Shuntaro Furukawa: Nintendo to explore shorter dev cycles; Invest in development teams to improve efficiency

Topher

Topher

Identifies as young


Invest in your teams? What madness is this?

Oh My God Wow GIF by The Roku Channel
 
Sounds nice, but let's wait and see exactly what that actually means.

Bigger teams? Smaller games? Shared development? The dreaded AI?
 
Loomy said:
Sounds nice, but let's wait and see exactly what that actually means.

Bigger teams? Smaller games? Shared development? The dreaded AI?
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If they are investing in AI to help the teams become more efficient rather replacing teams with AI then I'd say that is a good investment.
 
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Loomy said:
Bigger teams? Smaller games? Shared development? The dreaded AI?
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Yes, they are already building a second development HQ in Kyoto that will be larger than their current building, No, Probably depends on the game, No they already said it many times that they wont be using AI in their games.
 
L*][*N*K said:
Yes, they are already building a second development HQ in Kyoto that will be larger than their current building, No, Probably depends on the game, No they already said it many times that they wont be using AI in their games.
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They said they won't be using "generative AI" due to copyright concerns
 
Nop.. they should follow the US model of "evolution"..bloated studios, be as diverse as possible no matter the cost, create a culture of inclusion and 100% positivity and use as much Sweet baby inc type companies as they can for support. This is the way.
 
Topher said:
If they are investing in AI to help the teams become more efficient rather replacing teams with AI then I'd say that is a good investment.
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Yeah, I think they're already doing this, but everyone is scaling the use up significantly right now.

L*][*N*K said:
Yes, they are already building a second development HQ in Kyoto that will be larger than their current building, No, Probably depends on the game, No they already said it many times that they wont be using AI in their games.
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I think that applies to art and music alone.
 
Loomy said:
Sounds nice, but let's wait and see exactly what that actually means.

Bigger teams? Smaller games? Shared development? The dreaded AI?
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We already know the answer to three out of four of these questions:

1. Nintendo has been expanding for years, and have indicated that they're going to keep expanding in the Switch 2 era.

2. Nintendo already splits their development between larger titles with longer development cycles and smaller AA titles that cost less money and take less time to produce.

3. Nintendo already utilizes external teams and contract developers on many (most?) of their projects.

So that only leaves AI as an open question, though Nintendo has expressed reluctance to use it in the past.

Like the answers to most shareholder questions, I think this is basically just a more polished way of saying, "We're going to keep doing what we've been doing."
 
Shorter development cycles = smaller scoped games. Which is a great thing. Not every game needs to be open world or have a 40 hour campaign. A game like a successor to F-Zero GX with the same scope would clearly require much less development time than something like Mario Kart World. The challenge there is figuring out how to give player a new experience without treading old ground.
 
SamuraiEdge said:
I like the way he talks when it comes to them just making games in all true old school fashion in quality and efficiency. This is the way.
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As much as people bemoan Nintendo's hardware tech being outdated and underpowered, those decisions also help them keep development costs down. They've also been good about developing/co-developing lesser IP from their catalog and setting realistic expectations for sales and budgeting accordingly (i.e. not expecting WarioWare to do Mario Kart sales figures). That, along with the similar strategy for remakes, keeps a steady stream of games coming.
 
Sorry. But this is not news. In laymen's terms they are simply continuing on in a manner consistent with how they have for decades. Carefully and thoughtfully. A vague response in an inventor Q&A is not a headline story. There is no news to wring out of that response. They were not breaking any kind of news. And they never have before, ever will in an investor Q&A.

Super cringe.
 
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bender said:
As much as people bemoan Nintendo's hardware tech being outdated and underpowered, those decisions also help them keep development costs down. They've also been good about developing/co-developing lesser IP from their catalog and setting realistic expectations for sales and budgeting accordingly (i.e. not expecting WarioWare to do Mario Kart sales figures). That, along with the similar strategy for remakes, keeps a steady stream of games coming.
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Yup, the whole hardware side has weirdly paid off in its own way when it comes to costing allowing them to get as much as out of it with good programming and talent as we saw with the Switc 1. It's why I am happy with the hardware as it is for the next 5-6 years if they do another after taking advantage of the likely big jump then. All works in their favour just to focus on a good round level of gaming.
 
Loomy said:
I think that applies to art and music alone.
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They literally said their games requires a human touch, and they literally said they want to preserve the way their games has always been made I am not telling you how to live your life but Nintendo is the last on the line to go AI over actual devs and artists
 
I have to say I don't give a shit about reused assets. Like it never even crosses my mind playing Yakuza games. Rather than scrapping everything and starting over and shipping one or two games a generation they are able to ship games every year. I much prefer that to the alternative.
 
