Nintendo’s game development costs see “inevitable” rise but bigger budgets “do not necessarily equate to better ideas”

As game development continues to become more and more expensive across the industry, incurring significant costs for many game makers, Nintendo has chimed in with its design philosophy – supposedly unchanged since the NES era.

According to Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s research and development costs have seen a rise each year that has been “in some ways inevitable”.

However, for this Japanese giant, the quality of the games created is “more important than the amount spent on development”.

As a Nintendo board member, executive fellow and representative director, Miyamoto suggested that despite the rising costs of doing so, Nintendo continues to refine its products until they’re “something that our consumers will be satisfied with”.

He shared this stance with fellow board members during a financial results briefing for the first half of Nintendo’s financial year.

Originality is key

During the call, Miyamoto noted that Nintendo isn’t in a position to make “sweeping statements” about which ideas are worth pursuing in the current games landscape but does believe each game should be original – “something which has not existed in the past” – to deliver more value to gamers.

“We believe that it is important to nurture developers who take this unique concept to heart, allocate funds to development if necessary, and release games only after we are confident in the product,” he said.

Nintendo has implemented this philosophy on many occasions during the Switch’s lifetime alone, with ambitious projects like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses all significantly delayed before becoming among the best-selling titles in their respective franchises.

This emphasis on unique creations is also a philosophy shared by Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai, who previously warned of market research producing “average and mediocre” games.

Investing in a “development environment”

While Nintendo is clearly willing to embrace higher costs to create unique and experimental titles, senior managing executive officer and corporate director Shinya Takahashi noted that this doesn’t always mean spending large sums of money.

“I believe unique titles that are small in scale, but worth polishing can be created by expanding on the ideas of a small number of developers, rather than spending large sums of money on every game,” he said.

Senior executive officer and corporate director Ko Shiota added: “Bigger budgets do not necessarily equate to better ideas.”

Shiota also hinted at a similarity in “development environments” between Switch and its successor, which is still due for a full reveal this fiscal year and is now confirmed to be backwards compatible.

He noted that an understanding of developing for certain hardware in itself becomes a cost-saving measure over time, rather than starting over experimenting with and developing for brand-new hardware.

“In order to create very Nintendo products which integrate hardware and software, we must invest in the development environment,” concluded Nintendo president and representative director Shuntaro Furukawa.