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StarTopic Nintendo First Party Software Development |ST| Nintendo Party Superstars

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Thinking about it, what if the Namco remaster is Luigi’s Mansion 2? I was looking at comparison shots and there does seem to be have been some noticeable visual improvements, specifically in the backgrounds.

With the existence of the Porting Technology Team, I think the chance of it being a Gamecube game has gone down quite a bit, unless Namco pitched the project to Nintendo instead of the other way around.

There was also an opening for a level designer, which could mean that the remaster would have new content, or at least level design changes.

Watch it just be for the Booster Course Pass lol. That level designer position has been up for almost two years now and Namco worked on the base game and Tour.
 
N75 said:
Watch it just be for the Booster Course Pass lol. That level designer position has been up for almost two years now and Namco worked on the base game and Tour.
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There's a position for Tour that is labeled as such, a background artist position at that, so I imagine the "3D action game project" would be unrelated to Mario Kart. The Booster Course Pass doesn't have any unique tracks that weren't made for Tour first; even if they are marketed as 8DX originals (Sky-High Sundae, Yoshi's Island, Squeaky Clean Sprint) they were all developed in Tour first. Some object placement changes, and of course replacing some assets with higher quality equivalents (that would be a different position though), but minimal alterations to the base course models so far.

I'm still holding out hope that the action game remaster is Kid Icarus Uprising (and if it is, I expect the announcement around September based on Sakurai's video schedule), but Luigi's Mansion 2 is a reasonable option if neither Next Level Games or Grezzo are handling it. Just don't think BCP fits the bill.
 
Quoted by: N75
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MondoMega said:
There's a position for Tour that is labeled as such, a background artist position at that, so I imagine the "3D action game project" would be unrelated to Mario Kart. The Booster Course Pass doesn't have any unique tracks that weren't made for Tour first; even if they are marketed as 8DX originals (Sky-High Sundae, Yoshi's Island, Squeaky Clean Sprint) they were all developed in Tour first. Some object placement changes and of course replacing some assets with higher quality equivalents, but minimal alterations to the base course models so far.
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I agree that it‘s something else, but I’m not ruling out the possibility until the BCP is done. We may even have an answer before that point.
 
Wanted to speculate that we could potentially see Pikmin/2D Mario and even Splatoon/Animal Crossing split into different production groups. One which might have taken that seemingly vacant Production No.01 slot.
 
EAD Ninja said:
Wanted to speculate that we could potentially see Pikmin/2D Mario and even Splatoon/Animal Crossing split into different production groups. One which might have taken that seemingly vacant Production No.01 slot.
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We'll get a good idea with Pikmin and 2D Mario by the end of the year at least, since both Pikmin 4 and SMB Wonder are inevitably going to get Ask the Developer articles. Tomoaki Yoshinobu was still considered part of Group 10 in the Big Brain Academy article in late 2021, so we'll see what happens.

Splatoon was still Group 5 as of last year, and I don't think any internal Animal Crossing project is going to pop up before the next hardware, so that'll be a bit of a wait. Maybe by then we'll have already seen another internal project from Group 7! Yeah, as if.
 
That's true i forgot about that. but nintendo only does that for major titles right? not every first party release they do that
 
Nemesis24 said:
That's true i forgot about that. but nintendo only does that for major titles right? not every first party release they do that
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I wouldn't say major titles only considering we got one for Big Brain Academy and Game Building Garage. Really just a selected title they thought it was suitable for the series.
 
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the amount of times that someone said LA Remake was UE4 followed by a debunk a few posts later on the last few pages is unsettling. don't y'all read the posts since your last visit?
 
Speaking of the Peach game, I'm shocked that Nintendo and TOSE haven't made any new games together on Switch other than the honestly shockingly good BOTW port at launch. No Starfy, nothin'.
 
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IMG_5195.png
 
Just now remembering that Emily said, some years ago, that her understanding was the Pikmin 4 had been internally rebooted due to engine troubles.
 
oldpuck said:
Just now remembering that Emily said, some years ago, that her understanding was the Pikmin 4 had been internally rebooted due to engine troubles.
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I also remember Emily saying about a year or so ago that there was an unannounced Switch title that she hoped would not leak as she wanted to see people's genuine reactions to the announcement. I wonder if it was Super Mario RPG.
 
Retro doing 18 month contracts for some employees to avoid giving out health insurance is both bad morally, but seems extremely stupid lmao.

