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

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EAD Ninja said:
They had the chief director, a few game designers, script writers, some artists, musicians, and 3 lead programmers on the game. They definitely worked on this game, but like Metal said, I don't think they had a full production staff to make this game so Eighting and others filled that in.
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In other words, this is a Metroid Dread/WarioWare/Sushi Striker type deal. Nintendo does the core design and direction in-house, then the rest of the game is shipped off to a third-party to be finished.
 
MagiCarbo said:
In other words, this is a Metroid Dread/WarioWare/Sushi Striker type deal. Nintendo does the core design and direction in-house, then the rest of the game is shipped off to a third-party to be finished.
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is it? i thought warioware was an external game since they went to tanabe group
 
Nemesis24 said:
is it? i thought warioware was an external game since they went to tanabe group
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WarioWare had always been internally led, as most of the lead producers, directors and designers come from Nintendo. Intelligent Systems handles most of the back-end creative and programing stuff. At least, that's how its been since WW Touched.
 
I say that because the last game was put under Tanabe group and that group dont develop games internally, they do production only just like EPD1 and EPD2.
 
Nemesis24 said:
I say that because the last game was put under Tanabe group and that group dont develop games internally, they do production only just like EPD1 and EPD2.
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It's also important to remember that EPD quietly reorganized itself around 2019 or so, Much of the stuff that used to be out-house was consolidated under Group 2, while Group 6 and Group 7 switched to a co-development model for their games.
 
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So Pikmin 3 Deluxe was likely used for Eighting to find their footing with the series. Though the big feature for that port was full co-op play, which isn’t in 4. I wonder if it got axed (especially since the game revolves so much around Oatchi) or maybe it was just a discarded idea for 3 that was brought back.
 
N75 said:
So Pikmin 3 Deluxe was likely used for Eighting to find their footing with the series. Though the big feature for that port was full co-op play, which isn’t in 4. I wonder if it got axed (especially since the game revolves so much around Oatchi) or maybe it was just a discarded idea for 3 that was brought back.
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It's easy to imagine full campaign co-op being a feature considered for the original Pikmin 3, with the co-op challenge mode missions being all they could get running acceptably back then. Also easy to imagine them at least experimenting with Player 2 controlling Oatchi in 4 but eventually deciding against it. I could imagine the change in camera and perspective making it more difficult to get running smoothly; a lot more that could potentially be rendered at once.


Having seen the full bredth of datamining from the demo I definitely get the massive bump up in staff count compared to 3 though; this game is packed with a ton of content.
 
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Eighting having a significant role in development makes sense, but it does make me wish we someday know more about the history of the project. Assuming Eighting took it on in 2020, that's 5 years after Miyamoto said Pikmin 4 was 'nearing completion' (!). It's also interesting to see the large expansion in team size, though that tracks with Pikmin 3 having probably largely been built on Wii and Furukawa's comments a couple of years back that, with Switch being so successful, resources allocated to development and team sizes were increasing.

Obviously, the finished product can be very different to whatever previously existed, and this is likely the case for Pikmin 4. But it occurs to me that the game we're getting now will have had a relatively speedy development time in its manifestation as the collaboration with Eighting - two and a half to three years, give or take? Not too dissimilar to Metroid Dread, which presumably took around three and a half years for EPD and MercurySteam.

I wonder if Nintendo actually had a build of this game at EPD which they shared with Eighting, and which provided the basis for the finished product.
 
Dark Cloud said:
Why has no one talked about this 8ing company until the last few years? I’ve been on video game boards for over a decade and never heard this name mentioned until recently…
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They became more prominent on Nintendo boards because they handled the Pikmin 3 DX port. Back in the day they developed Kuru Kuru Kururin.

I'd say people didn't really talk about them because they primarily handled licensed anime titles, a number of which never launched outside Japan.
 
