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

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Mr Doggo said:
Inbetween making several popular racing games that make a shitload of money vs getting recognition from half a nerds
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Admittedly, I don't know how well these Nascar games do. Do you have any sales data for them so I can look at?
Clov said:
Why does this matter?
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Strange question, why wouldn't it matter? Getting people interested in your games is kind of a big deal.
Gingerbread Man said:
Well, Nintendo fans are interested in Nintendo devs. There are a lot of good videogames devs Nintendo fans do not talk about, simply because... they aren't part of the Nintendo family, but that's fair. Also, Monster's last three games with Nintendo were nothing to write home about -- two ports, and an expanded version of a mode from Wii Sports Resort. No wonder they decided to focus on what they love.
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Technically, Tropical Freeze was one of the last three games they worked on. Granted, they only worked on the secret bonus levels, but the game turned out to be a big success for both them and Retro I'm sure. Their Returns port is also probably the best version of that game with the extra levels and no waggle. It sold a hefty 3 million too.
Dardan Sandiego said:
I don’t think it would have mattered much in the long run. Short of giving them the keys to Mario Kart or something I doubt Nintendo could have kept Monster when they had they opportunity to develop NASCAR games again.
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Possibly. Admittedly, it's a bit hard to discuss about this topic as it's mostly conjecture.
 
Nathan Little said:
Strange question, why wouldn't it matter? Getting people interested in your games is kind of a big deal.
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Because the "gaming populace", especially the hardcore, Nintendo gaming populace, is small and insignificant in comparison to the market as a whole.

Nintendo fans may sit back and think "Why aren't Monster Games making a new Pilotwings? What a waste!", but in the meantime, they're happily creating games that are successful with more casual audiences.
 
Mr Doggo said:
Inbetween making several popular racing games that make a shitload of money vs getting recognition from half a nerds
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The NASCAR games aren't really popular racing games. There isn't good data on those games but, I don't see them outperforming even WRC let alone an actual popular racing game. iRacing is probably the biggest thing they've worked on outside of Nintendo but, they aren't even working on the main product but presumably console spinoffs. It's pretty likely that the NASCAR games were an easier license to get through their past connections rather than competing with European studios on more profitable series. Ultimately, it doesn't matter but, you shouldn't be so aggressive.

I'm curious if Grounding will work with Nintendo again. They've been getting quite a bit of contract work over the past couple years (Space Channel 5 VR, The Good Life, World's End Club and this year's Little Noah: Scion of Paradise) and recently picked up some Level-5 veterans (that were leads on Little Noah)
 
Clov said:
Because the "gaming populace", especially the hardcore, Nintendo gaming populace, is small and insignificant in comparison to the market as a whole.

Nintendo fans may sit back and think "Why aren't Monster Games making a new Pilotwings? What a waste!", but in the meantime, they're happily creating games that are successful with more casual audiences.
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Admittedly, I do live in a Nintendo bubble 😂. I am curious to see how well these recent Nascar games do in comparison to what they were doing under Nintendo.

In the end, I don't think it matters regardless, as they are obviously more into Nascar than Nintendo.
 
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Clov said:
Because the "gaming populace", especially the hardcore, Nintendo gaming populace, is small and insignificant in comparison to the market as a whole.

Nintendo fans may sit back and think "Why aren't Monster Games making a new Pilotwings? What a waste!", but in the meantime, they're happily creating games that are successful with more casual audiences.
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IRacing isn't for casual audiences lol, it's for the hardcore sweaty nerds. It's a subscription service that let's you play a deep simulation game. It's not Mario Kart.
 
Charamiwa said:
IRacing isn't for casual audiences lol, it's for the hardcore sweaty nerds. It's a subscription service that let's you play a deep simulation game. It's not Mario Kart.
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Audiences that aren't interested in another installment in the "Excite" series, then.
 
Clov said:
Audiences that aren't interested in another installment in the "Excite" series, then.
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why-does-this-exist-anubhavroy.gif
 
I don't think it's really much of a mystery why Monster Games distanced themselves from Nintendo: their passion was always in racing games. They were given the opportunity to make a few racing games for Nintendo at the start of their relationship with the Wii installments of the Excite series (good! this is the type of content they were already making!); then they were assigned Pilotwings Resort, essentially polishing and expanding one mode from Wii Sports Resort (still vehicle related I guess?); and then finally some random odd jobs like assisting on DKC Tropical Freeze and porting DKC Returns and Xenoblade to 3DS (why this team in particular?) For years there were rumors of Monster Games being behind a new Diddy Kong Racing for Wii U, and obviously such a thing never surfaced, but it would certainly feel like a more fitting project for them than Xenoblade 3D! Perhaps if it happened things would be different, but alas...

