Because it's faster to develop games on the Wii..

Err scratch that :P

Some Companys just take a long time to produce games such as Valve and Blizzard, they are trying to make the games perfect. And really they are perfect, Nintendo fits in the same category.

because the team that made gears 1 went onto gears 2 straight away. team behind unchated 1 went onto uncharted 2 straight away. team that made pikmin 2 has made NSMBwii before pikmin 3. a lot of those game are also completely unannounced.

that said nintendo's teams do seem to be taking ages , havnt heard about any projects from retro or HAL in ages, and NST hasnt done anything noteowrthy since hunters

Nintendo, Blizzard, and Valve are my 3 favorite developers, and they're the 3 slow meticulous Stanley Kubricks of the gaming world. They take their time, and they get the job done right the first time.

And Nintendo spends 90% of their development on wacky dreams that never see the light of day, so that slows them down a bit too.

Are you talking of the Valve that developed L4D2 in 1 year or so ?

No, I'm talking about the Valve that took 6 years to make Half-Life 2, and took 8 years to make Team Fortress 2.

A lot of the games that Nintendo produced last generation (SSBB, Mario Kart, Zelda WW, Metroid Prime) are still the games that I go back to, even today. At the time, I enjoyed games like Ratchet and Clank, Devil May Cry, Splinter Cell, or Grand Theft Auto. The latter list of games were great games. I enjoyed them at the time. Now, their "timeless status" has been marred. They have sequels that pretty much set in stone the fact that I will never play them again.

Nintendo's games aren't like that. I can go back and play SMB3 and still have a unique experience with SMW. Then, I'd have a totally different experience with SM64. And Sunshine and Galaxy are different and unique experiences, too. Look at your Uncharted's, your Gears of War's, or your Call of Duty's. Great games, but their shine dulls a whole lot faster. I've already forgotten about Drake's Fortune because now I'm Among Thieves. I may never play CoD4 again because MW2 has taken the spotlight.

Cookie cutter sequels can be released every year or two. What Nintendo is trying to bring to the market is much bigger than that. That's why they take longer to produce.

in my opinion.

I can only completely agree with that.

Roy Koopa FTW!

First off, Nintendo is one company which has produced some of the most games of any company in any gen out there. In this gen in particular, they are even getting flak for producing MORE sequels and prequels than last gen for games like Mario, Kirby, Pokemon and of course, their new 'Wii' series.

Second of all, the argument can be made that they take longer on 'certain' titles based on quality control and because they're trying to develop new things. Using your examples from the original post, MOST of those examples are sequels, but MANY of them are not following a similar design strategy as Nintendo titles. Are you really going to say something like Gears of War 2, Ratchet and Clank 2 or Blue Dragon 2 are going to be as unique and well...innovative of jumps in sequels as say Metroid Prime 3 to Metroid Other M or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess to the next Zelda Wii. Or how about games we've already seen, like the jump we had from Mario Sunshine to Mario Galaxy or the previous Kirby games to Kirby's Canvas Curse.

The simple answer is, while not all Nintendo games follow this philosophy, the reason some Nintendo titles take longer is because they do completely unique things and are built from the ground up to be completely unique games. You can't completely re-invent Metroid or Zelda by simply taking the previous game engine and making a 'sequel' in under 2 years.

As an aside, not every company out there completes sequels quickly, as per the opening posters example.  Someone mentioned Blizzard, which has been spending over 10 years creating a sequel to both Diablo II and Starcraft.  And look at SquareEnix, which recently wrapped up development of both Final Fantasy XIII and Dragon Quest IX, whcih both took nearly FIVE YEARS each, and one was a DS title.

Just remember, we WANT these developers to take their time making the game. The last thing we need is publishers rushing games onto the shelves.

As gamers, we should be willing to wait for the sake of quality.

This is one heck of a necropost.