I mainly remember Eighting because they also essentially developed Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
 
I thought Eighting was pretty well known, especially since they developed a lot of beloved fighting games like Bloody Roar, Tatsunoko vs Capcom and Marvel vs Capcom 3.
Also, they were the dev behind the Tomy-published Naruto games back when Bandai didn't have an exclusivity and multiple publishers could work on the same franchise. (Checking on their Wikipedia page it seems like they've worked on a shit ton of other licensed games over the years as well)
 
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GamerJM said:
I'll admit I'm not too familiar with the norms for how many people are in roles like this for the industry, but 22 writers for a Pikmin game? Does that like include all of the folks working on localization or is that counted separately? How much text is in this game?
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Localization is separate. Writers can also include people who write the text in the game. If there's a lot of text, more writers could help with that
 
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MagiCarbo said:
In other words, this is a Metroid Dread/WarioWare/Sushi Striker type deal. Nintendo does the core design and direction in-house, then the rest of the game is shipped off to a third-party to be finished.
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There are different types of co-development models;
I would say this is an in-house game co developed with Eighting. Nintendo had programmers, sound, and cg artists involved which was important for the game to feel like an EPD game despite the extensive support from Eighting and others.
 
MagiCarbo said:
WarioWare had always been internally led, as most of the lead producers, directors and designers come from Nintendo. Intelligent Systems handles most of the back-end creative and programing stuff. At least, that's how its been since WW Touched.
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That was how it was in the beginning, not just with Touched but it changed with WarioWare Gold. When it moved to Tanabe's group, the only Nintendo developer was Goro Abe, Tanabe and a few coordinators. The rest of the WarioWare team either stayed with Sakamoto or moved to EPD4.
 
MetalLord said:
503 vs 150
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Jesus Christ that's a hell lot of people in terms of Nintendo games. Nintendo really did all they could to make Pikmin a big deal with this one.
MisterSpo said:
Eighting having a significant role in development makes sense, but it does make me wish we someday know more about the history of the project. Assuming Eighting took it on in 2020, that's 5 years after Miyamoto said Pikmin 4 was 'nearing completion' (!). It's also interesting to see the large expansion in team size, though that tracks with Pikmin 3 having probably largely been built on Wii and Furukawa's comments a couple of years back that, with Switch being so successful, resources allocated to development and team sizes were increasing.

Obviously, the finished product can be very different to whatever previously existed, and this is likely the case for Pikmin 4. But it occurs to me that the game we're getting now will have had a relatively speedy development time in its manifestation as the collaboration with Eighting - two and a half to three years, give or take? Not too dissimilar to Metroid Dread, which presumably took around three and a half years for EPD and MercurySteam.

I wonder if Nintendo actually had a build of this game at EPD which they shared with Eighting, and which provided the basis for the finished product.
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Emily told us the game was rebooted by early 2019, so I assume this current iteration of the game has been in the works since late 2018 at least. Whether it was mostly an EPD effort until late 2019 when Pikmin 3 DX was done so Eighting could join the team, or whether Eighting was on board from the start and had a smaller team making 3 DX for a year or two is what I'm wondering now.
 
GamerJM said:
I'll admit I'm not too familiar with the norms for how many people are in roles like this for the industry, but 22 writers for a Pikmin game? Does that like include all of the folks working on localization or is that counted separately? How much text is in this game?
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Completely baseless speculation, but I wonder if there was a sort of "hey anyone who wants to can submit flavor text for the item descriptions" type deal.
 
GamerJM said:
I'll admit I'm not too familiar with the norms for how many people are in roles like this for the industry, but 22 writers for a Pikmin game? Does that like include all of the folks working on localization or is that counted separately? How much text is in this game?
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From the demo alone I could see the game has way, way more dialogue than a typical Nintendo game. A lot of text boxes and cutscenes. Definitely some effort that would take a lot of writers.
 
MetalLord said:
No,they even hired a visual novel developer called Studio Monado to work on the writing,the devs who wrote the panzer dragon games lol
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Wow... that's crazy. At least based on the demo 4 does seem like the most story focused game in the series yet so I wonder where that'll go
 
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Gonna also throw my hat in the ring that I had never heard of Eighting. I wonder how often this is gonna happen for EPD games as development requires more and more people on it.
 
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astrogamer said:
That was how it was in the beginning, not just with Touched but it changed with WarioWare Gold. When it moved to Tanabe's group, the only Nintendo developer was Goro Abe, Tanabe and a few coordinators. The rest of the WarioWare team either stayed with Sakamoto or moved to EPD4.
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Ko Takauchi is also still on as Character designer. And the copyrights for the recent games still say "Co-Developed by Intelligent Systems". So Nintendo still likely does a lot of pre-production and direction in-house even without nearly as much staff on their end.
 
