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Discussion Do you think that Nintendo's partners and subsidiaries have management issues?

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Truno

Truno

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It's a very common practice for developers who're working on new games to take into consideration feedback from fans and critics alike of previous works in order to deliver the best experience possible. However, it seems that most of Nintendo’s partners and subsidiaries avoid this.

Take Next Level Games, for example. They launched Luigi's Mansion 3, a game that was universally lauded. It was met with incredible success which was assuredly one of the factors that led to them being acquired by Nintendo. Despite this success, they went on to develop Mario Strikers Battle League, a game that was met with mixed to negative reception, earning it the worst score in the Strikers series and the worst score for a Mario Sports title on Nintendo Switch. It was seen as a big step pack from Charged and the original title.

Furthermore, look at Intelligent Systems. They launched Fire Emblem Three Houses, one of the highest rated and the best selling Fire Emblem game. Despite this, they shifted from the design aspects of Three Houses that were lauded in order to produce Fire Emblem Engage. Engage was met with mixed response which led to it selling considerably less than 3H. The same could be said for the reception from Wario Ware Move It and Get It Together! when compared to Gold.

There are more examples to this. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet (the worst rated mainline Pokemon generation by critics and user scores), Bayonetta 3 (lowest mainline Bayonetta game and the most divisive entry amongst fans), Mario Gold Super Rush (seen as a step down from World Tour), Endless Ocean Luminous being panned by critics, etc. There's other cases such as Super Mario Party and The Origami King which, although improved on their predecessors, the reception to the quality of these titles remains mixed. And then there are other cases such as Retro Studios where they haven't been able to produce a new original title in over a decade.

There are outliers to this, such as HAL or Monolith Soft, but the issue persists with most of Nintendo affiliates.

When a brand new Nintendo game is being released by EPD Tokyo or the Zelda team, there’s usually a sense of comfort as there is no doubt that they’ll be able to deliver an enjoyable title. However, for the aforementioned studios, the quality of their products are too inconsistent for them to receive the benefit of the doubt.

What do you think?
 
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Truno said:
Take Next Level Games, for example. They launched Luigi's Mansion 3, a game lauded by critics and fans alike. It was meant with incredible success which was assuredly one of the factors that led to them being acquired by Nintendo. Despite this success, they went on to develop Mario Strikers Battle League, a game that was met with mixed to negative reception from fans and critics, earning it the worst score in the Strikers series and the worst score for a Mario Sports title on Nintendo Switch. It was scene as a big step pack from Charged and the original title.
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Battle League was developed/released during the pandemic and following the Mario Sports model of trying to slowly drip feed free content. It's clear a combination of factors outside of NLG's control contibuted to that game's messy content rollout. But when you look at Battle League as a game, mechanically it is strong if not stronger than the first two games while maintaining the strong visual polish we expect from them. I feel like that is worth giving NLG benefit of the doubt.
 
Listening to the opinions of fans will only make your game match their level. Games that deliberately please fans ultimately make me feel mediocre.
Not to mention how to please fans. Fans may sound like a group with a common consciousness, but they are more manifested as numerous smaller groups.
In a game I play that has nothing to do with Nintendo, fans get angry about which group of fans the game company has pleased.
 
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You can argue with Pokemon sure, but "Quality Assurance" usually mean playtesting to make sure the game isn't broken on the spot, rather than indicate the quality or direction of said games.

Like, with Fire Emblem Engage you mentioned for example, it was revealed that they precisely went with a different direction than Three Houses because both games were in pre-production at the same time and they want to make a game more geared toward old-school FE fans, unbeknownst to them that the Three Houses formula would prove to be more popular than expected.

Overall I would say "No, not really" because everything that Nintendo made, internal or external, are all went through the same Quality Assurance process anyway.

EDIT: I wouldn't even mentioned Endless Ocean Luminous here because it's the kind of game that had a hard time to impress the critics anyway, especially if said critic wasn't a big fan of the genre to begin with.
 
