Nintendo Wants to Increase Staff and “Watch over Old IPs”

Earlier this week, Miyamoto revealed that he would like some of Nintendo’s franchises to be developed internally. He also took note of the problems warranted by a limited staff size and a need for sales on the Wii U. Satoru Iwata and Reggie Fils-Aime have also stated that Nintendo’s first party efforts will push the console into people’s living rooms, and third party support will sprout from that larger install base. Of course, all this means Nintendo needs to focus on juggernaut titles guaranteed to sell over more niche franchises. After Miyamoto stated he wants Nintendo game series to be developed internally, concerns were raised about the future of some of Nintendo’s smaller IPs that have been on hold as of late.

Shigeru Miyamoto has spoken again on the topic, stating the company’s solution. A massive hiring spree is occurring, allowing teams to grow. With a bigger staff comes more resources, thus more software.

“[We’ve] been working on what we can do to increase our internal staff in a way that will allow us to have more projects going at the same time. — Shigeru Miyamoto

He then goes on to talk about his experience with EAD Tokyo, the studio behind Super Mario 3D World, and Retro Studios, the minds creating Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. Shigeru Miyamoto relates his methods for a push in software for the developer back to his first statement.

“We’re doing this not by going out of house to different companies and having them develop games for us, but instead by working with partner companies and subsidiaries in a way that allows the Tokyo studio to run more projects.

“Certainly we do feel that we want to leverage the capabilities of Retro Studios further, because as we’ve seen from the Metroid games, they’re a very capable studio.

“The development style that we have with those companies is much closer to our own internal development style. It allows us to expand our resources.” — Shigeru Miyamoto

Miyamoto also talked about Nintendo’s attitude towards third party support, and Nintendo’s preference to rely on their own talent.

“In the past, we had what we called the collaboration projects, which were sort of like an outside company almost doing a cover of our games with their own studios. The determination that we’ve come to more recently is that we prefer to have an internal Nintendo producer who’s there to oversee any outside development work that’s happening, to make sure that it’s in line with what we expect out of our games. I guess in one sense, some of those outside companies that we worked with, they also have a tendency to continue to work on the same projects over time. They tend to look more like internal companies or internal partners than they really actually are.” — Shigeru Miyamoto

Nintendo’s focus on first party is a solution that has proven effective time and time again; however, this is the company’s venture into a new console, and there are always growing pains. A group of new developers will help the company gain some legs in the next-gen battle. It takes a village to raise a console.