The Mario creator assures us there won't be a shortage of software next year.
Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto is confident that Wii U will have a strong year in 2015 as far as software is concerned, with third-parties getting involved in developing more spin-off games.
During the company's latest investor meeting Q&A, the Mario mastermind went so far as to say Wii U's games lineup in the new year will be "plentiful," as the company strives to increase its overall software output. His full response, as unofficially translated by NeoGAF user StreetsAhead, is as follows:
"On development time, we have already completed the step of learning new development techniques. So, we should experience less developmental delays stemming from learning new hardware. From now on, it becomes a matter of if we can use our experience efficiently and one part of our plan to do so is to use 'spin off games', which allow us to use our major title franchises, but create on a smaller scale and we are working hard on making these sort of derived products. In this way, we are preparing to expand on our characters while also increasing the number of software we output and allowing our customers to have their next experiences in certain franchises without waiting three years.
"We are also working more and more with many different 3rd party companies to produce our titles [note: this seems to refer to outsourcing things like asset creation, cut-scenes, etc] and from this year we have begun to work with some software developers for the very first time. We are in the process of creating a system where we are actively seeking outside assistance to help us create an abundance of major titles. I feel that next year's Wii U titles are plentiful. We will continue working hard."
Earlier this year, Wii U owners were treated to a Zelda spin-off/crossover with Hyrule Warriors. What other sorts of third-party projects tied to Nintendo's iconic franchises would you like to see? Comment below and let us know.
I don't want to see just spin-offs thought. F-Zero, Ice Climbers, Duck Hunt, 1080, Excite, Golden Sun, Advance Wars, etc. There's plenty of franchises to bring back as well as spin-off. The software library has to be diverse enough without having a bunch of Mario/Zelda spin-offs.
Ian, you would have at least some semblance of a valid point if we didn't already know about a bunch of original, non-derivative games coming from Nintendo next year. This isn't instead of new things, but in addition. Nintendo finally seems to have gotten to the point where they realized third parties weren't coming back and decided to up their own output to support the system all on their own.
Great job ignoring the first sentence of my post. You're absolutely right, Nintendo only makes derivatives of existing IPs, like Splatooon and S.T.E.A.M.
um,, Splatoon started out as a Mario Sunshine sequel so no Ian was right, they changed it to be more weird which is in line with their normal way of doing things. Also picking TWO games out of all their other examples, really so that's how you prove they aren't just making a token effort by reminding us they have ONLY two new games coming out, one of which started out as a Mario Spin-off.
"I also feel that Nintendo now makes the mistaken assumption that the IP is the selling point instead of the gameplay."
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[font=helvetica, arial, 'liberation sans', sans-serif][/size]Ian, you then list Nintendo Land as a launch title that tries to sell itself on its IP... but the whole point of Land was that the gameplay was all new, made specifically w/ GamePad in mind. Sure the clothes looked like recognizable characters, but the meat of the game was all about mechanics and control. Maybe they could have sold it better, yeah. But they still realize their strength is in compelling experiences unavailable anywhere else.[/font]
Nintendo Land is a weird case of a game that has no idea who its intended audience is. Reading too much into it specifically isn't going to reveal much about the kinds of things we're talking about. I also disagree that Nintendo's franchises don't have enough in the way of stories to work for this kind of thing, and I think the best example to the contrary is Hyrule Warriors, which revels in Zelda fan service to great effect.
There is no point in guessing though we don't have a clue what this all means
Man instead of being so negative I'm going post my spinoff requests.
Mushroom Kingdom...think Kingdom Hearts but set in nintendos ips.
Bowser's Large and in Charge....a comedy platformer staring the big ole guy
Punch Out Fitness...that uses dual remotes.
Metroid Spinoff where you play as competing mercs trying to capture Samus
Am I the only one who wants a new Mario Strikers? I was playing the GameCube original a few weeks ago. Goddamn, I forgot how fun that game is.Probably. I didn't like either of those games.