Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has stated the company's belief that unique creativity is more important than development costs.
Discussing the rising cost of game development in a recent Q&A with investors, Miyamoto admitted that the company's development expenses have increased every year. “As our development scale has increased, the corresponding increase in costs is, in some respects, inevitable,” he said.
“We continue to refine our products until we are confident that we have created something that our consumers will be satisfied with,” Miyamoto said. “With that in mind, the important thing is to find ideas worth perfecting, and this hasn't changed since the Nintendo Entertainment System era.
“Everyone has different interests, so we can't make general statements about which ideas are worth pursuing. However, one thing we are sure of is that it should be something that hasn't existed in the past. The more polished it is something that has never existed before, the more value it brings.”
As a result, Nintendo aims to nurture developers who “take this unique concept seriously,” allocate funds as needed, and release games “only after we trust the product.”
Miyamoto added that it is “possible to create attractive products based on intriguing ideas, without incurring significant costs.”
“We believe that not all products require high costs,” he continued. “Even in the case of video games, with today's technology it is possible to create fun games with a small number of developers in a short period of time. We think it is important not to lose sight of this perspective.”
Shinya Takahashi, senior managing director and corporate director, commented: “I think you can create unique titles that are small in scale but worth polishing by expanding on the ideas of a small number of developers, rather than spending large sums of money. money in each game. “While overall research and development costs are increasing, there are certain products whose expenses remain relatively stable, depending on our approach.”
Ko Shiota, senior managing director and corporate director, added that the merger of the home console and handheld console for Switch allowed Nintendo to integrate their development environments, which will continue with Switch 2.
“As we are already familiar with Nintendo Switch, maintaining a similar foundation for development environments in the future will allow us to carry over the experience we have already created, which should lead to a reduction in research and development costs over time,” he stated. .
The investor question follows expensive and high-profile flops last year, including Warner Bros.' Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League and Sony's canceled Concord.
Meanwhile, Nintendo is preparing for the launch of Switch 2. While reports have suggested that its graphics could be comparable to those of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S with the ability to run Unreal Engine 5, its specifications are less powerful.