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Discussion How does Nintendo do it? (polished next level gameplay)

Kreese

Kreese

Koopa
Banned
I can't say I like the direction Nintendo generally goes with family friendly games, but by great Ceasar's ghost when they bring it, do they ever bring it. BOTW and Dread were absolute revelations. Peerless in terms of polish and gameplay imo. Not to discredit Mercury Steam's hard work, but you can just feel Nintendo EPD shining though in their role with co-development.

Nintendo are like the Last Samurai, the brave 300. A relatively smaller company that has an immense foothold in this giant industry. They can make even lesser budget titles shine brighter and sell more than games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, polished to perfection, with nigh a bug or any jankyness in sight.

TLDR: Nintendo games just feel better. The Nintendo difference ect.
 
Nintendo has some principals which they follow since their early days, when they made toys or started with videogames.
Their clear focus on Gameplay, where for example, controls and interactions in a gameworld need to feel consitent and natural throughout.
Marios Jump for example. How you can combine the duck with the jump, to make a ground pound. Or delay the jump from the duck to make a long jump.
How they introduced the FLUDD for a game full of paint and a tropical island because that water made them think about summer.
Or that Luigis Mansion basically is a game about a vacuum cleaner, because you interact almost only with the world with your poltergust.
Heck, Splatoons aesthetic came to be, because the devs thought about graffity when testing their game.

And that's usually how they tackle things. A Form Follows funcion principle with an emphasis on "Why do it, if it doesn't bring anything new to the table?".
Plus Nintendo is in a position to take their time, so that they can polish their games, don't need to rush it and usually they are very proud of what they have archieved.

(It also helps, that unlike many studios, they don't have a constant flow of people leaving, which helps young talent, often with no gaming experience, to consult guys like Miyamoto and Co. and learn from them)
 
It's their difference.

Its where they focus good part of they R&D. They are not the best at graphics, nor telling emotional stories.

They are good in making fun games with awesome gameplays. And they focus on this.
 
They have a pretty high hit ratio, but its not like they've never released garbage or janky games before. There are plenty of companies that have put out games at or above the nintendo average. Though I will admit Nintendo games at their best have a certain something all their own that I love, but so does say, Sega at their best.
 
Good management/producers who outline realistic targets that the dev team can work with. Talented designers and programmers who all probably play a lot of video games themselves and know what works and what doesn't. I'm guessing their QA is pretty talented too (and get listened to).
 
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Phantoon said:
Are there? Remember we're talking about minute to minute gamefeel here. Capcom come pretty close. Who else?
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More than I could name. Atlus, Sega, Capcom, Konami, Sony, any number of indie devs, ect. Not that all these companies have kept it together.
 
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But that's part of the whole point. Nintendo have done it for 35 years plus, and still do it. Sega used to be pretty great at it, but their output isn't anywhere near now. Konami make very few games. Sony don't make the type of games which emphasise gamefeel. Atlus mainly make RPGs, so gamefeel isn't a thing there really. Indie Devs are great, but don't have the output. Shovel Knight is awesome, but that's four games in what, ten years?

That leaves Capcom, as I said. And I can't say enough about how great Capcom are.
 
Guaraná said:
It's their difference.

Its where they focus good part of they R&D. They are not the best at graphics, nor telling emotional stories.

They are good in making fun games with awesome gameplays. And they focus on this.
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Yes, I agree
They can somehiw sometime have smaller scope, but more refined gameplay
 
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Phantoon said:
But that's part of the whole point. Nintendo have done it for 35 years plus, and still do it. Sega used to be pretty great at it, but their output isn't anywhere near now. Konami make very few games. Sony don't make the type of games which emphasise gamefeel. Atlus mainly make RPGs, so gamefeel isn't a thing there really. Indie Devs are great, but don't have the output. Shovel Knight is awesome, but that's four games in what, ten years?