I think you would want as few potential staffing issues as possible after so many years of total failure.

Microsoft does this a lot and the results are always catastrophic.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Retro doing 18 month contracts for some employees to avoid giving out health insurance is both bad morally, but seems extremely stupid lmao.

I think you would want as few potential staffing issues as possible after so many years of total failure.

Microsoft does this a lot and the results are always catastrophic.
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It is already been extremely stupid that health insurance is tied to work, but yeah given the [redacted] country they are in, it is a scummy practice.


However with a capatalist bloke glasses on, it makes perfect sense. All the benefits no burdens. Something with why wouldnt you do it , when it is allowed
 
Dr_Phishshoe said:
It is already been extremely stupid that health insurance is tied to work, but yeah given the [redacted] country they are in, it is a scummy practice.


However with a capatalist bloke glasses on, it makes perfect sense. All the benefits no burdens. Something with why wouldnt you do it , when it is allowed
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I mean, "why not do it" from a capitalist perspective is that constantly hiring and on-boarding new people takes forever in video games so you're constantly understaffed and end up making shit product (like 343 usually does)
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
I mean, "why not do it" from a capitalist perspective is that constantly hiring and on-boarding new people takes forever in video games so you're constantly understaffed and end up making shit product (like 343 usually does)
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Making shit products but still making money is a win in the capatalist handbook i guess. Wouldnt be suprised if that was a special achievement in said handbook
 
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Retro is not unique in this staffing situation. In fact, gaming companies that work primarily with long term employees are the strong exception.

That’s not a defense of Retro - just a statement that the pool of hirees Retro is drawing from will not be tainted by this process, because it’s so unfortunately standard.

Contracting is inevitable in the boom bust cycle that the industry has.

Maintaining steady state staff requires steady state income, which means either GameFreak like “release it even if it’s bad” cadence or a GTA V style massive success with an enormous tail.

Retro should give these staff benefits though.
 
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YouTube's showing me Arlo videos again. From the titles and thumbnails I would guess the "Nintendo is doomed" phase he kinda had is over since now they are catering fully to him with all the GC love (he's so transparent in that regard, grew up with GameCube, that's where his taste developed, and where his comfort zone is)

_________

Yeas, not every studio cann keep the stuff between full productions. It's only possible for select studios, or for studios like EPD that are big enough and reshuffle stuff between projects.

Kinda surprised that Nintendo's not trying to kinda do something like that by expanding retro as a base and establishing multiple divisions so that they work on 3-4 games at different stages.
 
NDCube was involved in the development of the E12S.
www.ndcube.co.jp

エヌディーキューブ株式会社

当社は任天堂株式会社が97％出資するゲームソフトウェア開発会社です。 これまで「マリオパーティ」シリーズ、「Wii Party」シリーズを中心に開発しており、関わったソフトの累計販売本数は2,000万本以上、更にスマートデバイス向けのタイトルも加わり、世界中のお客様に楽しんで頂いております。
www.ndcube.co.jp www.ndcube.co.jp
 
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Charamiwa said:
To the posts below talking about shit products. We can criticize industry practices without ignoring reality.
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sadly, many times studios have released what are considered terrific products with massive amounts of crunch: Metroid Prime, Red Dead Redemption 2, The Last of Us, Metroid Dread, so on and so forth.
Aether said:
YouTube's showing me Arlo videos again. From the titles and thumbnails I would guess the "Nintendo is doomed" phase he kinda had is over since now they are catering fully to him with all the GC love (he's so transparent in that regard, grew up with GameCube, that's where his taste developed, and where his comfort zone is)

_________

Yeas, not every studio cann keep the stuff between full productions. It's only possible for select studios, or for studios like EPD that are big enough and reshuffle stuff between projects.

Kinda surprised that Nintendo's not trying to kinda do something like that by expanding retro as a base and establishing multiple divisions so that they work on 3-4 games at different stages.
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honestly nintendo currently seems to be on the lookout on whether retro can handle such a large project. They ve always handled big ones, but this is a new standard. We shall see how things go once mp4 releases, maybe they will start producing two mp4 level of games at once.
 
Mr Doggo said:
honestly nintendo currently seems to be on the lookout on whether retro can handle such a large project. They ve always handled big ones, but this is a new standard. We shall see how things go once mp4 releases, maybe they will start producing two mp4 level of games at once.
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Im not even sure here.The goal in my post was not to have a studio pump out huge projects, but to organically grow studios to start handling side projects, then to start developing 2 major projects next to each other, and then have a rotating stock of personel to move around between always changing project teams.

