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Discussion At What Point During The Wii U's Life Time Do you Think Nintendo Shifted All Game Development Focus To The Switch

SpaceGodzilla

SpaceGodzilla

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it's pretty well known now that the WII U was a massive failure for Nintendo but it's successor the switch was the complete opposite.

but I wanted to ask when do you personally feel like Nintendo truly gave up on the system and focused more of upcoming titles to their next system?
 
IMO i know it sounds early but I think during fall 2014, by that time a 2d Mario, a 3D Mario , Mario Kart, and a New Donkey Kong had failed to boost sales efficiently and it's enough time that the last 2 major Wii u exclusives star fox zero and paper Mario color splash to have already started development before the shift
 
Probably the Monday after the emergency direct at the beginning of 2013, when sales still didn't pick up in any way.

They must have changed gears fast around that time and planned the next few years with games already too far in development, and only greenlighting the bare minimum of yet to be developed games like paper Mario color splash.
 
At the VERY latest, after holiday 2014. I think when a year with both Mario Kart AND Smash Bros doesn’t do anything to course correct, they must’ve known it was over.
 
timssprechstunde said:
Probably the Monday after the emergency direct at the beginning of 2013, when sales still didn't pick up in any way.

They must have changed gears fast around that time and planned the next few years with games already too far in development, and only greenlighting the bare minimum of yet to be developed games like paper Mario color splash.
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...So they gave up after like two months? Let's calm down lol. Just a year prior they spent much more time and effort than that to course correct the 3DS. Plus they released Splatoon and Mario Maker on the system, which at best would've been very early in development at that point. You don't go ahead with ambitious new IPs that try to sell people on the console's main feature if you've already deemed it a failure
 
Early 2015 when they realized dropping Mario Kart 8, Bayonetta 2, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, and Smash Bros wouldn't save the Wii U sales during holiday 2014
 
As soon as Mario Kart and Smash failed to move the needle. Heck, as soon as MK8 failed to move it, even with that 2 game deal Nintendo had to know the writing was on the wall.

Lord Azrael said:
...So they gave up after like two months? Let's calm down lol. Just a year prior they spent much more time and effort than that to course correct the 3DS. Plus they released Splatoon and Mario Maker on the system, which at best would've been very early in development at that point. You don't go ahead with ambitious new IPs that try to sell people on the console's main feature if you've already deemed it a failure
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I wouldn't be surprised if they were having doubts about the Wii U while they were panicking to get the 3DS profitable. That All-Hands-On-Deck 2012 lineup for the 3DS had to have seriously drained the resources and basically stripped the Wii U bare.
 
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Mer.Saloon said:
I wouldn't be surprised if they were having doubts about the Wii U while they were panicking to get the 3DS profitable. That All-Hands-On-Deck 2012 lineup for the 3DS had to have seriously drained the resources and basically stripped the Wii U bare.
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Concerns sure maybe, but moving all development efforts over to the next console by then? Nah lol. That would've done way more harm than trying to recoup. Suggesting they wrote off 4+ years ahead of time like that is bonkers
 
Lord Azrael said:
Concerns sure maybe, but moving all development efforts over to the next console by then? Nah lol. That would've done way more harm than trying to recoup. Suggesting they wrote off 4+ years ahead of time like that is bonkers
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You can forecast sales, so I assume that, when Nintendo saw how lackluster the Wii U was, they decided to slowly shift more resources on:
• Whatever projects they had in R&D
• 3DS software
• Next gen console games
 
ziggyrivers said:
You can forecast sales, so I assume that, when Nintendo saw how lackluster the Wii U was, they decided to slowly shift more resources on:
• Whatever projects they had in R&D
• 3DS software
• Next gen console games
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Correct. Slowly. Not two months after launch, which is the part I was arguing against
 
Lord Azrael said:
Correct. Slowly. Not two months after launch, which is the part I was arguing against
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Kit and Krysta were pretty clear why Nintendo did that emergency direct: because sales were desasterous after the holidays. So they would have a pretty good idea at that point to decide how much money to sink in a product that was just not selling.

Nintendo certainly didn't wait until Mario Kart to decide the fate of Wii U, at that point even the sales intern would have known that the console is lost. And 2013 seems to be the year they cut off development, as the last game released was middle of 2016
 
I would say after 2014 with the Mario Kart + Smash double header doing nothing for the Wii U was when dev resources were more clearly shifting to the Switch. By late 2015 it was clear Nintendo had already given up on the console with the quality of releases quickly dropping with stuff like Amiibo Festival and Mario Tennis Ultra Smash.