That leaves Capcom, as I said. And I can't say enough about how great Capcom are.
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Atlus RPGs feel great, and I'd argue Sega has been pretty on the ball. Also, Nintendo has had plenty of ups and downs, and have released at least one bad game every year they've been in the business. They're one of the best, but plenty of other people have done it as good and better.
 
Phosphorescent Skeleton said:
Nintendo has had plenty of ups and downs, and have released at least one bad game every year they've been in the business.
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One, that's extremely arguable and two, that's just statistics. Few companies release as many games as Nintendo. Who release as many bangers?

What's Sega released recently that feels incredible? I can think of Sonic Mania and Streets of Rage 4. There was a Yakuza re release, I guess?

Personally, as good as an RPG may be unless it's action heavy it doesn't "feel good" in the way we're discussing here at all.

I'm not arguing to be contrary, I'd love more games that felt as good as, say, Metroid Dread. If there are some I don't know about I want to play them.
 
I won't try to make an elaborate answer.
I'm just here to say it's THAT Nintendo Difference that's made me a Nintendo fan for the past 35 years.
To me, most of the games (and it's a euphemism) made by other publishers just feel... empty from an enjoyment perspective.
One can try to find answers trying to explain this difference, but at the end of the day, it's just something I viscerally feel...
 
Phantoon said:
One, that's extremely arguable and two, that's just statistics. Few companies release as many games as Nintendo. Who release as many bangers?

What's Sega released recently that feels incredible? I can think of Sonic Mania and Streets of Rage 4. There was a Yakuza re release, I guess?

Personally, as good as an RPG may be unless it's action heavy it doesn't "feel good" in the way we're discussing here at all.

I'm not arguing to be contrary, I'd love more games that felt as good as, say, Metroid Dread. If there are some I don't know about I want to play them.
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I guess that, even though I'm a big nintendo fan, I just don't feel that their great games are different from great games made by other companies, nor do I think that nintendo makes only great games. Their first party releases run gamut for gold to garbage.
 
They are masters at their craft.

They were a toy company and, ultimately, still are. They don't like to call their videogames art because, in their mind, they're still making toys. Gameplay first, everything else later. It's what keeps me being a Nintendo fan, their games, experimental or not, are polished as fuck, and they have their priorities straight.
 
Its simple, they know how. Been around for a long time and their company ethos/culture clearly translated well to new generations of developers, probably due to low turnover. Also, it helps that they've primarly always been focused on home consoles/handhelds vs arcade focused like sega and other older companies, that also bled a lot of talent through the years.
 
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Reinhard Schneider said:
They are masters at their craft.

They were a toy company and, ultimately, still are. They don't like to call their videogames art because, in their mind, they're still making toys. Gameplay first, everything else later. It's what keeps me being a Nintendo fan, their games, experimental or not, are polished as fuck, and they have their priorities straight.
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Yeah. I think this is the answer. They put play above everything because of their history.
 
Phosphorescent Skeleton said:
I guess that, even though I'm a big nintendo fan, I just don't feel that their great games are different from great games made by other companies, nor do I think that nintendo makes only great games. Their first party releases run gamut for gold to garbage.
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Sure they don't always make bangers, but that applies to everyone. But mostly those games that aren't that great are smaller titles and I would bet my ass, that they use these games to teach their junior staff to just work on soethign and gain experience. Because Nintendo mostly hires young talent fresh from universities and teaches them their way.
And when Ninendo chooses to make a AAA game, it is just a wonderful blend of Gameplay, Controls, Optics and little bit of story. For example I still have to see a 3D platformer as good as Mario, something that comes close to the dungeon design of a proper Zelda. If they choose to, they are the benchmark in their regards. Games can be so much and others wanna tell a story, utilize an existing IP or whatever and when I see games like God of War then man, there are great devs out there that can do incredibl stuff if you let them, but how many can claim to have this output over this amount of time with always bringing out some best of the gen contenders since the 80s?
 
Guaraná said:
It's their difference.

Its where they focus good part of they R&D. They are not the best at graphics, nor telling emotional stories.