Truno said:
Despite this success, they went on to develop Mario Strikers Battle League, a game that was met with mixed to negative reception from fans and critics, earning it the worst score in the Strikers series and the worst score for a Mario Sports title on Nintendo Switch. It was scene as a big step pack from Charged and the original title.
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Everything that is bad with Mario Strikers Battle League is arguably not NLG's fault but Nintendo's. The core gameplay is great, it's a beautiful game with beautiful animations. The only issue is lack of content, and that's a problem on a lot of other Nintendo games that weren't made by NLG. It's a publishing strategy, not a partner having a quality assurance issue.

Truno said:
Furthermore, look at Intelligent Systems. They launched Fire Emblem Three Houses, one of the highest rated and the best selling Fire Emblem game. Despite this, they shifted from the design aspects of Three Houses that were lauded by critics and fans in order to produce Fire Emblem Engage.
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Engage is a very different game from Three Houses (who wasn't made by IS), it's a FE game that is focused on the gameplay and not story as Three Houses. The gameplay is more complex in Engage, and the game looks a whole lot better. No quality assurance issue here either. Although I'd agree with you on their Switch WarioWare games being lackluster, but that's more an issue of the system lacking a real gimmick and a concept that has outlived its time.

Sorry for cherry-picking, but what I mean is that Nintendo orders and/or validate those games (only exception in the ones you listed is Pokémon S/V, who has issues but Pokémon is not entirely a Nintendo issue, and even then I'd argue that Pokémon has evolved for the best on Switch with Sw/Sh, S/V and Legends). Nintendo are producers, so to speak, so they're responsible for the quality of the final product at the end of the day. If a product hit the shelves, it means that they are satisfied with it. And given the sometimes experimental nature of Nintendo-published games, I'd say that having some lackluster/divisive games from time to time is part of the deal. Most Nintendo partners (even the ones you mentioned) published great games on the Switch, so I'm not sure exactly what point you're trying to make.
 
Truno said:
It's a very common practice for developers who're working on new games to take into consideration feedback from fans and critics alike of previous works in order to deliver the best experience possible. However, it seems that most of Nintendo’s partners and subsidiaries avoid this.

Take Next Level Games, for example. They launched Luigi's Mansion 3, a game lauded by critics and fans alike. It was meant with incredible success which was assuredly one of the factors that led to them being acquired by Nintendo. Despite this success, they went on to develop Mario Strikers Battle League, a game that was met with mixed to negative reception from fans and critics, earning it the worst score in the Strikers series and the worst score for a Mario Sports title on Nintendo Switch. It was scene as a big step pack from Charged and the original title.

Furthermore, look at Intelligent Systems. They launched Fire Emblem Three Houses, one of the highest rated and the best selling Fire Emblem game. Despite this, they shifted from the design aspects of Three Houses that were lauded by critics and fans in order to produce Fire Emblem Engage. Engage was met with mixed response by fans and critics. This led to it selling considerably less than 3H. The same could be said for the reception from fans and critics to Wario Ware Move It and Get It Toghether! when compared to Gold.

There are more examples to this. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet (the worst rated mainline Pokemon generation by critics and fans as per user scores), Bayonetta 3 (lowest mainline Bayonetta game and the most divisive entry amongst fans), Mario Gold Super Rush (seen as a step down from World Tour by fans and critics alike), Endless Ocean Luminous being panned by critics, etc. There's other cases such as Super Mario Party and The Origami King which, although improved on their predecessors, the reception to the quality of these titles remains mixed. And then there are other cases such as Retro Studios where they haven't been able to produce a new original title in over a decade.

There are outliers to this, such as HAL or Monolith Soft, but the issue persists with most of Nintendo affiliates.

When a brand new Nintendo game is being released by EPD Tokyo or the Zelda team, there’s usually a sense of comfort as there is no doubt that they’ll be able to deliver an enjoyable title. However, for the aforementioned studios, the quality of their products are too inconsistent for them to receive the benefit of the doubt.

What do you think?
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Engage was already in development when Three Houses was still being worked on. They also explicitly chose to push it in a different direction from Three Houses (in part because they were framing it as an anniversary celebration title, in part because they wanted to try expanding the audience). They didn't know at the time that Three Houses would become the best-selling entry in the series largely on the back of all of the things Engage was explicitly not doing, but they weren't going to just upend development of a game over TH's success. (Especially when dev had already been upended by COVID.)

