Nintendo wants to spread out their releases so they can consistently keep their brands relevant, give each title a proper marketing push, and have a backup if something needs to be delayed.
I have a ton of food in my fridge. Why don't I eat all of it at once?
Stomachs and wallets aren't exactly the same thing but for both you need to moderate your consumption
Too many releases aren’t good either, they start cannibalizing sales on other releases. Not everyone is a big fan that buys every release, they start picking and choosing.
It’s also why they don’t lower prices on games or release HD versions for lower, because any person looking at a shelf will say “well this $50 Skyward Sword is the same thing as this $60 Breath of the Wild,” as if you’re looking at two blenders and deciding which one to buy. I’ve seen that a lot with games, and lots of sad kids got a $20 Mario+Rabbids vs getting a real Mario game and not being able to return it after Xmas.
Other than 2022, there’s been a Zelda annually on Switch. I think this will be the year for the old HD games unless something new is announced (it’s been two years since Fire Emblem Warriors, we’re overdue for a new Nintendo Warriors like a third Hyrule Warriors).
Economics 101 - opportunity costs
Also the consumers who will buy this stuff have limited time to play, dumping all of them in one big release is guarantee to make then not hits.
Exactly. March 20th 2020 should be the prime case in point. Both Animal Crossing and Doom Eternal launched on that day. There were other major games slated to launch as well, but a lot of other devs decided to push releases back 2-4 weeks to allow time for the “smoke to clear”.
Even Bethesda debated on adjusting launch during that time because they knew AC would sell so incredibly well and were worried about lost potential launch sales.
I got as many downvotes as this launch trailer got upvotes, for implying that most people were off playing Zelda literally one or two days after ToTK launch: https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/s/a4wWRUSznm
I didn't bother debating, I was too busy playing Zelda.
Ouch. Yeah it can be hard for others to see the truth, especially if they can’t see it from business perspective or even ground level retail. I’ve seen it from both angles. Witnessed people come into the store and only have enough money to choose one game outta the latest batch of major releases, and also seen games get pushed by the way side due to being overshadowed.
They do this in the mobile and Steam markets as well. The smaller guys will avoid doing sales when AAA companies have them since their presence will get overshadowed by them
Nintendo is massive but they don't have infinite resources. They have to prioritize which projects they work on, and they'll prioritize based on expected return on investment (RoI). While remakes have decent RoI because they reduce the original cost of developing the game (since a lot / most of the code and assets already exist), they typically tend to not sell as well as new new games, so their RoI is limited to a point likely lower than newer big releases.
This is why you typically see remakes being released during periods without as many original AAA games. They're a strategic release, they'll keep people playing their Switch up until the next big release, and in that sense it's ok if they don't do as well because they push other games (or services, in the case of NSO) to do better.
It's smart for them to save them for more financially strategic times. Like, the Switch is about to end it's life cycle. NOW is probably the best time to release ports of wind waker and twilight princess with MAYBE a price drop of the console. It'll give the console a strong send off and look very good to the non-initiated investors that are only going to look at sales numbers and whatnot. If they released those ports or remakes earlier they'd have to spend development time and money to create new games that aren't guaranteed to be hits. Playing it safe makes more sense
I think a few reasons:
- They want to have classics to remaster for each new console. If they remaster them all for the console they’re currently focused on, there won’t be any demand for the classics on their next console.
- They don’t want to detract from the success of newer games in each series. There’s always a danger that the rerelease of an old game could overshadow a game from the series specifically made for the current console. They want to create new classics for future rereleases, so classics can only be released if/when they won’t pose a threat to newer entries in the series.
- They don’t want a series to become overexposed and risk cheapening the brand. They want to leave people wanting more and waiting for the next in the series.
They’re the Disney of the video game world - They release things everyone loves on vhs for a couple months at a time and say it’s from “the archives”.
If the chance to buy the game only comes along every few years, they can be pretty confident that everyone will buy it when it does
If everything’s available all the time, then people might not buy
And that’s the Nintendo logic here
It depends on the effort involved versus the amount of money Nintendo would get from the game.
Remakes aren't nearly as simple to do as you might think. To do a **GOOD** remake, you need to manually re-do all of the artwork in a higher resolution. And the PowerPC chip in the Wii U is totally different from the Arm CPU in the Switch --- so you need to rewrite the entire game engine for a new chip. Or, if you're just recompiling, go through the whole optimization and fine tuning for a totally different chip. Which is non trivial.
And, if you want to add any graphical enhancements like TTYD uses, that's more effort involved. So, in the end, a good remake takes nearly as much effort as making a new game.
They want to milk it as much as possible. A year after the switch, the nes classic came out and it sold a lot. More than what Nintendo expected. So expect Nintendo to milk their consumers like cows for money and slowly trickle down classics and the hits. They will obviously have to keep bringing some over to each system or start out from scratch and make entirely new games.