They are good in making fun games with awesome gameplays. And they focus on this.
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As far as graphics go, from an artistic standpoint they're are the best of the best.
Not telling Hollywood stories and outputing teraflops of graphics is a choice very carefully thought through that's not the result of any incompetence.
But if by "They are not the best at [...]" you mean "Their games are not the best at [...]" comparatively with the competition, then I have nothing to add !!
 
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Mazzle said:
Nintendo has some principals which they follow since their early days, when they made toys or started with videogames.
Their clear focus on Gameplay, where for example, controls and interactions in a gameworld need to feel consitent and natural throughout.
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One of the things I've seen come up during interviews, is that they care a lot about new player experience too. Sometimes they go a bit overboard, but Nintendo's designers consistently as a whole makes a conscious choice to prioritize that people are eased into their games, don't get frustrated, have a good time, and hopefully finish the game.

Which I think is something people often forget, because it's easy to get annoyed when you're drowning in tutorials and you've been playing games for 10+ years, but, as I heard pointed out a long time ago on a podcast, it's always going to be someone's first Mario or Zelda game. And making sure newcomers have a pleasant experience is just as, if not more, important as the hardened veterans.
 
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To me the Nintendo difference is basically intuition.
It's like they create and then add in the tinker time, so that when it comes to player gameplay, you can tinker and toy with the world they've built.

One of my biggest pet peeves is excessive invisible walling in of game worlds. It's why I bounced so hard off Horizon Zero Dawn.
There's no tinker or experiment to the game, except for the fights and while that's cool, it's not peerless game design imo.
Think of how crazy the gravity gun was in Half-life, and the sheer joy you had learning and playing with it in the game.
Both for fighting and just plain ingame interactions.

Too many games have let me down when I ask myself "I wonder what will happen if I use this here.....?" and nothing different occurs.
For Nintendo's best games, the magic happens in the small things, the stuff so many other developers would either ignore, just miss or not even occur to them.

Kojima is similar in the intuitive gameplay manner, as is Ueda imo.
 
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One of Nintendo's advantages compared to other publishers is the low turnover of staff. Veteran staff perform better and a team of them are more efficient than a team that is constantly changed members. When you have high turnover, you spend more time recruiting and bringing new hires up to speed and less time helping the staff that you already have.
 
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Kreese said:
I can't say I like the direction Nintendo generally goes with family friendly games, but by great Ceasar's ghost when they bring it, do they ever bring it. BOTW and Dread were absolute revelations. Peerless in terms of polish and gameplay imo. Not to discredit Mercury Steam's hard work, but you can just feel Nintendo EPD shining though in their role with co-development.

Nintendo are like the Last Samurai, the brave 300. A relatively smaller company that has an immense foothold in this giant industry. They can make even lesser budget titles shine brighter and sell more than games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, polished to perfection, with nigh a bug or any jankyness in sight.

TLDR: Nintendo games just feel better. The Nintendo difference ect.
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Yes there is dread but there are also blunders like other m, federation force, animal crossing amibo festival, starfox zero etc.... Every compony has great games and blunders. But I do agree that nintendo's high points are pretty damn great and even genre defining.
 
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I'd say it comes down to more time spent on the game's core aspects to see what works and doesn't before launch or expanding into a full game
 
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I’m always a huge fan of Nintendo’s “gameplay first” approach to game design. It’s why I stick with them every gen and why I fell off certain platforms / companies (such as Sony’s story / presentation first approach).
 
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I believe they prioritize that level of polish because it's what they are known for as a company and is a big part of their identity.

Nintendo games are still very often rushed out the door and unfinished. But they don't skimp on presentation, ever. So what we end up with sometimes are games that look, sound, and feel amazing but are severely lacking in content or direction.
 
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It turns out, keeping your employees happy and healthy, creates better products, and attracts more talent. For example, a good amount of employees that worked in Sonic Generations and Lost World, ended up working at Nintendo in Mario Odyssey. Have you thought how weird it was, Mario could roll as a ball down a hill with physics. Yeah its likely because of that. Nintendo even has a lot of early Capcom blood too, with a lot of Capcom's Zelda team working within the company. And don't even get started with Konami.