As it stands, theyr last finished Project was TF. Thats almost a decade.
Yeah, we have the remaster, but thats... a remaster. The question for such a studio is not if they can remaster something, there are enough technical wizard studios that could do that, its developing NEW games.

If they wait till MP4 is doen and if its good till they decide, that would mean it will take another 5 year for that transition, a lot of MP4 people will have been given the boot till the next game is up and running...
they should have started that development last decade, not now.

Then again, i said that for most of their first party studios even back when the Wii U was being strugling, and only now, at the end of the Switch we start to see the fruits of that. (constant content even if we ignore the shadowdrops of GC games, the Wii U remasters where always positioned as the main release, now the GC releases are just a "bonus" it seems, and those should have been easier then GC games since they where already HD)
 
Aether said:
Im not even sure here.The goal in my post was not to have a studio pump out huge projects, but to organically grow studios to start handling side projects, then to start developing 2 major projects next to each other, and then have a rotating stock of personel to move around between always changing project teams.

As it stands, theyr last finished Project was TF. Thats almost a decade.
Yeah, we have the remaster, but thats... a remaster. The question for such a studio is not if they can remaster something, there are enough technical wizard studios that could do that, its developing NEW games.

If they wait till MP4 is doen and if its good till they decide, that would mean it will take another 5 year for that transition, a lot of MP4 people will have been given the boot till the next game is up and running...
they should have started that development last decade, not now.

Then again, i said that for most of their first party studios even back when the Wii U was being strugling, and only now, at the end of the Switch we start to see the fruits of that. (constant content even if we ignore the shadowdrops of GC games, the Wii U remasters where always positioned as the main release, now the GC releases are just a "bonus" it seems, and those should have been easier then GC games since they where already HD)
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Indeed, if Nintendo is waiting until MP4 releases it will take several years until Retro is properly set up to release two AAA games at once. I dont think tho that Retro's slow production line reeally means something, after all, i think Nintendo has a lot of passion for Retro, they destroyed NST for less.

It doesn't surprises me that they arent really trying too much to intervene with the studio's management after what happened to NST as well lol. In addition, Retro and Monolith always seems to be the ones that have the most freedom as subsidiares.

With that said, Retro is indeed expanding their non contractor base, around half of the people hired are non contractors if im not mistaken, at least judging by the job offers they hire.
 
Mr Doggo said:
Indeed, if Nintendo is waiting until MP4 releases it will take several years until Retro is properly set up to release two AAA games at once. I dont think tho that Retro's slow production line reeally means something, after all, i think Nintendo has a lot of passion for Retro, they destroyed NST for less.

It doesn't surprises me that they arent really trying too much to intervene with the studio's management after what happened to NST as well lol. In addition, Retro and Monolith always seems to be the ones that have the most freedom as subsidiares.

With that said, Retro is indeed expanding their non contractor base, around half of the people hired are non contractors if im not mistaken, at least judging by the job offers they hire.
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With Monolith i totally get why, they can plot away on their pasion(xenoblade), but not only do they do this at an extreme pace, they are also highly proficient in the technological aspects nintendo needed, and helped with other projects.

No idea what REALLY happened with NST, but i assume its not for outsiders to know why it happend that way.

Retro... im honestly kinda confused why they did not intervene, but we will only know after MP4 is out, and more light comes on the years between TF and MP4. There definitely was something happening that had nintendo keep their trust in Retro, but still needed them to shut it down (otherwise we would have had something till now).

Yeah, its good that they are expanding, but how do the employee numbers compare over the last decade? i thing there was a time when more people where leaving? are we at an all time high in regards to employees?
 
Aether said:
With Monolith i totally get why, they can plot away on their pasion(xenoblade), but not only do they do this at an extreme pace, they are also highly proficient in the technological aspects nintendo needed, and helped with other projects.

No idea what REALLY happened with NST, but i assume its not for outsiders to know why it happend that way.

Retro... im honestly kinda confused why they did not intervene, but we will only know after MP4 is out, and more light comes on the years between TF and MP4. There definitely was something happening that had nintendo keep their trust in Retro, but still needed them to shut it down (otherwise we would have had something till now).