I saw a Tweet saying that 75% of people at Naughty Dog were actually contractors, so not full time Naughty Dog employees. I can't post the Tweet here right now because...well Twitter. Outsourcing is a big thing in games and it always has been. Nintendo has a history of having Nintendo employees lead, design, and manage projects while working with third party developers to make the game. The reason why they went with Namco to make Smash Bros. 4 and Ultimate is because they needed to people who had experience making HD games and because they just needed a large amount of bodies to make shit.

So it's not surprising that another developer was brought on to help with Pikmin 3. There's no evidence to say an inhouse programmer at Nintendo is more qualified to do the task as someone at another company. There is talent everywhere and the reasons why game's are good or bad comes down to management, budget and time, and fundamental design. We see how the difference in quality between Mercery Steam making a game for Konami vs. making one for Nintendo.
 
Marce-chan said:
From the demo alone I could see the game has way, way more dialogue than a typical Nintendo game. A lot of text boxes and cutscenes. Definitely some effort that would take a lot of writers.
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Ah I haven't played the demo. Interesting to hear that there really is that much dialogue and text then. That actually shifts my expectations of Pikmin 4 some lol.
 
GamerJM said:
I'll admit I'm not too familiar with the norms for how many people are in roles like this for the industry, but 22 writers for a Pikmin game? Does that like include all of the folks working on localization or is that counted separately? How much text is in this game?
Click to expand...
to be fair, just playing the pikmin 4 demo, there was a lot of text. more than dialogue, which has already a lot, they have archives and a lot of lore stuff in there, so i can understand why there's so many writers
 
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So Nintendo EPD in the switch generation co-developed games with Eighting, MercurySteam, indieszero and a few others right? i guess this is their way to finish projects if they dont have enough staff to release a product in the core team of the project
 
Nemesis24 said:
So Nintendo EPD in the switch generation co-developed games with Eighting, MercurySteam, indieszero and a few others right? i guess this is their way to finish projects if they dont have enough staff to release a product in the core team of the project
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there are parts of EPD that always worked with external devs like this, so for MercurySteam's and IndiesZero, this is nothing out of the ordinary
 
ILikeFeet said:
there are parts of EPD that always worked with external devs like this, so for MercurySteam's and IndiesZero, this is nothing out of the ordinary
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It's something Nintendo began doing regularly in the late Wii U days in order to get more games made. It's basically the reason they're even able to release as many games as they do regularly on the Switch.
 
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SirArthur said:
MAGES developed FDC games, supervised by EPD 7. But oddly on the Missing Heir (the "first" game), has their name is on the start screen along Nintendo, but not in the Girl Who stands Behind.
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Mages are present on both title screens. What you're thinking of is Tose only being credited for The Missing Heir; but that's in-line with the original releaes too. They went uncredited otherwise but have always been mentioned in the copyright for it and not The Girl Who Stands Behind.

https%3A%2F%2Fapptrigger.com%2Ffiles%2F2021%2F05%2FMISSINGHEIR01header.jpg
https%3A%2F%2Fapptrigger.com%2Ffiles%2F2021%2F05%2FGWSB01header.jpg
 
MondoMega said:
Mages are present on both title screens. What you're thinking of is Tose only being credited for The Missing Heir; but that's in-line with the original releaes too. They went uncredited otherwise but have always been mentioned in the copyright for it and not The Girl Who Stands Behind.

https%3A%2F%2Fapptrigger.com%2Ffiles%2F2021%2F05%2FMISSINGHEIR01header.jpg
https%3A%2F%2Fapptrigger.com%2Ffiles%2F2021%2F05%2FGWSB01header.jpg
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Oh ok, so it was TOSE. I knew the title screen had less icons in it lol. Thanks for the clarification.
 
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The lead UI Artist from the Horse game was also the Lead UI artist from Xenoblade 3,theres also some staff from Super Mario Party missing from Superstars credited, it must have been finished even before we supposed, like 2020/21
 
Nemesis24 said:
So Nintendo EPD in the switch generation co-developed games with Eighting, MercurySteam, indieszero and a few others right? i guess this is their way to finish projects if they dont have enough staff to release a product in the core team of the project
Click to expand...

ILikeFeet said:
there are parts of EPD that always worked with external devs like this, so for MercurySteam's and IndiesZero, this is nothing out of the ordinary
Click to expand...

I don't think it's possible in modern era to produce a game without multiple companies being affiliated. There's always going to be other entities involved in development: from both inside and outside companies. There are obvious differences in the role Nintendo plays in each game - but there's definitely a distinction here for example since Nintendo had their internal team have lead roles in Director, Planning, Script, Program, and Music. Not too different how they spearhead the other big games; except this EPD team is like 30 instead of 100+.
 