Nintendo has carefully expanded and cultivates talent too, by giving games the time that they need. Retro Studios, Monolithsoft, Next Level Games, and even Mercury Steam were a mess until Nintendo stepped in. Even with how disfunctional those studios were, Nintendo had them create instant classics, because they knew that games took time. They provided solid direction, and actual, really realistic deadlines.
 
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I think it's that all Nintendo games should be fun to play and that they focus on quality over quantity and if a games is best as a 10 hour game they don't put in filler content to get it to be a 20 hour game. The longer and bigger games we often get is a huge problem for me with the gaming industry.
 
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I guess they put an enormous emphasis on QA.

QA is a position infamous for its working conditions, and I can imagine that a QA team is at its best if it's treated with good conditions.

Playing one of those S-tier Nintendo games like BotW, Odyssey or AC:NH, you can really envision a motivated QA staff putting all their heart into finding bugs and providing feedback in order for the team to create an incredibly polished end product.
 
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There's no magic here. It's simply a different focus. They focus on movement and gamefeel first and foremost, at the "expense" of other stuff. Some other companies simply focus more on story, or world, or graphics, or whatever else, at the "expense" of movement and gamefeel. But there are certainly great games out there that excel at multiple things, and match Nintendo's peak. And Nintendo definitely does not have a perfect track record either.

So like I said, it's not like there's any intangible "Nintendo magic". It's simply a different approach to game design and different priorities, and these resonate with certain people more, just like a compelling narrative resonates with others more. It permeates most of their games, even out to their external partners, because Nintendo has a pretty heavy editorial hand. They work closely with partners and offer lots of feedback along the way, and will even axe projects when they don't meet their standard of quality.

They're also not afraid of cutting content or delaying games, which is a key difference. They'd rather focus on polishing what's there to its utmost peak instead of shoving in as much as they can. But they still release many games with both quality and quantity obviously, and that's because of the latter point. They give games the time they need, both to avoid crunch and to land on a polished product. It's part of their brand, so they won't sacrifice this lightly.

But let's be careful with this kind of rhetoric. When we say stuff like "Nintendo magic" or "intuition" or "Nintendo difference" or what have you, instead of trying to analyze from a practical or more objective perspective, we make it sound like they're just better, rather than it just being a deliberate choice of different priorities/principles, with their own pros and cons. This kind of dialog can sound quite fanboyish from the outside. We don't want to drive away discussion of other games, many of which are just as good as Nintendo's best.
 
That's what sets them apart. Just making games fun to play. BOTW has the most hours played for me in an open world game, just cause they have the "extra" things that bring a smile to you face.

Maro Odyssey was just flat out fun. Not the best game, but it just brought a smile to my face everytime I finished a level.
 
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Lord Azrael said:
There's no magic here. It's simply a different focus. They focus on movement and gamefeel first and foremost, at the "expense" of other stuff. Some other companies simply focus more on story, or world, or graphics, or whatever else, at the "expense" of movement and gamefeel. But there are certainly great games out there that excel at multiple things, and match Nintendo's peak. And Nintendo definitely does not have a perfect track record either.

So like I said, it's not like there's any intangible "Nintendo magic". It's simply a different approach to game design and different priorities, and these resonate with certain people more, just like a compelling narrative resonates with others more. It permeates most of their games, even out to their external partners, because Nintendo has a pretty heavy editorial hand. They work closely with partners and offer lots of feedback along the way, and will even axe projects when they don't meet their standard of quality.

They're also not afraid of cutting content or delaying games, which is a key difference. They'd rather focus on polishing what's there to its utmost peak instead of shoving in as much as they can. But they still release many games with both quality and quantity obviously, and that's because of the latter point. They give games the time they need, both to avoid crunch and to land on a polished product. It's part of their brand, so they won't sacrifice this lightly.