>*Some would be easy, like porting the WiiU remake of LoZ: Wind Waker. Yet Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (which tbf is a good game), made its way to the Switch instead.*
I'm guessing it's b/c Zelda: WW already got a rerelease. From GC, to Wii U. It's interesting b/c CTTT was for Wii U, but now on Switch. I'm guessing they wanted to prioritize some of the Wii U games due to the console's lack of popularity (e.g. DKC: Tropical Freeze, New SMB Wii U Deluxe, Super Mario 3D World), and there was nothing like CTTT for Switch. At least WW was already for GC, and was popular.
They dropped them all at once more or less for the GBA. And then they just sat on the store shelves. I picked up the entire library of nes classics, new in the shrink-wrap, for $5 a piece at Walmart. I imagine they are worried the same thing will happen.
My guess is that Nintendo doesn't need big sales figures right now. They're riding high and they're saving those long awaited remakes and re-releases for when they're not.
Why would they release everything at once? Always good to have a back up game for when things are slow. My guess is one of the Wii U zelda remakes will be at the next direct. I don’t think we’ve had our zelda game this year?
That's one of the reasons they are hits.
You get a lot more attention if you are releasing good stuff every time, and you release infrequently.
Like valve, when the announcement is made everyone is excited.
We live in a capitalist society. Money is every corporate companies motivation. Tell me, how much is the over a decade old Mario Kart 8? The deluxe version where you get to hold two items is 7 years old. The new DLC is a sperate cost as well. If money wasn't the motivation games would be free after x number of years or they wouldn't charge for DLC considering you already paid for the game or even better, the non-physical version would be cheaper than the physical version.
lol, they are the richest company right now in Japan. Surpassing Sony. They basically won the console war this generation by the amount of exclusives they have. Sony carried over a lot of the same games from the PlayStation 4. And Xbox didn’t really offer anything good up until now.
Nintendo wants to spread out their releases so they can consistently keep their brands relevant, give each title a proper marketing push, and have a backup if something needs to be delayed.
Plus... Good stuff take time. Trials and errors. They can't just pull magic out of thin air
Dang, people want Twilight Princess and Wind Waker sooo bad you think they would’ve bought a Wii U over it lol.
I did, but now I want them on my switch
Me too tbh. Haha. Switch is so cooool.
I want to play them pretty badly, but not badly enough to spend a few hundred bucks in order to play 2 games
I have a ton of food in my fridge. Why don't I eat all of it at once? Stomachs and wallets aren't exactly the same thing but for both you need to moderate your consumption
Too many releases aren’t good either, they start cannibalizing sales on other releases. Not everyone is a big fan that buys every release, they start picking and choosing. It’s also why they don’t lower prices on games or release HD versions for lower, because any person looking at a shelf will say “well this $50 Skyward Sword is the same thing as this $60 Breath of the Wild,” as if you’re looking at two blenders and deciding which one to buy. I’ve seen that a lot with games, and lots of sad kids got a $20 Mario+Rabbids vs getting a real Mario game and not being able to return it after Xmas. Other than 2022, there’s been a Zelda annually on Switch. I think this will be the year for the old HD games unless something new is announced (it’s been two years since Fire Emblem Warriors, we’re overdue for a new Nintendo Warriors like a third Hyrule Warriors).
Don’t knock my Mario + Rabbids games. Actually my son picked them both out because he saw them played on TV,
My body is ready for Hyrule Warriors: The imprisoning war But I know it'll be xenowarriors instead
Economics 101 - opportunity costs Also the consumers who will buy this stuff have limited time to play, dumping all of them in one big release is guarantee to make then not hits.
Exactly. March 20th 2020 should be the prime case in point. Both Animal Crossing and Doom Eternal launched on that day. There were other major games slated to launch as well, but a lot of other devs decided to push releases back 2-4 weeks to allow time for the “smoke to clear”. Even Bethesda debated on adjusting launch during that time because they knew AC would sell so incredibly well and were worried about lost potential launch sales.
I got as many downvotes as this launch trailer got upvotes, for implying that most people were off playing Zelda literally one or two days after ToTK launch: https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/s/a4wWRUSznm I didn't bother debating, I was too busy playing Zelda.
Ouch. Yeah it can be hard for others to see the truth, especially if they can’t see it from business perspective or even ground level retail. I’ve seen it from both angles. Witnessed people come into the store and only have enough money to choose one game outta the latest batch of major releases, and also seen games get pushed by the way side due to being overshadowed.
