Tendo City

So, right now, Nintendo still doesn't have any Mario games announced for 2023.  Nothing.   If this continues, this would be the first year in quite some time without any Mario-related titles.  There is the moving coming soonish, but that's not a videogame...

Last year they had a few Mario games, but fewer than in most recent years before it.  It was a little odd.

Of course, the Switch in general has next to nothing announced first-party-wise after Zelda in May.  And Nintendo is skipping E3 this summer, since they say they have nothing to show.  That's kind of odd.

We know that there have been rumors about a Switch II for years, but it keeps getting pushed back farther and farther, probably because of covid-related parts shortages and price increases.  I think that if not for covid a new Switch would be out by now, but, it's not.  I'm okay with this, the Switch games I play mostly run fine, but clearly as far as game development goes something has changed at Nintendo given the absence of game announcements or an E3 showing to announce major stuff for this holiday.

The question is, what's going on?  Are they just working on stuff they don't want to announce yet?  Are most first party titles after Zelda delayed until whenever Nintendo's next console releases, but that's not ready yet due to parts delays, and that's the main problem?  I'm fine with the Switch continuing on, but they'd need to release games for it for that to happen... so yeah, it's odd.

Of course, Nintendo knows that they have never followed up a hit console with a system more successful than their previous system, so they've got to be feeling some pressure, they've got to get this right.  But still, something odd is going on and I wonder how long it will be until we know exactly what Nintendo's plans are.

My response to this vanished into the ether, but suffice it to say we're still getting a Mario game a year, even if it's a remaster or an Ubisoft spinoff.  If I were to guess why mainline Mario games are getting more seldom, I think development time has been slowly going up even for Nintendo.  Look at Tears of the Kingdom and you'll see a game that was meant to turn around in something closer to Majora's Mask time or even Super Mario Galaxy 2 but it's turned into this.  Now, I don't see that as a bad thing myself.  I want the game good, and I want the developers to be treated well and not put through crunch again and again.

Oh and by the way, apparently recent releases of old Squeenix games have been removing hidden "developer rooms" because of dialog commenting on "crunch culture".  I don't think hiding that is healthy mind you.  I think it's good to keep all that highlighted so people know.

On the one hand, you're likely right about a big part of why we're seeing fewer Mario games is because of how much longer game development times are now than they were in the past.  Game development just keeps taking longer and longer and costing more and more, this industry is in a vicious cycle as games get bigger and more expensive, demanding more revenue than ever to break even on. 

Now, things getting more expensive to buy over time is natural since we live in a world which has inflation, and in some ways games aren't as expensive to buy as they once were.  A lot of console games in the early '90s were much more expensive than any game now, of course.  I'm not saying game prices can't go up too, they can... but the constant drip of microtransaction money, to DLC, battle passes, of whatever other kind of microtransaction you can imagine, is pretty brutal.  Not all games are monetized of course, but most things AAA(A) is.  But in a lot of cases the games have to be monetized, because they cost so much to make that that's the only way to make your costs back and maybe turn a profit!

Yes, the videogame industry is far more popular and successful than most people could have dreamed 30 years ago, and successful games sell massive numbers, but due to the constant pace of required budget increases due to how massively expensive AAA games are to make, the number of major releases each year, from all publishers, steadily decreases.   Of course the number of games from indie developers just keeps going up, but they are two very different markets. 

Nintendo defied this steady decrease of release volume for a long time since they decided back in the mid '00s to go a generation behind everyone else tech-wise, but since covid started we've definitely started seeing the effects of both remote work and Nintendo's preparation for a new hardware generation that they continue delaying due to parts shortages and the like.  And so now, even Mario's got problems, as he has no games scheduled for release this year despite the Mario movie being a big deal.  There probably is at least one big Mario game in development, but with how overly long AAA games take to develop, it's probably not ready despite Mario Odyssey being a somewhat old game now.

On that note, meanwhile, Nintendo is following the price-increase-to-fund-increased-dev-costs bandwagon by raising the new Zelda games' price the $70.  It was inevitable so sure, whatever.  It's more telling that this seemingly "quick-to-develope sequel with the same core mechanics and some of the same game world" game ... still isn't out, more than six years after its predecessor.  Remember when they got Majora's Mask done in two years?  Now that kind of game takes SIX years.  It's kind of sad.  I don't care much about BotW 2 much at all myself, of course, I think BotW is the worst Zelda game ever since I don't like open world games.  But it's a very telling thing that it's taken this long to finish despite there being so little to explain why other than "games take forever to finish now". 

For a perhaps even better example of this, Ubisoft has like 10,000 employees but currently is struggling to release... well, just about anything.

Ubisoft's teams are too busy imitating Pepe Le Pu to make their games.  There I said it.

(21st March 2023, 8:07 AM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: [ -> ]Ubisoft's teams are too busy imitating Pepe Le Pu to make their games.  There I said it.

Sadly true.