I feel funding these companies was a sort of "desperation move" on Yamauchi's part to get the Japanese market back. Iwata didn't seem to believe in them, letting them manage themselves until the late Wii / early 3DS era when he reformed Brownie and ND Cube (before Iwata, Brownie was publishing games with third parties and ND Cube was a ghost company).
That’s my thought process just centralize Pokémon spin-off development
Ambrella and Genius Sonority aren't big enough to do major games anymore, so other than absorbing the remaining staff, there's not much they could provide, IMO
Brownie Brown was more of a necessity to have more staff to support their games, I think. with HD coming and 3DS games taking as many resources as a Wii game, having subsidiaries do these tiny games that don't affect the bottom line wasn't financially responsible
That’s definitely interesting I’m betting on 2D Kirby but would love to see a new ip from Hal with the scale of Kirby so not like Boxboy or Part time UFO
It also means 140M$ spent during the last 7 years and Nintendo has only got one Switch port
maybe they did a lot of R&D that the rest of nintendo could leverageIt also means 140M$ spent during the last 7 years and Nintendo has only got one Switch port
Full price port that probably made enough to cover those 7 years?It also means 140M$ spent during the last 7 years and Nintendo has only got one Switch port
3.42 million on Switch and 2.02 million on Wii U as of December 2020; 5.44 million combined.
Is important to remember that the cost of the games are more than just the cost of Retro Studios, outsourced development plus marketing/localized costs increase quite a bit the cost of the games. Still with 5.44M units (and counting) it probably makes Retro Studios at worse break even for Nintendo until they release Prime 1HD and start making a profit again. DKTF Switch port has been selling like 600k per year even with Nintendo only getting like 40$ per copy that is enough to pay already all Retro Studios costs
wishful thinking, Retro have a proprietary engine
The Switch port they made is making more than the supposed costs of running the studio
that doesn't exclude their work being usable to other Nintendo studios
Forgot to mention it but they opened even more positions last week. It seems that they are expending a lot already for the next project (the engineer positions were open two weeks ago, the others last week)Next Level Games two weeks ago started hiring for their next project
Next Level Games on LinkedIn: #gamedevjobs #engineerjobs #hiring
Actively recruiting for our next project. Please reach out if any of these spots look like a good fit. https://lnkd.in/gcXbGDj #gamedevjobs #engineerjobs…www.linkedin.com
(In previous hiring ads they didn’t mention them being for their next project even if it was obvious they were, this is the first hiring ad post-Strikers launch)
www.nextlevelgames.com
Anything from Japan outside leaks is impossible to know, western branches is more likely but probably only in 15-20 years in some random LinkedIn page or some interviewI would love if the budget of the other studios showed up
Isn't about 17m for a 60 dollar game to reach 1 billion box office?
I mean Tomb Raider games were considered successes/broke even and made profit by selling about that, and those were games that costed more than 100 million to make. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze didn't cost nearly as much. The ~2m was probably enough to pay of on the Wii U, and the Switch port probably was almost only profit lol.
I don’t think being Japan focused limits how much they can grow to a big extend at least in the long term, there are every year hundreds of new game developers in Japan and Nintendo isn’t just the most desirable studio to work with but also has a strong program for new graduates which means that every year dozens of new employees enter Nintendo (and most of them never leave). The limit of being focused on Japan has more to do with how fast they can grow which is what could be the bigger issue with increasing development costs and resources needed to make games, Nintendo might not be able to grow fast enough to catchup
At least Square Enix was struggling to find people experienced in console development a few years ago. And with the demographic development of Japan this is an issue that is only going to become worse over time. It might be less of an issue for Nintendo right now but will eventually catch up to them as well.
There are issues to get people already experienced but not for new graduates which is the way Nintendo EPD grows the most, maybe in the future due to Japanese demographics this can be an issue but at the moment it isn’t.
The number of college enrolments has been stagnating for the past few years, it's really only a question of time until it gets worse.
They just get access to those resources through Koei Tecmo and Bandai Namco (which carries its own risks, of course).
Sure; part of what they're doing with EPD is meant to reduce that contractor reliance, so maybe investment in other parts of Asia happens in the medium term? Who knows, though.
It’s not even just the bolded now too but also them attempting:
They have enough positions open right now to reach 30 iirc, they will probably end up in the high 30s imo. Next Level Games is also hiring a lot by the end of Switch era both studios could end up having over 200 employees
Metroid Prime 1
For 3-5 years?
hard to say how long MP1 was in the works for, but I can see 3-ish years. before that and after Donkey Kong though, who knows. I kinda think it was a 3D donkey kong game
