I mean, Nintendo doesn't just make AAA games. They do work on smaller projects.
NES Remix, Warioware, Tomadachi Life, Rhythm Heaven Fever, Mario Maker, Mario vs DK? Steel Diver was a retail game.
Captain Toad was a smaller project. Amiibo Festival was a smaller project.
I do see what you mean. But it's tough to discern what Nintendo makes that qualifies or doesn't qualify as a AAA games. I mean, other than SSB, MK8, 3DW and Zelda, I'm not sure what other Nintendo games had teams as big or resource cost as extensive. Several of the games you mentioned are retail games and games like SMM and Splatoon are smaller titles I believe (in terms of development) that got a big marketing push. So I have to wonder if we can't just say reasonably that Nintendo primarily makes non-AAA games. And even Nintendo's version of AAA, I get the sense have far fewer people working on them and cost far less than your average Western AAA game.
Yeah, that worked out real well for the gamecube.
I see what you mean, but on the flipside Nintendo would have been thrilled if Wii U sold as well as GCN.
Reads like Nintendo will just launch games without as much content. And it sucks. Big games ask for long development cycles, you won't have a good Metroid Prime in one year.
I wouldn't necessarily conclude this. Most Nintendo games aren't as expensive or lengthy to develop as Metroid Prime, but almost every Nintendo game in the last ten years has had an incredible amount of content for the price, so I doubt they'd drop that value proposition.
Two things :
1. It would be incredibly advantageous to Nintendo to openly come out and state they support cross-play with other systems and launch the NX with a game like rocket league. Why? Because a big reason a ton of people do not buy 3rd party games on Nintendo platforms is because they cannot play with the rest of the fan-base (COD on wii etc). Having everyone know you can now buy and play lets say Madden or GTA6 and play with everyone else would greatly increase the chance of 3rd party consumers and developers supporting Nintendo again.
2. About the increased software output. I dont think they will scale down games and make them smaller, rather they are streamlining their development process via:
- Combining handheld and console dev studios
- Developing a single, connected platform/os for the NX and future systems for easy porting
- Partnering with many other developers to co-dev games (like they have been starting to with the Wii U)
- Possibly releasing NX and future games digital only (This is just me guessing based on My Nintendo only having rewards for digital e-shop purchases)
I think you make some really good points, but I did want to address your last notation there. I think it's considerably unlikely that Nintendo will burn their retail partners by going all digital. I personally would be totally okay with it, provided there was a refund program available, but I don't think the market is ready for it yet. Additionally, I wouldn't take the lack of physical game MyN codes to mean anything yet. We're presumably at the tail end of the current platforms, so I think it's reasonable to expect that Nintendo will wait for physical NX games to be a thing before packing in MyN codes with physical copies of games.