Yeah, its good that they are expanding, but how do the employee numbers compare over the last decade? i thing there was a time when more people where leaving? are we at an all time high in regards to employees?
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Different reasons i suppose. Retro was created right from the beginning to be this sort of prestige studio that nintendo pushed its name a lot, even nowadays, so it makes sense they would have a substantial amount of freedom compared to their other studios. But yes, surely Retro also has shown something that has got nintendo giggling as well, we will see.

NST was supposed to be this fusion of japanese and western values, Nintendo sent several of their designers there, but over time it seems like some sort of xenophobia grew from the japanese leads and it tore the studio apart, at the peak of Project Hammer.

And technically no, its not an alltime high, because when the studio was formed, in 1998, they were utterly gigantic. With over 200 people Retro was handling 4 projects at once. But very unproductive, so when nintendo came they culled down the studio to 3/4 of its original size (around 50 people). If we count from the time since Nintendo culled Retro down, it absolutely is an alltime high, yeah. Between contractors and full times, its probably around 160 to 170 people.

Retro has been hiring more than ever, i dont know how many employees they have there, between contractors and full time employees, but we do know they are hiring more than ever, this year alone they hired i think between 21 to 24 people already. Since MP4 restarted development they probably hired around 70 to 80 people.
 
Mr Doggo said:
Different reasons i suppose. Retro was created right from the beginning to be this sort of prestige studio that nintendo pushed its name a lot, even nowadays, so it makes sense they would have a substantial amount of freedom compared to their other studios. But yes, surely Retro also has shown something that has got nintendo giggling as well, we will see.

NST was supposed to be this fusion of japanese and western values, Nintendo sent several of their designers there, but over time it seems like some sort of xenophobia grew from the japanese leads and it tore the studio apart, at the peak of Project Hammer.

And technically no, its not an alltime high, because when the studio was formed, in 1998, they were utterly gigantic. With over 200 people Retro was handling 4 projects at once. But very unproductive, so when nintendo came they culled down the studio to 3/4 of its original size (around 50 people). If we count from the time since Nintendo culled Retro down, it absolutely is an alltime high, yeah. Between contractors and full times, its probably around 160 to 170 people.

Retro has been hiring more than ever, i dont know how many employees they have there, between contractors and full time employees, but we do know they are hiring more than ever, this year alone they hired i think between 21 to 24 people already. Since MP4 restarted development they probably hired around 70 to 80 people.
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Im not sure if it was for prestige, or because they realized that having a studio more in line with western tastes would help expand their reach?
Especially since their only IP that clearly was resonating more with western audiences was Metroid, so giving that to a western studio seemed reasonable.

In regards to studio size, im less looking from really early, but compared to say Metroid 3 or Tropical Freeze times.
When it was created it was a mess, but it also made sense to be a mess, it was an exodus with a lot of developers that where seemingly not happy with iguana entertainment/acclaim studios after the acquisition.
So you had a lot of people that started at the same time, no established structure, no natural growth, makes total sense that there where many projects parallel (back then dev teams where way smaller) and that not much of it came out (i assumed not enough pressure from up to deliver something and to many people that wanted to try stuff out).

Im probably oversimplifying, but keeping a studio with 200 people that mostly just experiments with prototypes is expensive as f*, so downsizing and then getting it in shape to be sustainable seems like the right move back then.

Thats why im interested in MP3 / TF numbers, thats where the studio had developed several aclaimed games. Since then there had to be a reduction in stuff for them to survive 10 years without a major release, so im really really curios whats happening with MP4 if they are at 160 now.


ILikeFeet said:


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Oh yeah, forever since i watched those. I've forgotten that NST was the Project Hammer studio
 
Aether said:
Im not sure if it was for prestige, or because they realized that having a studio more in line with western tastes would help expand their reach?
Especially since their only IP that clearly was resonating more with western audiences was Metroid, so giving that to a western studio seemed reasonable.
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Indeed, but i meant that Nintendo really was constantly pushing the studio's name. At E3, Interviews, sometimes even in teasers and trailers which is rare (and yeah, reminder, Nintendo rebooted MP4 and specifically name dropped Retro too, so this didn't stop)

Aether said:
In regards to studio size, im less looking from really early, but compared to say Metroid 3 or Tropical Freeze times.
When it was created it was a mess, but it also made sense to be a mess, it was an exodus with a lot of developers that where seemingly not happy with iguana entertainment/acclaim studios after the acquisition.
So you had a lot of people that started at the same time, no established structure, no natural growth, makes total sense that there where many projects parallel (back then dev teams where way smaller) and that not much of it came out (i assumed not enough pressure from up to deliver something and to many people that wanted to try stuff out).
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I looked up the game's credits and there wasnt much growth for Retro during MP3 to TF. They did grow somewhat going from MP1 to MP3, from 50s to 80s people but MP3 and TF dont really have a lot of growth, TF had around 90 people i guess and MP3 around 85.