And it's not like Engage failed. It's still sold in line with the post-Awakening era. But there's little doubt that IS saw the response to Engage and are taking that into account for the future.

That's not a QA issue. That's just how things go sometimes.
 
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I don't know if I'd strictly call this a quality assurance issue so much as a production issue.

The Camelot Mario Sports games on Switch are generally solid with a lack of content, especially at launch. Same with Strikers, albeit at a higher scale. Given more time to work on the project, these issues could have been addressed more, but they were deemed okay to launch. That's on Nintendo, too.

The Pokémon games have been well known for how rushed they have been. They've been increasing in scale and scope but stuck on a three year development cycle. The seems began to show as soon as the 3DS, and the Switch just made that obvious. More time to put into development would help these problems, but they were deemed okay enough to watch. That's on The Pokémon Company, and Nintendo is clearly okay with the sales numbers.

I can't speak to Fire Emblem, but Intelligent Systems has been consistently working on Switch titles beyond Engage. We got two Paper Mario releases and co-developed the WarioWare games. If you wanna argue about the quality of those games, sure. But again - they were deemed okay to launch, and that's also on Nintendo.

And hey, just because the game is internally developed at Nintendo doesn’t mean quality all of the time. The 1-2 Switch games were just alright. Labo didn't set the world on fire. And that's just on Switch. Meanwhile those Mario and Zelda games you cited have lengthy development cycles. We still don't have a full 3D Mario sequel, and a direct sequel to BotW took six years to make to ensure that top quality. Give developers time and resources and they will be able to produce stronger products, but I wouldn't strictly blame the QA on the associates.
 
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Some studios have that issue, sure, but as a whole? Not in the slightest whatsoever.

You’re pulling random examples that had problems for varying reasons and trying to box them up into one singular category. Very few of the examples you brought up have anything to do with QA.
 
Lugia667 said:
this is borderline concern trolling imo
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Exactly. Most of those games are a 7 at worst. How is that in any way indicative of a quality assurance issue? Just because some people in enthusiast circles don't like them?

The only one I can understand is Pokemon, but that's less of a quality issue and more of a "Gamefreak has to meet a hard deadline" problem.
 
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No...? What the hell? Some bizarre framing in here just to dunk on games you don't like

Strikers was panned due to being very light on content. It very closely follows the release model that Nintendo themselves pioneered with Splatoon and Mario Maker; if anything, I'd guess this is entirely the fault of Nintendo's oversight. They probably pushed this game (and others) to adopt this content rollout plan.

Fire Emblem Engage admittedly did not align with what the majority wanted, but to pretend it's a badly made game is ridiculous. Bad writing, sure. But it's extremely polished, a step up graphically, and features some of the best strategic gameplay in the entire franchise. Even detractors recognize these qualities.

You even include Origami King, which, against my better judgment, I'm going to point out is a very well made game that simply does not match what some vocal fans of the older entries wanted.

That's the theme here, really. Just some borderline conspiracy nonsense trying to rationalize why these games you don't like are bad and part of a systemic issue. While ignoring EPD stinkers such as Amiibo Festival and 1-2-Switch, which are worse than anything you've listed here

EDIT: Hmm Amiibo Festival might've not been developed in-house? Not sure. Whatever, there's plenty of other examples, like Wii Music or what have you
 
Party Sklar said:
Everything that is bad with Mario Strikers Battle League is arguably not NLG's fault but Nintendo's. The core gameplay is great, it's a beautiful game with beautiful animations. The only issue is lack of content, and that's a problem on a lot of other Nintendo games that weren't made by NLG. It's a publishing strategy, not a partner having a quality assurance issue.
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I've sat on this a while after doing some Uni work for marketing and Customer Relationship Management, and I've honestly come to the idea that Nintendo's primary issue when it comes to the Mario Sports titles is that Nintendo is kinda aware they don't have to try as hard for those titles specifically. There is a degree of "expected standards" with a lot more of the hardcore titles. Basically all of them feel like Nintendo and the respective studio trying very hard to make the best game possible because the customer in-turn expects a good game.