But let's be careful with this kind of rhetoric. When we say stuff like "Nintendo magic" or "intuition" or "Nintendo difference" or what have you, instead of trying to analyze from a practical or more objective perspective, we make it sound like they're just better, rather than it just being a deliberate choice of different priorities/principles, with their own pros and cons. This kind of dialog can sound quite fanboyish from the outside. We don't want to drive away discussion of other games, many of which are just as good as Nintendo's best.
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I mean, it's my opinion that Nintendo's best games are a cut above the other companies best, and I've played a lot of damn games. I'm sure other companies would love to be able to sell games at full price for years on end, not have to spend as much making them, and churn the same level of critical acclaim and sales as Nintendo do but they can't. I don't think BOTW or Dread are easy kinds of games to pull off either or else everyone would be making them, and I do think Nintendo has the best developers. Actually, I remember reading the criteria to even become a developer at Nintendo is nearly as stringent as getting a job at NASA. Whether it be older games like Wave Race 64, Mario 64 ect. Nintendo games have a level of mechanical depth and polish I can't find elsewhere. This is my opinion and we should be able to freely express our opinions.
 
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This explains it best -



The guy does incredible videos overall.
 
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Because they are simply the best in their top offerings. No other company comes close. And the market clearly agrees given that Nintendo's games keep selling for years and years at full price while every other company needs to half the price six months in.
 
Kreese said:
I mean, it's my opinion that Nintendo's best games are a cut above the other companies best, and I've played a lot of damn games. I'm sure other companies would love to be able to sell games at full price for years on end, not have to spend as much making them, and churn the same level of critical acclaim and sales as Nintendo do but they can't. I don't think BOTW or Dread are easy kinds of games to pull off either or else everyone would be making them, and I do think Nintendo has the best developers. Actually, I remember reading the criteria to even become a developer at Nintendo is nearly as stringent as getting a job at NASA. Whether it be older games like Wave Race 64, Mario 64 ect. Nintendo games have a level of mechanical depth and polish I can't find elsewhere. This is my opinion and we should be able to freely express our opinions.
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I'm certainly not trying to shut anyone down. But we can express our opinions without taking shots at other companies. Nintendo are some of the best in the biz but it's not like every single one of their games is a BotW or Odyssey 97 meta-score, 20m+ seller tier success. They release plenty of unremarkable or bad games too. Metroid Dread, while great, doesn't necessarily stand head and shoulders above something like Hollow Knight for example. And I'm personally of the opinion that games like Shovel Knight and Celeste trounce any EPD-developed 2D platformers, including on the gamefeel front. Different people have different tastes.

Obviously Nintendo deserve praise. Others might match or exceed them from time to time, but not at anywhere near close to the volume or consistency. They're still my favorite publisher by far. But it's because their values and approach align with my preferences, not because they're "just better", or wizards, or as strict at hiring as NASA is (...)

This kind of talk is what makes it uncomfortable for Nintendo fans to post on other parts of the internet, and I simply don't want to see the same thing happen here but the other way around. That's all.
 
Lord Azrael said:
Obviously Nintendo deserve praise. Others might match or exceed them from time to time, but not at anywhere near close to the volume or consistency. They're still my favorite publisher by far. But it's because their values and approach align with my preferences, not because they're "just better", or as strict at hiring as NASA is (...)

This kind of talk is what makes it uncomfortable for Nintendo fans to post on other parts of the internet, and I simply don't want to see the same thing happen here but the other way around. That's all.
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I think it's ridiculous that Nintendo fans should have to feel uncomfortable to post anywhere on the internet. The reality is the internet heavily skews Sony and this is just a symptom of that. We should be able to be as loud as proud about the games we like as anyone.
 
When they hit, they hit hard. Nintendo is very good at coming up with mechanics and scenarios that I never thought of and didn't know I wanted. The runes in Breath of the Wild are a great example. Intuitive and fun to use, and with enough depth that, when mastered, allow for some insane and rewarding chain reactions.
 