1998 Retro wasnt just Iguana, it was everywhere, even Hollywood (this hasnt changed, they do hire some hollywood people to this day, such as the senior animator who comes from Dreamworks). And yes, total lack of direction, the only thing ol' Jeff Spangenberg (the studio owner) did there was fill it with talent, but he stopped coming to work after that, the guy was a mess, to a point where he was hosting an adult website on Retro's servers at the time (no kidding!). Nintendo bought his shares for just 1 million and dumped him when they came to visit in 2000 and were shocked, by everything.

Aether said:
Since then there had to be a reduction in stuff for them to survive 10 years without a major release, so im really really curios whats happening with MP4 if they are at 160 now.
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Kinda, but not really. It did happen, but it was around 2018. Retro did start hiring a few interesting players (writers, the Deus Ex composer, Alexander Brandon, animators) but their projects didn't pan out as they hoped so there was a decent amount of people leaving but not as big as in 2008, for example. As for the current number, MP4 is simply certainly a huge game that will require several hundreds of people to be made. Im sure the actual number of people will be even larger, around 300 coming from support studios (even back In TF Retro had to ask Monster Games for support).
 
oracion said:
NDCube was involved in the development of the E12S.
www.ndcube.co.jp

エヌディーキューブ株式会社

当社は任天堂株式会社が97％出資するゲームソフトウェア開発会社です。 これまで「マリオパーティ」シリーズ、「Wii Party」シリーズを中心に開発しており、関わったソフトの累計販売本数は2,000万本以上、更にスマートデバイス向けのタイトルも加わり、世界中のお客様に楽しんで頂いております。
www.ndcube.co.jp www.ndcube.co.jp
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Well, from the looks of it, it seems to be from the team behind clubhouse games.
 
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The music being outsourced to T’s Music probably means this was primarily an NDcube title with EPD 4 staff handling production.

Edit:Well look at that:

nintendo.fandom.com

Tatsumitsu Watanabe

Tatsumitsu Watanabe is a director at NDcube. He has been an instrumental part of the Mario Party series since its sixth entry, where he worked as a planner under Hudson Soft. He also had a history working on the Bomberman series. Super Bomberman 3 - Game Designer Bomberman Generation - Battle -...
nintendo.fandom.com nintendo.fandom.com
Lead game designer on this.

www.mobygames.com

Hiroyuki Tsuboguchi - MobyGames

Game credits, biography, portraits and other game industry information for Hiroyuki Tsuboguchi - MobyGames
www.mobygames.com www.mobygames.com
Chief Sound Director on SMP and now Sound Director on this. Was only credited for sound coordination since then.
 
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Shikata being a co-producer now could mean that he’s with EPD 4 for the time being, as production staff don’t usuallly move to different groups. Granted, the game has likely been done for a while as already said, so who knows.

Shimamura was Production Manager and Shohei Mizutani was Project Manager. Still a few EPD 4 no-shows. Yosuke Tamori (Mario Kart Live), Hiroshi Matsunaga (MKL/RFA), Tsubasa Sakaguchi (LABO).
 
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So far it looks like some of the 1-2 Switch EPD leads stayed on for the sequel. The brunt of the game seems to be EPD handling the web/server components of the multiplayer, and NDCube doing most of the standard joycon games (hence why a few are recycled from MP).
 
Hideki Fujii was shown to be in EPD 4 during the Ask the Dev interview for Big Brain Academy. With it now being confirmed that he worked on Everybody 1-2-Switch, Toru Minegishi working on an unannounced EPD 7 project seems extremely likely. Though I wonder if that means he isn’t the Sound Director for Side Order.
 
Also looks like Will Co., Ltd. is under Special Thanks as they too are a common NDCube supporter from the Hudson era, but no sign of CAProduction who are more or less NDCube B from the Hudson era too. Will's sort of NDCube C.
 
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One of the two programming directors, Shun Hakamada, apparently hasn’t been credited since Mario Party 10 outside of a Special Thanks credit in MP Superstars. Maybe he was a part of that New IP division at NDcube? Or the Pocket Camp team?
 
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