In a piece by Bloomberg, a number of ex-Nintendo employees have spoken about how the company handles game development and new IP, offering some interesting insights:

“The company culture, or whatever you’d call it, embraces people taking initiative. For example, it’s not unusual for someone to secretly work on something without telling their boss — like, ‘I made this in secret’ — and then it turns out to be interesting, so it gets turned into a real product. In that sense, there really is a lot of freedom.”

“New franchises haven’t come out simply because there’s no real need to make them. When Nintendo wants to do something new, it’s basically about the gameplay mechanics first — about creating a new way to play. As for the skin or the wrapper, they don’t really fuss over it. They just pick whatever fits that new gameplay best.”

- Ken Watanabe (Programmer on Splatoon, Pikmin 3, New Super Mario Bros Wii)

“Whether it turns out to be a blockbuster or a huge flop, the company lets you just focus on building what you believe to be fun, without distraction.”

- Takaya Immamura (F-Zero, Starfox, A Link to the Past, Majora's Mask, Starfox 64, F-Zero X)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-09-05/nintendo-invents-new-ways-to-have-fun-with-old-characters

https://www.gonintendo.com/contents/52556-former-nintendo-devs-explain-nintendo-s-approach-to-new-ip-say-the-company-lets-devs

Yeah there are lots of stories echoing that.

Not only games, the Game Boy itself was largely made in secret after president Yamauchi cancelled the project (lol). They just kept working on it anyway and then when there was a delay to the Super Famicom (SNES) which originally supposed to release I believe in 1989, the Game Boy team stepped up and showed Yamauchi the product again. That's the only reason it got released. Pretty wild to think about.

The cell shading in Zelda: Wind Waker too, the team kept it secret from Miyamoto who hated the art style, but they had progressed too far that they knew they would be allowed to finish it.

Sounds like empowerment to me. Have a good team they should have freedom. If a manager has to be super involved, said manager has the wrong team.

Sounds a bit like how Valve run things.

Shows that Nintendo starts with gameplay first when thinking about a new game. Sounds obvious, but think about how many devs start with thinking about story or setting first and then have to fill in the gameplay later on.

Pretty much Ubisoft in a nut shell.  Make gameplay, plug and play characters/settings.  One of the reasons I have not played many of their games recently.

Ironic that to most people Valve and Nintendo are polar opposites whose fanbases are probably the closest to a modern console war mindset. 

They severely lack new IPs.

Drag x Drive is the most recent.

So I was entirely right when I guessed that a lot of their better games are just new IP, and they use their franchises to skin them for profitability. Whether it's Doki Doki Panic or DKB... it's the same thing. New IP with old skin.

Can't say I'm a fan of it, but their sales are good.

Depends on the genre - if you're making RPG, it's setting, story, then system mechanics that support them - as per Tim Cain, father of Fallout.