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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Does anyone have a source of the budget of Nintendo games?

The_Liquid_Laser said:
KrspaceT said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:
curl-6 said:

I recall them saying that BOTW needed to sell 2 million copies to break even: https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2016/06/30/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-needs-to-sell-2-million-copies-to-break-even/?sh=2a751ec1615f

Hahah!  This is why Nintendo is awesome.  They budget games so that they would be profitable even on a dud system like the Wii U.  And on a really successful system, like the Switch, they make crazy profits.

Of course, the real profit making potential on a game like BotW is it's ability to sell hardware.  The biggest profits come from multiplication and not addition.  Calculate the profits on 20m copies of BotW and that is thinking in "addition" terms.  But a bigger install base increases the sales of every new game that is released.  That is thinking in "multiplication" terms.  Also a bigger install base means more titles will come to the system.  That is also multiplication.  On a system like the Switch, it's profitable even if you only count revenue from third party royalties.  And then when you also count first party sales, hardware sales, subscriptions, etc... then it's ridiculously profitable.

The real measure of a first party game is not if it generated a profit.  The real measure is in how well it moves hardware.  Profits on a single game is money addition.  Having a bigger install base is money multiplication.  So Nintendo probably broke even or made a minor profit on systems like the Gamecube or Wii U, but they are still duds, because their games didn't move hardware.  Why break even when you can make mad, stupid profits?  This is the idea of opportunity cost.  Nintendo wastes time and money when they make games that don't move hardware.  Games that move hardware are a good investment.

So if a game makes a profit, that alone doesn't make it a good candidate for a sequel.  Almost every Nintendo published game makes a profit.  But there is still a big difference between a system like the Switch and a system like the Wii U.  They need to make games that move hardware so they keep having Switch-like sales instead of Wii U-like sales.

I'm a bit curious on the '1st party got to sell hardware to be worth it' part as I....have to question if Kirby or Yoshi, for example, really sell consoles the way Mario or Bayonetta do (and yes I intentionally used those two as they both do it despite one being VASTLY more mainstream). It honestly seems more like games like that are more about adding value to the console purchase than to sell the console....


Or maybe I'm vastly underestimating the power of Yarn Yoshi in selling stuff. Though there is the fact those games are likely a heck more cheap to make. 

...Though on a third thing the merchandise they make is also a factor. Real easy to make plushies of those guys than say, Marth or Shulk.

I think Kirby is more popular in Japan (comparatively) than in other regions.  I believe it actually does sell hardware there.  Kirby games also tend to be on the easy side which actually makes them unique compared to other Nintendo games.  It's similar to Bayonetta in that, even though these games don't sell mega millions, they offer something that no other game on the system offers.  You can also put Xenoblade Chronicles and Fire Emblem in that same category.  None of these games sell a huge amount, but they are unique and don't have a huge budget, so they are worth offering. 

I kind of agree on Yoshi though.  I'm not convinced that Yoshi games really sell hardware.  Or at the very least they fill the same niche that Kirby games do.  Nintendo could probably make one of these games or the other, but I'm not convinced they need both.

I've never really thought about that, but I agree. I say this as someone who doesn't play Yoshi or Kirby games because the lack of difficulty makes them unappealing to me, so it may be different for fans of one or both of those games, but it may make more sense if the Yoshi series branched out more than an "easy" 2D platformer. Maybe some type of RPG more akin to the Mario & Luigi series since that studio is now, sadly, dead.



I like it when my mom goes out of town because I get to sleep on her side of the bed. -William Montgomery

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If you have the number of employees a team has/ number of people who have worked on the game (credits) and multiply that by the average salary, then multiply that by the number of years the game spent in development, you then have a 75% estimate of the overall cost. Good luck! :)



Hey as it has been said Yoshi sells and Nintendo seems content to let other studios make games for it. If you want a causality of focus it is probably Advanced Wars but who knows maybe A.W will get adopted by some other studio someday.



The Democratic Nintendo fan....is that a paradox? I'm fond of one of the more conservative companies in the industry, but I vote Liberally and view myself that way 90% of the time?

KrspaceT said:
 If you want a causality of focus it is probably Advanced Wars but who knows maybe A.W will get adopted by some other studio someday.

Is Advance Wars owned by Inteligent Systems or Nintendo? If it is the former then i don't think it's very likely that they would just give away their IP to some other studio.



