Donkey Kong Bananza Took 7~8 Years To Develop - Started Immediately After Mario Odyssey (2017)
- Thread starter adamsapple
- Start date
Zephyranthes
Member
If publishers would just wait to announce games until 6 months before release, nobody would care about dev times.
Seems like Nintendo may have finally caught on.
Seems like Nintendo may have finally caught on.
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I am saying that any development time length can be perfectly reasonable depending on how many people were working on the project. That's why you need to know the total number of man years.
In this case we could be talking about 20 people in the prototyping phase. If that lasts 3 years then that's 60 man years. Another 5 years with 50 people would give 310 man years total for the project. That would compare with ~200 for Expedition 33. But it's actually going to be closer because Expedition 33 relied on contractors to supplement the internal team.
However I don't think Bananza is a "simple" game. It's a platformer where the critical path is not fixed, but is carved through the game world by the player's actions. One of the previewers was saying that every person playing the game around him took a completely different path and saw a different set of content. When you multiply that by the number of levels, you can end up with a huge amount of work.
Hudo
Member
This. For all we know. It could've been Miyamoto gooning for 5 years in a room before Nintendo's EPD engine core team (I at least suspect there is one) got to work.
When was RDR2 released though? That's pretty much a GTA game.
NeoIkaruGAF
Gold Member
How can you say this with such certainty when Nintendo has been known for a long time to sit on finished games just to stagger their releases, as others have already stated?
This is not people "giving Nintendo a pass". It's just people expressing opinions based on factual historical evidence. Plus, with all the stories that have come out in the last five years or so, one can't simply handwave away the fact that tons of western studios have been shown to royally mismanage the development of their games. I'd wager Nintendo is at least a tad better at that.
MSduderino
Member
Different main studio, but all of rockstar chipped in to make that game great. DKB is same main studio as SMO with all of nintendo chipping in to make the game great.
nial
Member
There are two big lies there.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
It's not a problem per say. I just refuse to believe without evidence that this game was finished almost one year ago.
Starting with this new S2 generation I don't think Nintendo will be doing that anymore or as much. The cost of making games is going up for everyone. Maybe less for Nintendo due to the type of games they make, but they are still rising fast. It'll make no sense to spend $100 Million making a game, to then just sit on it for one year.
Buggy Loop
Member
I think that's a more likely scenario. Maybe they had very early concepts of a game before that but peoples forget that when a game launches you also have a time frame of supporting it.
SamuraiEdge
Member
I think that's a more likely scenario. Maybe they had very early concepts of a game before that but peoples forget that when a game launches you also have a time frame of supporting it.
You know they consulted with real life monkeys for authenticity (they gave some good feedback) They really went that far for Kong.
Jinzo Prime
Gold Member
Nintendo has the bulk of their devs slide around across multiple projects; people don't just stand around working on one game for years. This game probably stayed in the prototype phase for a long time.
Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
But DK is not a monkey, his gorilla.
SamuraiEdge
Member
Fuck lol
MSduderino
Member
It will if you get double your return by releasing it a year later. Nintendo doesn't need short term gain.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Bro.........Nintendo is a business just like Sony, Valve, and Microsoft. Don't delude yourself into thinking they aren't. I agree that they don't operate like most multi-billion businesses, but the days of sitting on a valuable assets for a year are over for Nintendo.
Represent.
Represent(ative) of bad opinions
What the fuck is going on. Nearly 10 YEARS for a Switch 2 games aimed at kids?
Steve Holt
Member
The pre-production period can be significantly lengthy and prototyping. It is not the same as full production.
Robb
Gold Member
I wouldn't read too much into it. All they said was it started development sometime after Mario Odyssey, which only tells us it was started sometime after 2017.
As
Buggy Loop
pointed out above the director for the game was hired at Nintendo in 2020..![L*][*N*K](/data/avatars/m/842/842515.jpg?1750247637){kind=avatar}
L*][*N*K
Member
How many years do you think the Odyssey team kept working on Odyssey after launch? Did they add raids and new season that I am not aware of?
MSduderino
Member
Where are you getting this? All indications seem to point to the opposite.
MSduderino
Member
Last I checked, businesses like to increase their returns. Why would they rush any game out when everything is selling fine for now?
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Look at their actions for their S2 pricing all around. Plus Nintendo has even spoken on game creation costs going up for them too. For some reason the majority don't want to embrace this truth.
I personally don't think they are rushing DK: Bananaza out at all. Since I don't believe it was completed and sitting on the shelf for a year. They wouldn't have had some of those framerate issues if that was the case.
MSduderino
Member
Assuming they did start immediately after SMO, we don't know when they completed the game since it was meant for S1 and Nintendo is known to sit on completed games and release them over a year after they are done. They helped with other projects too like Bowser's Fury.
