these titles out quicker, and if they don't have enough staff available, they need to hire them. Quality isn't an argument. If they hire competent directors and producers, that won't be an issue.

I think it would be a great idea if they also started funding indie game 3D sequels. Say Nintendo funded a Shovel Knight 64, Retro City 64, Ghost Song in 3D, and Hyper Light Drifer in 3D, in exchange for exclusivity of those titles. They provide extra staff, but all the creator keep creative control. It would give indie game ideas a published game's budget, which could be huge for those devs, and be great PR for Nintendo. Sony already did something similar with Journey. Nintendo should do the same.

You are right, it seems like a lot of Japanese companies are lagging this gen and last gen. HD was a lot more trouble for them than they realized.

The thing is there should be no excuse for Nintendo cause they have to support their console... we should have already had a Zelda game by now, and Smash Bros. should've came out Q1 this year or last year.

I think that maybe you should bold the ones that are already confirmed. Dr. Mario should also be bolded, since we have Dr. Luigi which is basically Dr. Mario 2 with Luigi.

Nintendo should just hire some talented devs teams (Let's say, Platinum Games) when the opportunity arises. I'm not saying "hurr durr buy lots of devs out of nowhere hurr durr" but rather when it's a good time to do so, they should take the chance. More devs teams mean the capability to produce more games, which means less droughts.

Still, I think that on the 9th gen Nintendo will be more ready for this issue than they were with Wii U back when it released.

Nintendo doesn't need to have as many employees as EA, not even close. EA needs 3-4 teams (one for each platform) for each of their sports games (Fifa. Madden, etc), something that very, very few other publishers need.

With that said, does Nintendo need to expand? Yes, definitely. If they have to sustain 2 consoles by themselves they need to launch more games, more often and from a wider range of genres, and they can only do that by expanding their current teams, and by hiring new people to create new teams that can work on those genres where they don't have experience.

Yeah for sure. But shareholders wouldn't like that since it would hurt profits.