If you were Monster Games, would you want to stick around with Nintendo to work on, say, a Switch port of Geist; when you could instead go off and work on what you clearly actually want to do, racing games?
 
MondoMega said:
I don't think it's really much of a mystery why Monster Games distanced themselves from Nintendo: their passion was always in racing games. They were given the opportunity to make a few racing games for Nintendo at the start of their relationship with the Wii installments of the Excite series (good! this is the type of content they were already making!); then they were assigned Pilotwings Resort, essentially polishing and expanding one mode from Wii Sports Resort (still vehicle related I guess?); and then finally some random odd jobs like assisting on DKC Tropical Freeze and porting DKC Returns and Xenoblade to 3DS (why this team in particular?) For years there were rumors of Monster Games being behind a new Diddy Kong Racing for Wii U, and obviously such a thing never surfaced, but it would certainly feel like a more fitting project for them than Xenoblade 3D! Perhaps if it happened things would be different, but alas...

If you were Monster Games, would you want to stick around with Nintendo to work on, say, a Switch port of Geist; when you could instead go off and work on what you clearly actually want to do, racing games?
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To be more specific it wasn’t just racing games but NASCAR games in particular they wanted to do. Given that they got the rights to work on it Monster Games happily jumped onto that series. Only to lose the ability to develop NASCAR games in 2020. They are now owned by iRacing for their sim racing series.

This article goes into the history of the NASCAR license & how MGI jumped back on.
www.polygon.com

Wrecked by the big boys 15 years ago, veterans return to NASCAR video games

Makers of NASCAR Heat 2002 return with NASCAR Heat Evolution this September
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com
 
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Speaking of Grezzo, Nintendo has actually leveraged their talent with original games (Line Attack Heroes, Ever Oasis), ambitious remakes (Majora 3D and Awakening Switch -- admittedly, Luigi's Mansion 3D and Ocarina 3D were a bit more "phoned-in") or even a co-production with EPD (Tri Force Heroes). So I don't think they are going anywhere.

Good-Feel is another great partnership. They are good at making 2D platform games, and Nintendo needs 2D platform games for some of their series. Win-win. Though their radio silence since Crafted World does worry me.
 
GamerJM said:
Are those NASCAR games Monster makes now any good?
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Overall they seem to be well liked for what they are with NASCAR Heat 2019 being the best of those games. They have some flaws that I don’t think they ever ironed out but nothing that isn’t completely game breaking if I remember correctly.
 
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Gingerbread Man said:
Speaking of Grezzo, Nintendo has actually leveraged their talent with original games (Line Attack Heroes, Ever Oasis), ambitious remakes (Majora 3D and Awakening Switch -- admittedly, Luigi's Mansion 3D and Ocarina 3D were a bit more "phoned-in") or even a co-production with EPD (Tri Force Heroes). So I don't think they are going anywhere.
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Yeah, this is my thinking. They've worked on Nintendo's most prestigious IP multiple times, and Nintendo have backed them with original projects too. I doubt Nintendo let that partnership waver and I'd be surprised if Grezzo felt the need to look anywhere else; it's not really comparable to say Monster (where there was an increasingly clear genre mismatch and a license Monster wanted to work on) or AlphaDream, where the team only worked on one IP which hit diminishing returns.

Grezzo on a new action adventure game for Switch would be good.
Gingerbread Man said:
Good-Feel is another great partnership. They are good at making 2D platform games, and Nintendo needs 2D platform games for some of their series. Win-win. Though their radio silence since Crafted World does worry me.
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It's not that surprising with Good-Feel. They had a fairly lengthy gap from Yoshi's Woolly World to Crafted World, with only the 3DS port in between it (2015 to 2019, though they did port Kirby's Epic Yarn to 3DS for an early 2019 release too). They opened a second location in Osaka to keep working on their own IP but also planned to continue contractual work. It wouldn't surprise me if we see a couple of releases from them in 2023; a platformer with Nintendo and their own smaller scale new IP.
 
Look at the products page on Good-Feel's site for a real surprise.

www.good-feel.co.jp

制作実績 | 株式会社グッド・フィール （Good-Feel）

株式会社グッド・フィールが開発に携わったタイトルの一覧です。株式会社グッド・フィールは、家庭用ゲームソフト、スマートフォン向けゲーム・アプリなどの企画・開発・販売・運営を行うゲーム開発企業です。
www.good-feel.co.jp

but yeah, I wouldn't be particularly worried about Good-Feel's partnership with Nintendo. The continued absence of their Goemon inspired game doesn't inspire much confidence in it seeing release, however. It was supposed to release last year!
 