Now I imagine Switch itself began far sooner than that since it was clear by early 2013 that Wii U wouldn't be a success. But if you think about the game pipeline for Switch first year, you had a lot of the teams still making Wii U software for a while until around late 2014 / early 2015. BotW ended up on both Wii U and Switch, then the 3D Mario team moved to Odyssey after releasing 3D World + Captain Toad, Splatoon 2 had a very fast turnaround from Splatoon 1's surprise success, the presence of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, etc.
 
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Mid-2015 definitely. Like many have already said, a few months after Smash Bros. released the system still wasn't gaining a lot of traction so at that point it was just finish any game that has to be on Wii U and move anything that doesn't (like Breath of the Wild) over to the Switch.

Remember in late 2014 we got our first gameplay look at Breath of the Wild where the tablet was actually used for stuff, so at that point it was still a Wii U-only game. Then we see nothing of it for all of 2015. That was likely because it was then that they realised that the Wii U couldn't be saved.
 
Ehh. "Shifted ALL game development focus" is pretty heavy. It's not until second half 2016 that first-party Wii U releases REALLY dropped off. Only a few of the first-half 2016 games were time-sensitive or required Wii U's hardware, but they still chose to let things like Pokkén and Tokyo Mirage Sessions go forward.
 
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  • ARMS probably entered full production by the end of 2015, as Mario Kart 8 wrapped up production on its DLC earlier that year.
  • Splatoon 2 began development in earnest around October 2015.
  • Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle was conceived in February 2014, and based on Grant Kirkhope signing on as composer by the end of the year, was definitely in full production by 2015.
  • Fire Emblem Warriors was conceived during the development of Hyrule Warriors Legends, sometime in late 2015.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had early planning begin in July 2014, but presumably only began full production after X's early 2015 early release.
I think it's safe to say that Nintendo had ditched Wii U development by mid-2015, with anything pitched after mid-2014 being Switch (or 3DS)-bound. I say the latter because Splatoon may very well have been the last big Wii U project that Nintendo greenlit, which would have been late 2013/early 2014. And that was a 2015 game. Everything that was released by Nintendo for the Wii U in 2016 appears to have similarly began development by early 2014 or was otherwise a smaller endeavor ala Twilight Princess HD.
 
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OctoSplattack said:
  • ARMS probably entered full production by the end of 2015, as Mario Kart 8 wrapped up production on its DLC earlier that year.
  • Splatoon 2 began development in earnest around October 2015.
  • Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle was conceived in February 2014, and based on Grant Kirkhope signing on as composer by the end of the year, was definitely in full production by 2015.
  • Fire Emblem Warriors was conceived during the development of Hyrule Warriors Legends, sometime in late 2015.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had early planning begin in July 2014, but presumably only began full production after X's early 2015 early release.
I think it's safe to say that Nintendo had ditched Wii U development by mid-2015, with anything pitched after mid-2014 being Switch (or 3DS)-bound. I say the latter because Splatoon may very well have been the last big Wii U project that Nintendo greenlit, which would have been late 2013/early 2014. And that was a 2015 game. Everything that was released by Nintendo for the Wii U in 2016 appears to have similarly began development by early 2014 or was otherwise a smaller endeavor ala Twilight Princess HD.
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When were Switch Devkits out in the wild for 3rd parties again? At least the ones that werent Ubisoft?
 
I'd say that the process already was set in motion whenever they internally decided that they wanted to merge their both Development Departments. So likely very soon after the WiiU Launch. They probably didn't fully shifted their focus away until Nintendo EPD was formed, but given how long it takes to develop a game, they'd certainly had lost faith in their business strategy they had at the time quite early. If we are talking about ALL Game Development, then it wasn't until 2016, early 2017, when development for BOTW on WiiU was done.
 
I think by 2014 they already somewhat recognised where the Wii U was heading; even before Mario Kart and Smash failed to significantly move the needle. We know Odyssey went into production soon after 3D World, already targetting Switch rather than either of their (at the time) current platforms.

www.ign.com

Next 3D Mario Game in Development - IGN

Nintendo producer Yoshiaki Koizumi confirms that another Mario game is in development at EAD Tokyo.
www.ign.com www.ign.com
www.nintendolife.com

Super Mario Odyssey Was Always Planned To Be Released On Switch

Not destined for Wii U
www.nintendolife.com www.nintendolife.com

Per the Gigaleak we also know the name Switch was locked in for their next platform as early as 2014; though at the point of the below itteration it's doubtful there was even any consideration to, say, make Breath of the Wild cross-gen, given the planned specs were weaker than the Wii U. I believe that decision would've come some time in 2015 when the Switch hardware began to finalize.