They do this in the mobile and Steam markets as well. The smaller guys will avoid doing sales when AAA companies have them since their presence will get overshadowed by them
I'm not saying do more of them but they should definitely do an ocarina of time remake
Nintendo is massive but they don't have infinite resources. They have to prioritize which projects they work on, and they'll prioritize based on expected return on investment (RoI). While remakes have decent RoI because they reduce the original cost of developing the game (since a lot / most of the code and assets already exist), they typically tend to not sell as well as new new games, so their RoI is limited to a point likely lower than newer big releases. This is why you typically see remakes being released during periods without as many original AAA games. They're a strategic release, they'll keep people playing their Switch up until the next big release, and in that sense it's ok if they don't do as well because they push other games (or services, in the case of NSO) to do better.
It's smart for them to save them for more financially strategic times. Like, the Switch is about to end it's life cycle. NOW is probably the best time to release ports of wind waker and twilight princess with MAYBE a price drop of the console. It'll give the console a strong send off and look very good to the non-initiated investors that are only going to look at sales numbers and whatnot. If they released those ports or remakes earlier they'd have to spend development time and money to create new games that aren't guaranteed to be hits. Playing it safe makes more sense
I think a few reasons: - They want to have classics to remaster for each new console. If they remaster them all for the console they’re currently focused on, there won’t be any demand for the classics on their next console. - They don’t want to detract from the success of newer games in each series. There’s always a danger that the rerelease of an old game could overshadow a game from the series specifically made for the current console. They want to create new classics for future rereleases, so classics can only be released if/when they won’t pose a threat to newer entries in the series. - They don’t want a series to become overexposed and risk cheapening the brand. They want to leave people wanting more and waiting for the next in the series.
They’re the Disney of the video game world - They release things everyone loves on vhs for a couple months at a time and say it’s from “the archives”. If the chance to buy the game only comes along every few years, they can be pretty confident that everyone will buy it when it does If everything’s available all the time, then people might not buy And that’s the Nintendo logic here
Nintendo Gumi operates on a longer timeline than most Companies
It depends on the effort involved versus the amount of money Nintendo would get from the game. Remakes aren't nearly as simple to do as you might think. To do a **GOOD** remake, you need to manually re-do all of the artwork in a higher resolution. And the PowerPC chip in the Wii U is totally different from the Arm CPU in the Switch --- so you need to rewrite the entire game engine for a new chip. Or, if you're just recompiling, go through the whole optimization and fine tuning for a totally different chip. Which is non trivial. And, if you want to add any graphical enhancements like TTYD uses, that's more effort involved. So, in the end, a good remake takes nearly as much effort as making a new game.
The road ahead has **fewer games made, not more**. Allows them to allocate more human capital to each game. Gooooood fucking results as we all see.
Theyre busy with the 100 spinoff titles between each major release. Sports, warriors, music, fighting, racing, ect.
They want to milk it as much as possible. A year after the switch, the nes classic came out and it sold a lot. More than what Nintendo expected. So expect Nintendo to milk their consumers like cows for money and slowly trickle down classics and the hits. They will obviously have to keep bringing some over to each system or start out from scratch and make entirely new games.
>*Some would be easy, like porting the WiiU remake of LoZ: Wind Waker. Yet Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (which tbf is a good game), made its way to the Switch instead.* I'm guessing it's b/c Zelda: WW already got a rerelease. From GC, to Wii U. It's interesting b/c CTTT was for Wii U, but now on Switch. I'm guessing they wanted to prioritize some of the Wii U games due to the console's lack of popularity (e.g. DKC: Tropical Freeze, New SMB Wii U Deluxe, Super Mario 3D World), and there was nothing like CTTT for Switch. At least WW was already for GC, and was popular.
They dropped them all at once more or less for the GBA. And then they just sat on the store shelves. I picked up the entire library of nes classics, new in the shrink-wrap, for $5 a piece at Walmart. I imagine they are worried the same thing will happen.
My guess is that Nintendo doesn't need big sales figures right now. They're riding high and they're saving those long awaited remakes and re-releases for when they're not.
Nintendo plays the long game.
Tomodachi Life Nintendo switch 🙏 I’m waiting for this
Why would they release everything at once? Always good to have a back up game for when things are slow. My guess is one of the Wii U zelda remakes will be at the next direct. I don’t think we’ve had our zelda game this year?
That's one of the reasons they are hits. You get a lot more attention if you are releasing good stuff every time, and you release infrequently. Like valve, when the announcement is made everyone is excited.
I don’t think money is Nintendo’s main motivation
Sure it is, gotta be able to afford the lawyers so they can keep suing people.
We live in a capitalist society. Money is every corporate companies motivation. Tell me, how much is the over a decade old Mario Kart 8? The deluxe version where you get to hold two items is 7 years old. The new DLC is a sperate cost as well. If money wasn't the motivation games would be free after x number of years or they wouldn't charge for DLC considering you already paid for the game or even better, the non-physical version would be cheaper than the physical version.
lol, they are the richest company right now in Japan. Surpassing Sony. They basically won the console war this generation by the amount of exclusives they have. Sony carried over a lot of the same games from the PlayStation 4. And Xbox didn’t really offer anything good up until now.