MondoMega said:
Look at the products page on Good-Feel's site for a real surprise.

www.good-feel.co.jp

制作実績 | 株式会社グッド・フィール （Good-Feel）

株式会社グッド・フィールが開発に携わったタイトルの一覧です。株式会社グッド・フィールは、家庭用ゲームソフト、スマートフォン向けゲーム・アプリなどの企画・開発・販売・運営を行うゲーム開発企業です。
www.good-feel.co.jp

but yeah, I wouldn't be particularly worried about Good-Feel's partnership with Nintendo. The continued absence of their Goemon inspired game doesn't inspire much confidence in it seeing release, however. It was supposed to release last year!
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In my dream reality Nintendo saw it, picked it up, and are collaborating on it and turning it into a larger scale and more polished game.

I always forget Good-Feel have a done a bunch of smaller projects for mobile. Also, I don't think I'd ever seen the fun Japanese cover art for Wario Land Shake It! before.
 
MisterSpo said:
Weird this thread took such a turn after I suggested Grezzo were probably still working with Nintendo. People really got independent partner anxiety. (this is a half joke)
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Yeah, I think it's good to keep in mind that some of Nintendo's partnerships aren't exclusive but presumably work on a contractual basis, if only to avoid disappointment. These can go awry or end for any number of reasons, like how Nintendo and Ganbarion stopped working together after Wii Fit U. But I also don't see much of a point in looking at successful relationships like the one with Grezzo and draw comparisons to Monster Games.
 
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Hopefully Grezzo and Good Feel are working on 1st party games because I wouldn't expect many externally made Nintendo games in 2023 without them. lol
 
MisterSpo said:
It's a joke, though difficult to parse: I meant there should be a Two Point game where you run a Nintendo-affiliated independent development studio.
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Easy Level: Inteligent Systems (Nintendo buys you a building, trusts you with all their IPs and gives you all the support you ask)
Hard Level: CinG (Nintendo finds your games disposable and doesn’t care if you go bankrupt)
 
On a more serious note, similarly to what Nintendo did with SRD I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually buy CAProduction since they've been acting exclusively as a support studio for Mario Party for over a decade and even led development on Clubhouse Games.
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
On a more serious note, similarly to what Nintendo did with SRD I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually buy CAProduction since they've been acting exclusively as a support studio for Mario Party for over a decade and even led development on Clubhouse Games.
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Yep, agreed. They've been a very reliable assist team from the Hudson era and sort of help "complete" NdCube's Hudson-ification if you will. Speaking of, Will Co., Ltd. is similar as well and deserve more recognition. They too have worked on most NdCube games and also heavily assisted in the Hudson era too. Hidetoshi Endo really had fantastic connections and was one of the flat out best hires Nintendo made last decade or so. He was President of Hudson for over a decade up 'til his departure in 2008 and he evidently immediately went to Nintendo and proceeded to personally revive the dusty NdCube office, becoming its President up 'til last year I think?

Imagine a similar concept for other dead JP devs Nintendo could do that with. That'd be something. But there were few more appropriate to do this with than Hudson. Hudson and Nintendo were always like Chocolate and Peanut Butter. I'm still shocked Nintendo never pushed to just buy Hudson when they likely could have. Oh well, hindsight.
 
Did you know that Hudson Soft was named after trains? Locomotives with a 4-6-4 wheel configuration are called Hudsons and apparently the Kudo brothers were into trains.

en.wikipedia.org

Hudson Soft - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Been sitting on that one for weeks now
 
Hero of Legend said:
Yep, agreed. They've been a very reliable assist team from the Hudson era and sort of help "complete" NdCube's Hudson-ification if you will. Speaking of, Will Co., Ltd. is similar as well and deserve more recognition. They too have worked on most NdCube games and also heavily assisted in the Hudson era too. Hidetoshi Endo really had fantastic connections and was one of the flat out best hires Nintendo made last decade or so. He was President of Hudson for over a decade up 'til his departure in 2008 and he evidently immediately went to Nintendo and proceeded to personally revive the dusty NdCube office, becoming its President up 'til last year I think?

Imagine a similar concept for other dead JP devs Nintendo could do that with. That'd be something. But there were few more appropriate to do this with than Hudson. Hudson and Nintendo were always like Chocolate and Peanut Butter. I'm still shocked Nintendo never pushed to just buy Hudson when they likely could have. Oh well, hindsight.
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I suspect, based on a hunch more than anything, that Nintendo avoids acquisitions that create too many redundancies. I'm not sure what happened to Hudson's publishing arm under Konami but I doubt it would have survived under Nintendo (because there'd be no need for it).
 