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For internal Nintendo productions (EAD and SPD; later EPD after the restructure) i'm confident any major projects pitched in 2014-2015 were either bound for Switch or late-life 3DS stragglers; Wii U already off the table. For external studios there's some other clues we can use to figure out when they were given the greenlight to move over to Switch:
  • Retro reportedly started development of their mystery cancelled game for Wii U in 2014, so at that stage they either expected to get it done within two years, or were simply not yet privy to that new hardware. It's rumored it moved over to Switch before cancellation, so they would've well passed the point where releasing a game on Wii U was off the table.
  • Crashmo World was reportedly planned after the release of Pushmo World in 2014, and entered full production at Intelligent Systems in 2015 (after Stretchmo, presumably). According to these rumors it remained in development until December 2016, when it became necessary to move all development resources over to Switch, and the decision was made to not bring it over.
  • Luigi's Mansion 3 is known to have had early design work done on Wii U, but it's never been made clear when exactly this occured following 2's release; by the time Federation Force released in 2016 and full production began Next Level were already targetting Switch.
  • Grezzo never ended up releasing a game on Wii U, but there is evidence that the 3DS version of Luigi's Mansion started life as a Wii U project, or potentially a cross-platform release like Sushi Striker or the port of Captain Toad became (the internal codename GreenCubeU is used in some places). We don't know when the project started development, and the credits aren't helpful either as there's a number of staff who were credited on Ever Oasis -> Luigi's Mansion -> Link's Awakening three years in a row.
  • Speaking of Sushi Striker, we know directly through interviews that the game was first conceptualised in Spring 2015 (Nothern Hemisphere), initially only as a 3DS project before later becoming cross-gen. A similar development pipeline also occured for Fire Emblem Warriors, which also started production in 2015 on 3DS, built directly off Hyrule Warriors Legends.
  • One final segue into more Fire Emblem; Three Houses had begun planning as a 3DS title following the release of Fates in Japan in 2015, but was deprioritized in favor of developing Echoes for 3DS instead; by the time it was ready to begin production proper it was only natural to release the next non-remake Fire Emblem on Switch instead.
 
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There's a summary of the gigaleak and the Project (I don't record the "3DS successor" name before it turned to Switch) of the next hardware made by @oldpuck on the hardware thread, it's said that it was by early 2015 that it was decided that all unannounced projects would be moved for the next console that was targeting October 2016. There was just Paper Mario Color Splash left because that was already done by then.

Luigi's Mansion 3 (which started development by late 2014 I think) shifted, probably ARMS was aiming for Wii U on its inception for a short period, maybe a couple of 2018/2019 games that had barely started pre-production, but there were games such as Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and others already targeting the next console from the start.
 
Marce-chan said:
There's a summary of the gigaleak and the Project (I don't record the "3DS successor" name before it turned to Switch) of the next hardware made by @oldpuck on the hardware thread, it's said that it was by early 2015 that it was decided that all unannounced projects would be moved for the next console that was targeting October 2016. There was just Paper Mario Color Splash left because that was already done by then.
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This is my understanding - all active but unannounced WiiU games we’re moved to Switch once the Switch was locked in as the Wii U successor (instead of the 3DS successor it started out as)

Contracts with Nvidia were signed in early 2015, but it was all but a done deal by late 2014
 
Semi-related, but I remember when some people legitimately thought that no Nintendo teams had moved onto the Switch outside of the 2017 releases until the Switch was out and succesful, just because there weren’t that many first party titles in 2018.
 
Nintendo needed a new platform to develop for, before they could shift focus away from Wii U. They also needed to keep software teams busy on projects. And they would've been aware that software they continued to develop for Wii U, could later be released for the new platform. So I guess they wouldn't have abandoned Wii U at least until the new platform was clearly defined.
 
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Marce-chan said:
Luigi's Mansion 3 (which started development by late 2014 I think) shifted, probably ARMS was aiming for Wii U on its inception for a short period, maybe a couple of 2018/2019 games that had barely started pre-production, but there were games such as Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and others already targeting the next console from the start.
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The Joy-con are too pivotal to Arms for it to have ever been considered for Wii U, imo. Luigi's Mansion 3 was defo a Wii U game first though, which we know thanks to that one tweet by the animator.
 
NantenJex said:
The Joy-con are too pivotal to Arms for it to have ever been considered for Wii U, imo. Luigi's Mansion 3 was defo a Wii U game first though, which we know thanks to that one tweet by the animator.
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Agree on ARMS; based on the GDC presentation (and another development video, same footage though) it seems more like the Joy-Con developed alongside the game rather than the game adapting the existence of Joy-Con.



