At the annual Nintendo Shareholders Meeting, a question about development time was presented. In response, Nintendo detailed how it is hiring more members for its teams to help combat the growing development time needed for titles. However, the company noted that at a certain point, longer development times are unavoidable as technology becomes more and more complex. They can attempt to bring dev time down, but Shinya Takahashi noted that the company can only do so much.
We’ve seen massive gaps between some of Nintendo’s biggest releases, such as the six-year gap between The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. However, Nintendo has done an excellent job at providing smaller titles in between. This included games like The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Cadence of Hyrule, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD.
The above goes for all series, especially with Super Mario. The Nintendo Switch did not receive a new 2D Mario title until 2023 with Super Mario Bros. Wonder, yet we had dozens of Mario titles to hold players over. This release was brought up in the shareholder’s meeting, with Takashi Tezuka stating that he wants to create games that are fun in shorter amounts of time. He also stated that Nintendo is assessing short-term titles while developing games that will make players love Nintendo and its IPs.
During the same meeting, Nintendo also commented on game soundtracks. The company was asked about its stance on putting game soundtracks across streaming services and what it thinks about game soundtracks overall, and it stated that “music is necessary for IP expansion”.