Hero of Legend said:
Imagine a similar concept for other dead JP devs Nintendo could do that with. That'd be something. But there were few more appropriate to do this with than Hudson. Hudson and Nintendo were always like Chocolate and Peanut Butter. I'm still shocked Nintendo never pushed to just buy Hudson when they likely could have. Oh well, hindsight.
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In the late 90s and early 2000 era, Nintendo was all about establishing joint partnerships in Japan. Even though it's not well documented in Western press/archives, Nintendo and Hudson formed Monegi Inc. (51% Nintendo, 49% Hudson) and they were exclusively involved in Mario Party development and a few Super Robot Taisen games. A lot of the veteran ND Cube staff may be directly from Monegi rather than Hudson, although it's hard to pinpoint exactly. Hiroshi Ikeda who was the original Nintendo R&D4 manager during the first years of (EAD) Miyamoto/Tezuka developing games on their own, was the President of Monegi, and then later Mario Co., Ltd which was another spinoff join venture company.

Monegi Inc, Mario Co., Ltd., Randnet Co., Ltd., Marigul Inc., Mobile 21 Co., Ltd are a few of those joint companies from Japan.


Dardan Sandiego said:
On a more serious note, similarly to what Nintendo did with SRD I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually buy CAProduction since they've been acting exclusively as a support studio for Mario Party for over a decade and even led development on Clubhouse Games.
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Anything is possible but SRD was a wildly different scenario than some of the contemporary contract support studios. Everything from their almost 40 year history being a tech tool developer and program consignment team directly affixed in Nintendo's Kyoto development studio, to their equally important role of being the programming end of the original Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda IPs.

Obviously HAL and IS would be the closest situations to SRD, with the former TEC Co., Ltd (Nintendo/IS co venture) and the original minority stake Nintendo purchased from HAL, but then selling it back and instead settling on the Warpstar joint venture around their Kirby IP - being some earlier moves to sort of establish formal ties outside of longstanding contractual agreements and IP co-ownership. The big difference is that SRD never became its own developer/co-developer but always remained a purely programming arm for Nintendo's design and technology groups.
 
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Lelouch0612 said:
I think a new KT collaboration and an externally developped Pokemon spin-off are very likely for 2023.
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Do you mean that rumored FE for the KT collab? That one seems like a shoe in.

Besides that one another Pokemon spinoff makes sense. Can't think of many other contract games though if Good Feel and Grezzo (just for this pretend scenario) aren't releasing something. For non-EPD Nintendo owned studios I suppose there's a chance we see Prime 4 and things from ND Cube and NST.
 
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EAD Ninja said:
In the late 90s and early 2000 era, Nintendo was all about establishing joint partnerships in Japan. Even though it's not well documented in Western press/archives, Nintendo and Hudson formed Monegi Inc. (51% Nintendo, 49% Hudson) and they were exclusively involved in Mario Party development and a few Super Robot Taisen games. A lot of the veteran ND Cube staff may be directly from Monegi rather than Hudson, although it's hard to pinpoint exactly. Hiroshi Ikeda who was the original Nintendo R&D4 manager during the first years of (EAD) Miyamoto/Tezuka developing games on their own, was the President of Monegi, and then later Mario Co., Ltd which was another spinoff join venture company.

Monegi Inc, Mario Co., Ltd., Randnet Co., Ltd., Marigul Inc., Mobile 21 Co., Ltd are a few of those joint companies from Japan.




Anything is possible but SRD was a wildly different scenario than some of the contemporary contract support studios. Everything from their almost 40 year history being a tech tool developer and program consignment team directly affixed in Nintendo's Kyoto development studio, to their equally important role of being the programming end of the original Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda IPs.

Obviously HAL and IS would be the closest situations to SRD, with the former TEC Co., Ltd (Nintendo/IS co venture) and the original minority stake Nintendo purchased from HAL, but then selling it back and instead settling on the Warpstar joint venture around their Kirby IP - being some earlier moves to sort of establish formal ties outside of longstanding contractual agreements and IP co-ownership. The big difference is that SRD never became its own developer/co-developer but always remained a purely programming arm for Nintendo's design and technology groups.
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Really fascinating info, thanks! I knew about most of those joint-venture companies. Shame Nintendo just let them die out rather than buy them out (though maybe they just took in most folks from them, who knows).

And again I knew about Monegi but didn't they just get absorbed into Hudson after what, Mario Party 4? It's fitting that was the team that largely migrated to NdCube, but it's obvious that a lot more from Hudson came with them overtime as well.
 
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If we’re talking about companies absorbing other companies do you think Creatures will just buy out Genius Sonority liked they did to Ambrella
 
I would be surprised if Nintendo buys any videogame studio other than owners wanting to retire and selling the studio to Nintendo which I don’t think is the case for any modern Nintendo-affiliated studio. Situations like SRD/NLG are rare
 
Blue Monty said:
I would be surprised if Nintendo buys any videogame studio other than owners wanting to retire and selling the studio to Nintendo which I don’t think is the case for any modern Nintendo-affiliated studio. Situations like SRD/NLG are rare
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Wouldn’t Camelot fall under this Hiroyuki Takahashi is in his mid 60s
 
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