Mario Sports however is more aimed towards a casual audience and I honestly think Nintendo is aware of how little they need to try with them. It honestly feels like "Let's make a low-effort title that's made 'complete' with post-launch content and we'll abandon the game if the game doesn't continue to sell well". I think this is single-handedly the worst aspect of the Switch generation. I'm so annoyed about Nintendo's attitude to post-launch updates, even to games that are generally content complete like Mario Maker 2, Splatoon 2 and 3, Animal Crossing New Horizons and so on. I think that's the issue with those kinds of titles.


Anyway, specific to @Truno's post, I wholeheartedly disagree with Fire Emblem Engage's inclusion on this list. I do agree the story and writing is egrigiously terrible, but basically all of the rest of the game is incredibly well-made. It was a different direction that didn't pan out. In regards to Warioware... it's fucking Warioware, that entire series is filled with "good" reviews (83 for Smooth Moves Metacritic) or mediocre of bad reviews. Move It! and Get It Together were only just rated lower than Warioware Gold, which is a damn good game.

Idk, I just think the entire foundation for this post is sorta flimsy overall. You aren't wrong overall and some specific franchises and companies really need to get their shit together in regards to the quality of their releases, but it's not something I overall agree with, especially since companies like HAL, Techmo Koei, Bandai Namco and Platinum Games have been doing very well for themselves in regards to the quality of their second-party offerings..
 
Truno said:
And then there are other cases such as Retro Studios where they haven't been able to produce a new original title in over a decade.
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That they would rather go a decade without a new release rather than release a game that was any less than a masterpiece speaks to how HIGH their quality assurance is, not the opposite.
 
TheSpaceBetween said:
That they would rather go a decade without a new release rather than release a game that was any less than a masterpiece speaks to how HIGH their quality assurance is, not the opposite.
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It does show a level of mismanagement though. Ultimately choosing not to release garbage is good, but not releasing anything isn't great for the confidence boost.

But the fact they are expanding and regularly looking for new hires is a good sign that they aren't just burning out their devs and needlessly burning money.

...Well they could be burning money for all we know. But I'd like to hope they've been making use of the lessons over the years of silence.
 
TheSpaceBetween said:
That they would rather go a decade without a new release rather than release a game that was any less than a masterpiece speaks to how HIGH their quality assurance is, not the opposite.
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Ehhh probably not? Sidestepping the fact that quality assurance is once again the wrong term to use here, it sounds more like Retro has experienced a lot of internal turmoil over the years. Nintendo canceled a bunch of their games when they bought them for example. There's a line between "high standards" and "something went wrong", and going a decade between releases has long since crossed it. They'll probably bounce back, I'm sure Prime 4 will be good, but they clearly went through some issues this past generation. Lots of other studios maintain a steady clip of bangers
 
As others have stated, some of the issues you've stated are not to do with "quality assurance". More glaringly is Engage, which I can tell you didn't like*; it just has a different focus, excelling in areas that Three Houses didn't, but falling behind in other areas.

Likewise, with WarioWare: Move It! - a game I will admit, I didn't love as much as I wanted to - I wouldn't claim there is a "quality assurance" issue; the game is about on par with other WarioWare games in other aspects, minus some wider single-player content: it just seems that WarioWare is a tad tired now.

*(I'm not into FE, but I'm aware of the discourse arouund the game.)
 
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Lord Azrael said:
Ehhh probably not? Sidestepping the fact that quality assurance is once again the wrong term to use here, it sounds more like Retro has experienced a lot of internal turmoil over the years. Nintendo canceled a bunch of their games when they bought them for example. There's a line between "high standards" and "something went wrong", and going a decade between releases has long since crossed it. They'll probably bounce back, I'm sure Prime 4 will be good, but they clearly went through some issues this past generation. Lots of other studios maintain a steady clip of bangers
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I think the Retro situation, while peculiar, isn't all that outlandish. We know of one specific new IP title they worked on after Tropical Freeze that was scrapped, and then they took over/restarted MP4 development while they were at some stage of working on at least a remaster of MP1.