Dr. Wilkinson said:
Sorry. But this is not news. In laymen's terms they are simply continuing on in a manner consistent with how they have for decades. Carefully and thoughtfully. A vague response in an inventor Q&A is not a headline story. There is no news to wring out of that response. They were not breaking any kind of news. And they never have before, ever will in an investor Q&A.

Super cringe.
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This is great news nevertheless. It describes that Nintendo has seen this happening in other companies and studios and are carefully planning to not fall in the same pits.
 
Loomy said:
Yeah, I think they're already doing this, but everyone is scaling the use up significantly right now.


I think that applies to art and music alone.
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You couldn't possibly know that because they've never made that announcement. *But generally speaking, Nintendo will be one of the very last major publishers/ developers to force AI into their development pipelines. They have a very strong culture of letting experienced creative developers do what they do, as long as they ship commercially successful products. There is no appetite/ mandate/ culture at the top of Nintendo to somehow allow non-developers to try and tell developers how to do their job. Furukawa has no software development experiences, he's Business/ Finance. Iwata was extremely rare in that he came from the development side. Basically they run the business and let the software teams make great games, and that system works.

Nintendo has literally never been more successful and made more money than they have the last 8 years. They are doing extremely well, and the value of the company has never been higher.
 
Trilobit said:
This is great news nevertheless. It describes that Nintendo has seen this happening in other companies and studios and are carefully planning to not fall in the same pits.
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Yeah, so that's literally not news. That's simply restating something that's already widely known.

It also wouldn't be newsworthy to state that "Zelda teams are always working on the next Zelda", and "hardware teams are always looking into technology on the next hardware product". This is the same as that.

Wringing news out of nothing is cringe and annoying, quite honestly. Not everything you read is intended to be subject to "some dude" online trying to pass anything they see off as news.
 
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Dr. Wilkinson said:
Yeah, so that's literally not news. That's simply restating something that's already widely known.

It also wouldn't be newsworthy to state that "Zelda teams are always working on the next Zelda", and "hardware teams are always looking into technology on the next hardware product". This is the same as that.

Wringing news out of nothing is cringe and annoying, quite honestly. Not everything you read is intended to be subject to "some dude" online trying to pass anything they see off as news.
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Connificent said:
But HD town is hard so Zelda ToTK took 6 fucking years to make.
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No doubt. Switch 1 also continued to sell better than N's biggest expectations to the point that Switch 2 was allowed to arrive at least a year or so later. MKW started dev for S1 and came to S2, but some games probably started for S2 and they had to release for S1 or they'd be sitting on them (TOTK is an example of this, I believe). They also released a bunch of first party games last year on S1. We don't really know much about Nintendo releases from September and beyond, but they could be sitting on a ton of stuff.
 
L*][*N*K said:
They literally said their games requires a human touch, and they literally said they want to preserve the way their games has always been made I am not telling you how to live your life but Nintendo is the last on the line to go AI over actual devs and artists
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Dr. Wilkinson said:
You couldn't possibly know that because they've never made that announcement. *But generally speaking, Nintendo will be one of the very last major publishers/ developers to force AI into their development pipelines. They have a very strong culture of letting experienced creative developers do what they do, as long as they ship commercially successful products. There is no appetite/ mandate/ culture at the top of Nintendo to somehow allow non-developers to try and tell developers how to do their job. Furukawa has no software development experiences, he's Business/ Finance. Iwata was extremely rare in that he came from the development side. Basically they run the business and let the software teams make great games, and that system works.

Nintendo has literally never been more successful and made more money than they have the last 8 years. They are doing extremely well, and the value of the company has never been higher.
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Between Bowser and Furukawa, the comments have been somewhat strongly against - or cautioning against - generative AI that relies on training using other people's work. Furukawa specifically pointed out IP rights as one issue.

But Bowser did say that conversations around using AI are happening inside Nintendo - as with every other studio/publisher.

I'm not suggesting Nintendo is going to start replacing artists with AI, but if you're looking for increased efficiency and productivity at the scale Nintendo is operating - especially if you're also concerned about keeping costs down - then you're looking at AI.
 
Loomy said:
Between Bowser and Furukawa, the comments have been somewhat strongly against - or cautioning against - generative AI that relies on training using other people's work. Furukawa specifically pointed out IP rights as one issue.

But Bowser did say that conversations around using AI are happening inside Nintendo - as with every other studio/publisher.

I'm not suggesting Nintendo is going to start replacing artists with AI, but if you're looking for increased efficiency and productivity at the scale Nintendo is operating - especially if you're also concerned about keeping costs down - then you're looking at AI.
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If it happens, they'll be one of the very last to do it.
 
"Zelda teams are always working on the next Zelda".

"The software teams are always looking at fresh ideas for a new Pikmin".

"The hardware teams are always researching new technologies for future hardware platforms".
 
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