(Yes I do see the dev hardware using Wii U Game Pads lol)


As for Luigi’s Mansion 3 there’s a lot more confirmation than just one tweet; it was initially discussed during Treehouse Live at E3 2019 (below), and in other interviews during that E3. It was always interesting how candid they were about that element of the game's production; don't get that with every game (Pikmin 4 recently for example, didn't divulge anything on that long development history during any of the dev interviews).

 
Probably before the end of 2014.

PS: All? All was probably at 2018 since they did release some 3DS games even in 2019.
 
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The only internal core I can think of that could have still been on 3DS by the Switch's reveal is the WarioWare "team" (Goro Abe/Ko Takeuchi).

After Game & Wario (which I think was originally envisioned as a new IP but was given the WarioWare branding later on to presumably help sales), Abe for whatever reason was moved onto the amiibo project. Takeuchi worked on Rhythm Heaven Megamix in the meantime. It isn't clear when WarioWare Gold began development. Gold is an interesting project as it had to be a 3DS project due to touch/microphone microgames, but Crashmo World was apparently shelved so that IS could focus on Switch.

So exactly how long was the gap between Gold's completion and release? Or was it just considered a more profitable project compared to Crashmo? It's not the first oddity with the series. Get it Together was rated a year(?) before it even released and had a usually high amount of staff crossover with Origami King.
 
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SpaceGodzilla said:
IMO i know it sounds early but I think during fall 2014, by that time a 2d Mario, a 3D Mario , Mario Kart, and a New Donkey Kong had failed to boost sales efficiently and it's enough time that the last 2 major Wii u exclusives star fox zero and paper Mario color splash to have already started development before the shift
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Was pretty much gonna say this. Mario Kart, 2D/3D Mario, and Smash Bros are some of the biggest sellers they have, and when Smash 4 still didn’t move consoles I think they gave up. Which feels more evident given how pathetic their 2015 and 2016 lineups were.
 
I wouldn’t say they shifted away from Wii U to Switch so much as they didn’t bother shifting resources back to Wii U after the 3DS. Wii U development suffered from difficulties getting the 3DS off the ground, but by the time the 3DS was on steadier ground the Wii U was clearly already out. I have trouble imagining the Wii U had a whole lot more games from Nintendo planned for it beyond what we got. The bigger differences are how much resources they allocated to games given sales expectations. For example, Mario Tennis and Mario Party came out but seemed to be very limited compared to previous (and later) entries. If any one game truly got axed, maybe it was Animal Crossing though since that didn’t come out until 2020 maybe that had other issues.
 
At least since this article was posted. Which was November 6, 2014. Development pipelines were so backed up because of the difficulties adjusting to HD development. IMO, the decision to make smaller in-between games was the acknowledgement that big-name software was taking too long on two systems, and probably also followed the acknowledgement internally that Nintendo needed to consolidate development for just one machine.

After that second holiday failed to move the needle, and after most of those "in-between" games were received poorly through the next year, that probably just cemented their thinking. Also was probably the catalyst for the decision to port BOTW to the Switch. No sense in smaller games that don't sell that well and destroy the brand.
 
julian said:
I wouldn’t say they shifted away from Wii U to Switch so much as they didn’t bother shifting resources back to Wii U after the 3DS. Wii U development suffered from difficulties getting the 3DS off the ground, but by the time the 3DS was on steadier ground the Wii U was clearly already out. I have trouble imagining the Wii U had a whole lot more games from Nintendo planned for it beyond what we got. The bigger differences are how much resources they allocated to games given sales expectations. For example, Mario Tennis and Mario Party came out but seemed to be very limited compared to previous (and later) entries. If any one game truly got axed, maybe it was Animal Crossing though since that didn’t come out until 2020 maybe that had other issues.
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Ultra Smash is to this day IMO, modern Nintendo's most desperate game. Say what you will about future Mario sports games, but nothing has ever gotten as bare as Ultra Smash. A game I dont even think was rushed, it was planned to be that barebones from the beginning just because Nintendo needed something on Wii U to bring in the money in that disastrous year for little cost.

Heck, I almost think Ultra Smash was just a dolled up prototype for Aces.
 
I'm of the mind that they had some stuff cooking and they let it release and immediately transitioned to switch development.
when you look at things like mario tennis, it's not hard to imagine that they were like... "ok that's good enough, just stop adding things ... cut the rest of the game and polish it off."

and aside from smash bros... it seemed like no REAL effort was put into other games.
I think they knew they had a problem before Wii U launched, but there were games in the pipeline that were far enough along that they let release then and as those studios freed up they put them on BOTW and switch dev.
 
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