That Metroid Prime 4 has gone this long without a proper public update only draws concern because of the unusual circumstances outside of Retro's control. (Ex: The logo teaser trailer, Nintendo being public about the original project being scrapped.)
 
But Scarlet and Violet and 2 of the best games in the series and Engage is better than Three Houses so I don't understand the post I guess
 
Management?

Arguably. It's hard to say with how hush hush Nintendo has been. They've mismanaged the direction of the Mario sports games for a while by insisting their devs push out the games in bare bones states only to become content complete.

Arguably, this worked out in Favor of Aces, and Super Rush. Both are now very content complete games. Main problem for Super Rush is that it messed up one of the fundamentals of Golf games since the beginning, so the whole core is ROTTEN.

Battle League, it's hard to say how much it was impacted by the Pandemic development, and if Nintendo decided it was better to cut their losses. It's the only one of these games that never got to that content complete state Aces and Super Rush got. Mechanically it's good.
 
Hailinel said:
I think the Retro situation, while peculiar, isn't all that outlandish. We know of one specific new IP title they worked on after Tropical Freeze that was scrapped, and then they took over/restarted MP4 development while they were at some stage of working on at least a remaster of MP1.

That Metroid Prime 4 has gone this long without a proper public update only draws concern because of the unusual circumstances outside of Retro's control. (Ex: The logo teaser trailer, Nintendo being public about the original project being scrapped.)
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Yeah, I'm not putting Prime 4's situation on them or anything. They only got it five years ago, after the reboot. Though to be fair five years is also a long time to hear nothing; if it's still not shown to us by the time Switch 2 is revealed, at that point I think it will be fair to worry again.

I guess the bigger "issue" is that they're a smaller studio that only works on one new game at a time seemingly. So if one project deep into development gets canceled, it puts a huge gap in their release schedule. I guess other studios mask this better by always having several projects in the pipeline
 
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All of this reads "Why don't games confrom to what I want" because I enjoyed the vast majority of the games you say are universally hated.

Even Engage, which I place lower than Three Houses for me, had something to enjoy. Trying to say that every game needs to follow the critics and fans opinions is a great way for your game to languish and flop.
 
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Truno said:
It's a very common practice for developers who're working on new games to take into consideration feedback from fans and critics alike of previous works in order to deliver the best experience possible. However, it seems that most of Nintendo’s partners and subsidiaries avoid this.

Take Next Level Games, for example. They launched Luigi's Mansion 3, a game lauded by critics and fans alike. It was meant with incredible success which was assuredly one of the factors that led to them being acquired by Nintendo. Despite this success, they went on to develop Mario Strikers Battle League, a game that was met with mixed to negative reception from fans and critics, earning it the worst score in the Strikers series and the worst score for a Mario Sports title on Nintendo Switch. It was scene as a big step pack from Charged and the original title.

Furthermore, look at Intelligent Systems. They launched Fire Emblem Three Houses, one of the highest rated and the best selling Fire Emblem game. Despite this, they shifted from the design aspects of Three Houses that were lauded by critics and fans in order to produce Fire Emblem Engage. Engage was met with mixed response by fans and critics. This led to it selling considerably less than 3H. The same could be said for the reception from fans and critics to Wario Ware Move It and Get It Toghether! when compared to Gold.

There are more examples to this. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet (the worst rated mainline Pokemon generation by critics and fans as per user scores), Bayonetta 3 (lowest mainline Bayonetta game and the most divisive entry amongst fans), Mario Gold Super Rush (seen as a step down from World Tour by fans and critics alike), Endless Ocean Luminous being panned by critics, etc. There's other cases such as Super Mario Party and The Origami King which, although improved on their predecessors, the reception to the quality of these titles remains mixed. And then there are other cases such as Retro Studios where they haven't been able to produce a new original title in over a decade.

There are outliers to this, such as HAL or Monolith Soft, but the issue persists with most of Nintendo affiliates.