MisterSpo said:
Eighting having a significant role in development makes sense, but it does make me wish we someday know more about the history of the project. Assuming Eighting took it on in 2020, that's 5 years after Miyamoto said Pikmin 4 was 'nearing completion' (!). It's also interesting to see the large expansion in team size, though that tracks with Pikmin 3 having probably largely been built on Wii and Furukawa's comments a couple of years back that, with Switch being so successful, resources allocated to development and team sizes were increasing.

Obviously, the finished product can be very different to whatever previously existed, and this is likely the case for Pikmin 4. But it occurs to me that the game we're getting now will have had a relatively speedy development time in its manifestation as the collaboration with Eighting - two and a half to three years, give or take? Not too dissimilar to Metroid Dread, which presumably took around three and a half years for EPD and MercurySteam.

I wonder if Nintendo actually had a build of this game at EPD which they shared with Eighting, and which provided the basis for the finished product.
Click to expand...
maybe Pikmin 4 started develoment as a Wii U game hench Miyamoto stating the develoment is nearly complete in 2015, but the Wii U floped, and they decided to restart the development of game around 2019-2020 now on Switch
 
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EAD Ninja said:
I don't think it's possible in modern era to produce a game without multiple companies being affiliated. There's always going to be other entities involved in development: from both inside and outside companies. There are obvious differences in the role Nintendo plays in each game - but there's definitely a distinction here for example since Nintendo had their internal team have lead roles in Director, Planning, Script, Program, and Music. Not too different how they spearhead the other big games; except this EPD team is like 30 instead of 100+.
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in the HD era with this huge games taking 4-6 years to complete and a develoment staff of 800-1446 developers in Tears of the Kingdom case, is essencial that Nintendo has to help of severals partners to help complete they games and prepare them when they transition to a more powerful hardware(Switch sucessor)
 
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SirArthur said:
MAGES developed FDC games, supervised by EPD 7. But oddly on the Missing Heir (the "first" game), has their name is on the start screen along Nintendo, but not in the Girl Who stands Behind.
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thanks. i wonder how you guys know if its developed or just produced. i look at the credits and i cannot recognize it unless they specify lol
 
Camelot: 36 employees as of April 2023
NERD: 75 employees as of June 2023
1UP: 80 employees as of June 2023
Grezzo: 84 employees as of April 2023
ND Cube: 132 employees in 2022
Good Feel: 130 employees as of January 2023
SRD: 138, April 2023
Game Freak: 169 employees as of April 2022
Intelligent Systems: 190 employees as of April 2022
Hal Laboratory: 215 employees as of June 2023
Creatures: 232, April 2023
Monolith Soft: 258 employees as of June 2023
Next Level Games: ???
Retro Studios: ???

Monolith Soft loses 5 employees (since december 2022) and Hal gains 13 (since July 2022).
 
GamerJM said:
I'll admit I'm not too familiar with the norms for how many people are in roles like this for the industry, but 22 writers for a Pikmin game? Does that like include all of the folks working on localization or is that counted separately? How much text is in this game?
Click to expand...
Pikmin has a history of having multiple flavor text blurbs for each item in its databases written in the voices of different characters. Every Piklopedia entry in 3 Deluxe had text for like 4 or 5 different characters.

The game also just seems a fair bit more dialogue heavy in general from the demo, with the whole rescuing people thing likely to contribute to that.
 
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Nemesis24 said:
So Nintendo EPD in the switch generation co-developed games with Eighting, MercurySteam, indieszero and a few others right? i guess this is their way to finish projects if they dont have enough staff to release a product in the core team of the project
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It's not a totally new thing before EAD was formed (1990) games were usually designed internally but programmed by partners such as SRD, HAL and Intelligent Systems. F-Zero was allegedly the first internally coded title.

www.timeextension.com

Jez San On Argonaut, Star Fox And Working With Nintendo

"They’d never trusted a western company in that way before"
www.timeextension.com www.timeextension.com
The reality was, at the time – and probably even still now, to a degree – Nintendo doesn’t actually employ that many good programmers. They’re mainly creative, and what used to happen was Nintendo would program their games in-house but they’d make them work and they’d make them fun. And then they’d send them to this company called HAL, which would reprogram the games with their good programmers.
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