MSduderino
Member
Nintendo admitted to costs going up, not that they have to release games right away when they are done. We know many recent nintendo games were ready over a year before they launched. MKW and DKB seem to continue this trend since they were meant for Switch 1.
You don't think the are rushing it out or been letting it sit? So this is the goldilox perfect time to release DKB? Not sure I understand this point.
SILKYSMOOTH30FPS
Member
Sure, that's why i originally said that it all depends on the amount of people developing the game. And i also said that if their team is reasonably big, taking 7-8y for such a simple looking/mechanically game is just not normal. And from everything i've seen, it does look very simple. Its Red Faction Guerrilla in a DK skin, and that game wasn't complex in any way. And unless i've missed it, which is possible because i am not exactly following this game, the platforming sections seemed childishly simplistic.
MSduderino
Member
Likely going to have as much complexity as SM Odyssey. So if that's how you felt about that game, probably similar on this.
Nah pretty much the same. All of Rockstar worked on RDR2 and GTA5.
MSduderino
Member
And different teams from Nintendo helped with DKB too, not just the Odyssey team.
Red Faction Guerrilla is a standard open world shooter, with a fixed terrain that has destructible buildings placed on top of it. The destruction doesn't limit the level design, other than by requiring that structures are physically realistic.
DK Bananza is a platformer where the player carves their way through a 3D terrain and the developers have to provide challenging and diverse content wherever the player ends up. Surely you can understand the design difficulties involved in creating a world where players can ignore almost all barriers?
Edit: It's also worth noting that Red Faction Guerrilla itself took around 5 years, at a time when most studios were still able to keep to 2-3 year development windows. We don't even know if DK Bananza required more man years than that game!
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vodka-bull
Member
Claire Obscure, 5 years, 33 developers. Just saying…
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
I don't think it's been finished for a year and now just sitting around on the shelf not being worked on is what I'm saying. That's just silly to believe for a game like this.
Dr. Wilkinson
Member
Some people are going to see OP and immediately assume this means the game has been in full production since 2018 and therefore the next 3D Mario is several years away. I am sure that is not the case. And development includes pre-production. And likely the game has been done for a while. Similar to how Mario Odyssey was done prior to October 2017, with the launch date being a strategic timing choice, rather than a "this is the soonest we could ship the game" date.
Also, the Tokyo EPD team is not just one giant team, it's staggered between different games and production cycles, just like Kyoto EDP. For example the Bowser's Fury mini-campaign did not take four years of a full-size dev team.
Also, the Tokyo EPD team is not just one giant team, it's staggered between different games and production cycles, just like Kyoto EDP. For example the Bowser's Fury mini-campaign did not take four years of a full-size dev team.
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Dr. Wilkinson
Member
Posts like these are exactly why context is key for the OP. And I wish it had the proper context so we don't have egregious misunderstandings.
nial
Member
That's the case of EPD Kyoto, not EPD Tokyo located in a completely different place. The vast majority of Super Mario Odyssey staff was not credited on other EPD projects afterwards.
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Dr. Wilkinson
Member
Tokyo is a separate team located in a different city, in a separate office from the much larger Kyoto EPD team which is basically just another word for the bulk of Nintendo's in-house development who make most of their other franchises.
Tokyo is basically the 3D Mario team, they don't get pulled from Tokyo and moved to Kyoto. It's Koizumi's Mario team that, except for Jungle Beat and now Bananza, is solely a 3D Mario dev team that made Galaxy 1, 2, 3D Land, 3D World, Odyssey, and Bowser's Fury.
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SILKYSMOOTH30FPS
Member
That's what i said above. Nintendo has no excuse.
nial
Member
Well, yes, that's exactly what I implied. EPD Tokyo staff doesn't seem to be part of the large employee pool at EPD Kyoto working from project to project. They're basically like their own standalone studio.
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Dr. Wilkinson
Member
ChorizoPicozo
Member
This is what it takes to use the unprecedented power of SW2
Dr. Wilkinson
Member
Part of those rumors were Nintendo shopping around and taking pitches from external partners to make a DK game. Specifically one at Activision that was supposedly canceled. The lack of success in farming it out might well have led to them doing this game after Odyssey.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
i wonder if there is some DEI/Woke influence.... that shit tends to make things take longer. maybe Nintendo was forced to used inclusive coding
Dr. Wilkinson
Member
They didn't help on Bowser's Fury, it was literally their game (EPD Tokyo).
Certainly if people are worried, there is no reality in which there isn't a 3D Mario game in full swing at EPD Tokyo that is at most 1-2 years away.
Tokyo is a large, ever-growing team, Bananza certainly has not been their only title since releasing Bowser's Fury in Feb 2021.
3D Mario is likely being strategically timed for announcement and release next year to a) give Bananza it's time in the sun, and b) to "synergize" with the next Mario movie in 2026.
I would literally bet my life on it.
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Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
??? What? Not every fucking thing is about "woke" or "DEI" you guys going way too fucking over board with this shit.