When a brand new Nintendo game is being released by EPD Tokyo or the Zelda team, there’s usually a sense of comfort as there is no doubt that they’ll be able to deliver an enjoyable title. However, for the aforementioned studios, the quality of their products are too inconsistent for them to receive the benefit of the doubt.

What do you think?
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Personally it's kinda hard to say.

Like compare to different company i feel like Nintendo is one of the better managed in the gaming industry, mostly because their output of games and the sheer quality. But there is couple of hiccups, like you mention, with Mario Striker, Bayonetta 3 and Fire emblem engage (despite the game being good in gameplay, but bad in story) Also all the games you mentioned aren't bad, but different or mid and made with a lower budget (except pokemon company)

But with Covid i think they did good, with managing game development and output.

When i think of bad management, i think of Xbox and their output of games and the countless of mediocre, buggy and bad games, like last year we got the smash hit Redfall.

Overall i think it's pretty good, there's some improvement, especially with the Pokemon Company, but Nintendo doesn't manage them.

Laslty it's better than the Wii U management, like we got Amibo festival and countless of mediocre games, with the exception of a couple one.
 
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No, i'd say this has nothing to do with management. A lot of this is just creatives having a different vision for a game than what the fans want. It is pretty normal to find a few games to be mediocre with a company that publishes as much as Nintendo.
 
I am a little confused about the NLG example. Other than being developed by the same studio, Strikers and Luigi's Mansion don't have all that much in common. What feedback were they supposed to take to heart from LM3 when making Battle League? To make it good? I think they tried to do that!

The FE example makes more sense but I don't think it's as simple as it's painted. In some ways, Engage is based on the feeling among some fans that Three Houses was lacking on the tactical front. It just turns out that's probably a smaller share of the fandom than the portion that likes the more relational elements found all over Three Houses.
 
I don't think so, the problem is actually Nintendo. I think they restrict their partners too much on their own aesthetics and mechanics instead of allowing them to work more freely with their own ideas. It's interesting to notice that most games mentioned here as disappointments are sequels of series/franchises already milked to exhaustion and very difficult to add something new.

Nintendo should allow those partners to work more freely and out of their safe zone, this would help both of them to allow more variety among Nintendo's ecosystem.
 
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Truno said:
It's a very common practice for developers who're working on new games to take into consideration feedback from fans and critics alike of previous works in order to deliver the best experience possible. However, it seems that most of Nintendo’s partners and subsidiaries avoid this.

…

Furthermore, look at Intelligent Systems. They launched Fire Emblem Three Houses, one of the highest rated and the best selling Fire Emblem game. Despite this, they shifted from the design aspects of Three Houses that were lauded by critics and fans in order to produce Fire Emblem Engage. Engage was met with mixed response by fans and critics. This led to it selling considerably less than 3H. The same could be said for the reception from fans and critics to Wario Ware Move It and Get It Toghether! when compared to Gold.

…

What do you think?
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Fire Emblem Engage was literally a fanservice anniversary title, built to appeal to fans who had been following the series forever by including characters dating back to the earlier games in the series from 20-30 years previous, on top of a player avatar who is a literal god. Those characters then overshadowed the new original ones. Hard to say that appealing to series fans wasn’t one of the weaker parts of FE: Engage, whereas its main strong point compared to TH is in its battle engine and more varied scenarios, something that’s down to the battle designers, and feels like it was reacting to criticism of the relatively basic battles of Awakening and TH. Not only that, but development of these games doesn’t only begin after all critical commentary is in for the last one, nor is it always the same internal team.

Personally, I’m more interested in letting studios and professional games developers make the games they think will work, given the varied skillsets in the teams and the vision of the senior creatives within it, rather than putting too much weight in what fans say. Not every title hits the mark, but fans are largely clueless about other pressures on a studio regarding what gets suggested, demanded, greenlit and cut during development.
 
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Personally as good as Retro Studios is and can be, I definitely think they also have problems putting out games. When they are left alone they can’t seem to put out a game, but when they have someone from Nintendo proper guiding them is when we see their potential shine.
 
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Retro Studios and GameFreak seem like the major outliers here (and even GF manages to release games that sell well, they're just of questionable quality). Everything else is more subjective.
 