Otter said:
If you have the number of employees a team has/ number of people who have worked on the game (credits) and multiply that by the average salary, then multiply that by the number of years the game spent in development, you then have a 75% estimate of the overall cost. Good luck! :)

Otter said:
If you have the number of employees a team has/ number of people who have worked on the game (credits) and multiply that by the average salary, then multiply that by the number of years the game spent in development, you then have a 75% estimate of the overall cost. Good luck! :)

Neat!

Now someone please give me a lost of how many employees worked in each game and for how long 



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If BOTW is their most expensive game ever and it only needed to sell 2 million, it puts in perspective how insanely profitable stuff like Animal Crossing or Pokemon or Smash must be.



curl-6 said:

If BOTW is their most expensive game ever and it only needed to sell 2 million, it puts in perspective how insanely profitable stuff like Animal Crossing or Pokemon or Smash must be.

And SEGA spending     $70 million on a game when they were bankrupt and soon after left consoles tell us why when people said Nintendo is the next SEGA during the Wii U era they were clueless. Nintendo manages money very well.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

Otter said:
If you have the number of employees a team has/ number of people who have worked on the game (credits) and multiply that by the average salary, then multiply that by the number of years the game spent in development, you then have a 75% estimate of the overall cost. Good luck! :)

It’s not quite that simple. The whole team doesn’t work on the game from start to finish. Different disciplines come in at different times. Especially when you’re looking at game development pipelines.


Different disciplines come at different points in development. To illustrate a bit, design and production will be heaviest in the early stages. It will probably utilize some senior art and code people to help conception. Senior coders and artists art will then mock up certain elements of the design, but stand-in elements will be mostly used from previous games (I believe they even used Zelda 1 at some point for Breath of the Wild).

Code will then work more properly on the core game mechanics before bringing in content teams (other designers, script coders and such) and more artists to start making more proper game content.

QA comes in at full force at some point during Alpha.

Alpha is complete when all major features are done and no major bugs exist.

Beta phase is when the team is at the biggest as production and design will be playing the game a lot while code and art smash bugs and all of the polishing occurs. Much of the core (feature dev/hard coding) code team will finish up during Beta and only come in if absolutely required. This is largely scripting and content bug fixing heavy. They might also change things based on feedback, but largely core features will have been finalized in Alpha, it is less likely new changes will come during Beta.

Gold Master is when the game is essentially done and they’re just testing it for any remaining bugs. Most of the team will already have moved off at this point except those who are behind and testing it for flaws according to their discipline, but most people working on the game will be QA.

While not all companies use the same procedures, they’ll use some version of the above framing.

But anyway, one last thing: AAA pipelines typically have a trunk and branches. So the branches are the yearly releases of games you get. They actually begin quite a while before release, probably two years. Basically the trunk keeps getting developed to keep pushing forward features, optimization, and such, but the branches are split off for scripting and art leading into an actual game release. Usually you’ll have 2-3 different branch teams that are the ones responsible for your actual game releases. With some game franchises, they might even contract another dev studio to handle one of the branch schedules, or even all of the branch schedules (I believe the old WWE games were done this way, the older ones, I believe, had their trunk developed in Japan while the branches were done by English teams in the UK and/or the US).

Anyway, in the timeline of budget. Unless you’re talking about AAA pipelines. Typically games don’t utilize the entire dev team from start to finish. This will be a bit different for small indie teams with like 1-6 people doing multiple things (Any designer who worked on smaller teams also knows they spend half to most of their time doing QA). But either way, budgeting is not so simple as calculate team size and multiply salaries by time to develop the game.

Last edited by Jumpin - on 21 November 2020

I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

I'm actually wondering whether BOTW2 could challenge its own sequel for the "most expensive" Nintendo game. They may have been able to reuse the engine and some assets, but in typical Zelda team fashion it's taking forever to come out, and paying a big team for 4 and half years isn't cheap.

If they're trying to up the ante to try to outdo its predecessor that could also inflate costs.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 21 November 2020

curl-6 said:

I'm actually wondering whether BOTW2 could challenge its own sequel for the "most expensive" Nintendo game. They may have been able to reuse the engine and some assets, but in typical Zelda team fashion it's taking forever to come out, and paying a big team for 4 and half years isn't cheap.

If they're trying to up the ante to try to outdo its predecessor that could also inflate costs.

It sounds like the game started work in 2018 and it is 2020. A two year cooking period with the fandom knowing about it for a year is not exactly unheard of or forever, especially given a certain COVID factor. 

It's no Majoras Mask turnaround, but its not exactly Duke Nukem Forever.



The Democratic Nintendo fan....is that a paradox? I'm fond of one of the more conservative companies in the industry, but I vote Liberally and view myself that way 90% of the time?