Mario Club (their game testing unit) is well known for being the best at finding bugs and is no doubt a huge asset in achieving that level of polish.

Being the best doesn't mean being perfect. Some bugs will inevitably slip through.
 
I can't possibly be as elaborate as some of you in my answer. In my opinion it's because they put gameplay first. It's a fundamental difference if you try to make a game look and feel as realistic as possible or if you try to make a game look and feel as fun as possible.
 
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evilmonkey said:
Mario Club (their game testing unit) is well known for being the best at finding bugs and is no doubt a huge asset in achieving that level of polish.
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I think that's a little unfair to testers elsewhere. The vast majority of bugs are found during development at any company. It's just a matter of prioritizing them. But most publishers don't have the development culture of Nintendo, and won't delay at the expense of profit.
 
There's an interview with Guillermo del Toro where he says that he doesn't see himself as a film director, but as a storyteller. He mentions that one of the reasons he started making a game with Kojima was that he wanted to learn new ways of telling a story and become better at his trade. He also wants to write a book someday for the same reason.

In the game industry, the developers with more varied experience are the usually most interesting. Developers like those at Capcom and Sega have a broader perspective of what games can be, because they acquired a lot of precious (and lost) knowledge from making arcade games, like how to make a game control well or how to have a high skill ceiling. Sega even made hardware, which also gave them invaluable experience.

Nintendo has dipped its feet into any form of entertainment imaginable, from the early days of arcade games and toys, to weirder stuff like virtual pets and edutainment. A Nintendo creative, like Koizumi or Miyamoto, have studied the concept of 'fun' in much more perspectives than the average industry worker. I think the development of SMB3 is a great example of how the developers incorporated ideas from other mediums, like board games, into the design of the game.
 
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I like most platforms - even if Nintendo is the best for me personally.

And options are great for everyone. Take the SteamDeck - I plan on getting one because I love handheld gaming and it’s pretty cool. But I see so many people online comment “bye Nintendo” or “Nintendo is finished” and I’m like… why? Why do people want another company to fail or go away? Not to mention they’re two different products two different aims. I don’t get people.

Or the outdated hardware comments and how it’s anti consumer. That one boggles my kind. One, no shit. It came out in 2017. It’s not a PC. Tech gets outdated fast. And two, it keeps their consoles affordable for most of us. The Switch starts at 200 bucks. That’s one thing people don’t get. I don’t have a PS5 because I just cannot put down 500 bucks for it. 600 if I get one game. I just can’t. My daughter wanted a Switch for Christmas. Okay, that’s your yearly big gift. 200 bucks. People dismiss affordability and it comes off as elitist.
 
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I'm not a game dev but I've worked as a software developer in the past.

There are a lot of factors that make the difference in software companies, but mainly (from my experience anyway):

  • Clearly defined roles in teams (everyone knows what they should be doing).
  • Standardized practices across the company (those folks at networking won't come with a weird ass hacked together solution incompatible with what other teams are doing be cause everyone follows the same guidelines.
  • Extensive documentation (so it is used as a reference on what to do, or what to NOT do).
  • Culture (everyone feels like they're contributing to the same cause for the benefit of the team).
  • The right tools for the job (ask those folks using Frostbite at EA for anything not Battlefield how they're doing).
From what we know about Nintendo, they check all of these boxes. But what puts them over the top is the complete trust the company puts on its designers, who in turn check all of these boxes. For example, Miyamoto's stroke of genius of making Mario in SM64 feel good to control carried most of the game, given that it had relatively simple graphical designs (helped by Nintendo's art direction which is usually on point), and pretty much that style of controlling a character has been carried over to countless games.

On top of that, unique to Nintendo is Gunpei Yokoi's 'lateral thinking of withered technology', which still influences Nintendo today and probably will never go away. Nintendo has learned that they do not need to have state of the art machines anymore, because they can work around 'old' technology by innovating in the gameplay department.

That has its pros and cons of course. If anyone expects Nintendo to come up with a TLOU 2 or RDR2 tier production well, they should be taking a seat because it probably will never happen.
 