AngryAlchemist said:
No, i'd say this has nothing to do with management. A lot of this is just creatives having a different vision for a game than what the fans want. It is pretty normal to find a few games to be mediocre with a company that publishes as much as Nintendo.
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Agree entirely with this. Creatives work on these things for years, a significant chunk of their career. Once they are relatively senior, getting their vision down is part of the gig. They are still gonna have a better hit rate than any homogenised ‘fan’ view of things, with more originality to boot. Not all fresh ideas work, but that’s OK, they are still vital in a medium where series are expected to run for decades.
 
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These partners are managed by Nintendo, and in much the same way that Nintendo manages their internal studios. And just like Nintendo's internal studios, they are unusually risk-taking, relative to their fellow Giant Corporate Game Conglomerates.

If these companies have management issues at the level you are talking about, then it's Nintendo's fault.
 
A lot of what's cited in the OP feels more like complaining about creative decisions - like it's making some sort of argument that either management for some strange reason dictated creative decisions like uh, WarioWare doing something different, or arguing that management should be taking more control which is... no.

Honestly citing WarioWare at all here makes it impossible to take any kind of serious thesis from this. I can't fathom fans who look at the Switch WarioWare games and see them as "too different" or disappointing. The core gameplay is rocking.

Mer.Saloon said:
Management?

Arguably. It's hard to say with how hush hush Nintendo has been. They've mismanaged the direction of the Mario sports games for a while by insisting their devs push out the games in bare bones states only to become content complete.

Arguably, this worked out in Favor of Aces, and Super Rush. Both are now very content complete games. Main problem for Super Rush is that it messed up one of the fundamentals of Golf games since the beginning, so the whole core is ROTTEN.

Battle League, it's hard to say how much it was impacted by the Pandemic development, and if Nintendo decided it was better to cut their losses. It's the only one of these games that never got to that content complete state Aces and Super Rush got. Mechanically it's good.
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Is Battle League mechanically good? Quality, for sure, but I got the sense that for people less focused on the content pipeline and more on the hardcore competitive balance, the game was claustrophobic and limiting.
 
Stopdoor said:
Is Battle League mechanically good? Quality, for sure, but I got the sense that for people less focused on the content pipeline and more on the hardcore competitive balance, the game was claustrophobic and limiting.
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It's a different type of balancing from the OG games which throws off people who wanted those to form the baseline. A similar problem to Super Rush, but not as bad because it doesn't utterly betray the whole genre of soccer games.
 
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Eh, the only game I'd call poorly managed that you listed would be Pokémon Scarlet/Violet, which had all its good undermined by a lack of polish, resulting in a game that I'd argue is one of the best entries in the series gaining highly mixed reception due to its technical and performance issues alone. Things that could have been solved on a managerial level by better planning or an increase in development time.

The other games you list mostly read as creative choices or executive mandates that got mixed critical and fan reception, and even then, not enough to really call them failures.

Not sure what's going on with Retro giving what happened with that failed post-Tropical Freeze project, but they got Metroid Prime Remastered out the door, so I think they're fine at the moment.
 
Considering how messed up the industry is using the word "Management issues" for a comparison of the metascore of these studios output is a bit tone deaf.

As people have said, a lot of these projects were in development either during the pandemic, concurrent or the studio simply wanted to try something. Nothing to deep there.
 
Let's see
  1. Internal teams are making less games than ever before, console/handheld hardware consolidation done specifically to prevent droughts has been an utter failure.
  2. Same engine sequels like TOTK are taking 6 years to create when the whole point of sequels like it are faster turn around with the reuse.
  3. 3D Mario team hasn't put out a major game for 7+ years now. Even in the best case scenario and they have a new game coming this year, 7 years between titles is crazy!
  4. Gamefreak. Nuff said.
  5. Mario Sports games are in the dumpster because of likely of bad managerial decisions regarding DLC.
  6. Camelot being stuck in sport games hell for over 15 years
  7. Allowing NST to be stuck in Mario Vs DK hell until just last year. They should have been nerfed up and more directly managed after the Project HAMMER mess, Nintendo has room to expand with Western developers
  8. Letting studios like Alpha Dream and Skip Ltd die after greenlighting bad projects (Ziplash, too late 3DS remakes of M&L games)
  9. Implementing the Mario IP mandate and tripling down on the new Paper Mario formula in the face of explicit and overt criticism
  10. Prime 4 was completely mismanaged to the point of rebooting the entire project.
  11. Retro Studios going 10 years between new releases, post TF game getting mismanaged and cancelled as a result. Also somehow taking 5+ years to make a Metroid Prime 4 with zero to show for it.
I would say so in my opinion!
 