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They do it because they put a lot of emphasis on the gameplay in a way even great developers tend not to. The only developer that comes close to them in this regard is Capcom (who I honestly think make better games, even if Nintendo is slightly more consistent with game feel). Konami used to, kind of. I think the controls of the Castlevania games, especially the Classicvania games, can be a bit underrated, in the sense that things like knockback are so universally considered annoying, but there is actually a lot of thought and attention to detail put into the character's strengths and limitations. Even Konami's most pretentious games were quite gamey in the past. Silent Hill 1 actually has smoother more action-oriented controls than Resident Evil, for example (for some reason the SH team just got terrible at game feel with 2 onwards, though, still a great game).
 
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Lord Azrael said:
I think that's a little unfair to testers elsewhere. The vast majority of bugs are found during development at any company. It's just a matter of prioritizing them. But most publishers don't have the development culture of Nintendo, and won't delay at the expense of profit.
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I didn't mean to call out other testers at all, but the Mario Club unit has some seriously skilled testers. Just look at this to give you an idea:



That said, it's true that the dev teams also prioritize fixing these bugs.
 
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Lord Azrael said:
There's no magic here. It's simply a different focus. They focus on movement and gamefeel first and foremost, at the "expense" of other stuff. Some other companies simply focus more on story, or world, or graphics, or whatever else, at the "expense" of movement and gamefeel. But there are certainly great games out there that excel at multiple things, and match Nintendo's peak. And Nintendo definitely does not have a perfect track record either.

So like I said, it's not like there's any intangible "Nintendo magic". It's simply a different approach to game design and different priorities, and these resonate with certain people more, just like a compelling narrative resonates with others more. It permeates most of their games, even out to their external partners, because Nintendo has a pretty heavy editorial hand. They work closely with partners and offer lots of feedback along the way, and will even axe projects when they don't meet their standard of quality.

They're also not afraid of cutting content or delaying games, which is a key difference. They'd rather focus on polishing what's there to its utmost peak instead of shoving in as much as they can. But they still release many games with both quality and quantity obviously, and that's because of the latter point. They give games the time they need, both to avoid crunch and to land on a polished product. It's part of their brand, so they won't sacrifice this lightly.

But let's be careful with this kind of rhetoric. When we say stuff like "Nintendo magic" or "intuition" or "Nintendo difference" or what have you, instead of trying to analyze from a practical or more objective perspective, we make it sound like they're just better, rather than it just being a deliberate choice of different priorities/principles, with their own pros and cons. This kind of dialog can sound quite fanboyish from the outside. We don't want to drive away discussion of other games, many of which are just as good as Nintendo's best.
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This is more or less what I was trying to say, but you added a lot more detailed explanation. Well said.
 
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Guaraná said:
It's their difference.

Its where they focus good part of they R&D. They are not the best at graphics, nor telling emotional stories.

They are good in making fun games with awesome gameplays. And they focus on this.
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I think cause simple, they dont want to excel on those 2 compared to gameplay.
For graphics, they spend more time on mechanics and polishing rather than texturing the wrinkles of a horse testicles (you know what game)
For the story, IMO most games that “excel” at it, writte an story and then develop the game around delivering that story. Nintendo does it backward, design/ Brainstorm a game and then add some story to showcase that gameplay (Mario O, Splatoon Singler Player Campaigns, Etc etc etc)
 
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I don't think it's just priorities. Nintendo have been the kings of gameplay and polish since the days of the SNES. Of course it was pronounced even moreso in N64 era. The AAA game didn't even exist back then. I think it has more to do with their corporate culture and the fact that they only take the best of the best game developers. When building upon those design philosophies generation after generation a certain magic is created.
 
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For the most part they have always had the same philosophy. Create the mechanics of what the game will be first, then build e earning else around that. It works for them.

Now other devs have different approaches and some similar, and what works for everyone will be different. Nintendo’s approach is great for them.
 
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