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Ricimer said:
  1. Internal teams are making less games than ever before, console/handheld hardware consolidation done specifically to prevent droughts has been an utter failure.
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AngryAlchemist said:
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Wii U and 3DS combined, Wii and DS combined, etc. had more first party games than the Switch year to year. Nintendo isn't created smaller handheld like projects anymore with shorter development times, they're allowing bloated projects like TOTK to take 6 years instead. That's mismanagement in my opinion, but I understand why others would feel differently! The quality of the 1st party games on the Switch has been phenomenal.
 
Ricimer said:
Wii U and 3DS combined, Wii and DS combined, etc. had more first party games than the Switch year to year. Nintendo isn't created smaller handheld like projects anymore with shorter development times, they're allowing bloated projects like TOTK to take 6 years instead. That's mismanagement in my opinion, but I understand why others would feel differently! The quality of the 1st party games on the Switch has been phenomenal.
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What droughts?

Also, big games take a long time to make. Especially in the modern HD era.
 
Hailinel said:
What droughts?

Also, big games take a long time to make. Especially in the modern HD era.
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2018, 2020, 2024, have all had pretty bad first party software droughts.

Games can take longer to make in general but you can also greenlight smaller, handheld style projects with purposefully smaller scopes and smaller development times. They have done this to some extent with titles like Endless Ocean, but not nearly enough.
 
Ricimer said:
2018, 2020, 2024, have all had pretty bad first party software droughts.

Games can take longer to make in general but you can also greenlight smaller, handheld style projects with purposefully smaller scopes and smaller development times. They have done this to some extent with titles like Endless Ocean, but not nearly enough.
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Those weren't drought years. Especially not compared to the Wii U era. And there was something else kinda big that happened in 2020 that explains the entirety of that year from March onward.
 
Ricimer said:
Let's see
  1. Internal teams are making less games than ever before, console/handheld hardware consolidation done specifically to prevent droughts has been an utter failure.
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I think your definition of ‘drought’ is very different to mine. There’s also a very different context between games development for previous non-HD platforms and games development in 2024. Furthermore, these days why would they put out smaller games when the indie scene is way, way more hotly contested than anything else these days, to the point where visability for the tons of quality indies is a real problem.
 
Ricimer said:
2018, 2020, 2024, have all had pretty bad first party software droughts.

Games can take longer to make in general but you can also greenlight smaller, handheld style projects with purposefully smaller scopes and smaller development times. They have done this to some extent with titles like Endless Ocean, but not nearly enough.
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Eh, 2024 is the only year imo where you can argue any genuine drought.
 
PixelKnight said:
I think your definition of ‘drought’ is very different to mine. There’s also a very different context between games development for previous non-HD platforms and games development in 2024. Furthermore, these days why would they put out smaller games when the indie scene is way, way more hotly contested than anything else these days, to the point where visability for the tons of quality indies is a real problem.
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Developing for HD systems does not inherently mean development time increases too. You can make smaller projects with smaller development times. Nintendo just aren't making smaller games as much anymore since the 3DS died, which is a shame. Handheld franchises like 2D Zelda, Mario & Luigi, Rhythm Heaven, etc. falling by the wayside is sad.
 
Cheetah6442 said:
Eh, 2024 is the only year imo where you can argue any genuine drought.
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2020 was even worse than this year. Understandably with COVID, but even then that year was going to be weaker no matter what. 2018 was also really bad if you remove all the Wii U ports.
 
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