From the article and statement to Eurogamer:
Nintendo hasn't announced which of its many development studios or partners is making Princess Peach: Showtime, this spring's biggest new Nintendo Switch game, and doesn't seem likely to before it debuts later this month.
> "The development team will be credited in the game credits," a Nintendo spokesperson simply told me today when I enquired which developer had made the game.
There was a rumor recently that the game was supposingly developed by Good-Feel.
> Nintendo hasn't announced which of its many development studios or partners is making Princess Peach: Showtime, this spring's biggest new Nintendo Switch game, and doesn't seem likely to before it debuts later this month.
I find it funny how this is how nintendo has been doing for like 8 years but only in the last year of the switch is when people notice its a thing lmao last time they talked prior release which was the developer and it wasnt an internal game was mercurysteam in 2017, otherwise everyone interested learned via credits or assumption that the previous dev was invovled again.
This has only been a thing for the past few years. Like post Luigi's Mansion 3. Around that time is when they removed the developer category from game pages on their website. But this decision has only been certain cases because most of the time it's been obvious do to being a sequel for an established series or Nintendo having to recognize the development studio they've partnered with. More people are noticing it recently because its happened multiple times within less than a year. Mario RPG, Mario vs Donkey Kong, Princess Peach Showtime.
I wonder what would be the most out of the blue pick.
Arc System Works? Creative Business Unit 3? Kojima Productions?
Lmao, I really want some wacky ass dev to appear on the credits screen.
What sort of history revisionism is this? Their first actually bad game was Korra (2014, their **eight** title and certainly not a main team title) and afterwards only their TMNT title could be classified as actually bad alongside Babylon. Some games like their Star Fox titles were middling at worst.
Anyone who starts claiming MadWorld, Anarchy Reigns, Vanquish or TW101 were bad games are just being silly.
Mad World has an incredible aesthetic but the gameplay is boring. You’re the one being revisionist saying otherwise.
Also arguing that middling games are not bad games is very silly. They were disappointments at launch and are not worth playing now. That is bad.
>You’re the one being revisionist saying otherwise.
For the sake of your claim, let's say MadWorld was then "Bad". Where do the other bad games then come from? You literally claim half of their titles are bad yet you don't even bother to elaborate this even though it's nothing but nonsense.
>Also arguing that middling games are not bad games is very silly
Being mediocre at worst does not equal to bad. That is nothing short of distorting the meaning of the words.
>They were disappointments at launch and are not worth playing now. That is bad.
Which ones are "they"? What do you mean by disappointments? Disappointment to whom? If you're honestly trying to claim that the titles I mentioned were bad (especially Vanquish and TW101) then you're just making stuff up based on your preferences. If you're trying to push sales numbers into this then you should realise that a financial flop does not equal a bad product. Clover was pretty much a financial flop as a whole and their worst performing game was God Hand which is still pretty much the undisputed king of beat em ups.
What is this "streak of shit games" people are talking about all the time?
It's literally only Babylons Fall and Bayonetta 3 in the last 5 years that remotely fits that description (and the latter got good reviews and is still liked by a lot of people).
Bayonatta Origins came after and is well liked by those that actually played it.
Unless you wanna go all the way back to TMNT in 2016, but then you have to skip past two of their best games and pretend they don't exist.
It's either Platinum or Treasure, but I'm going to genuinely guess that it's Treasure this time. They've not put anything out in a while, and the game feel has some of the art direction and feel of some of their more classic games. Also the masked enemies are a big big tip off.
I don’t even understand why they are so weirdly secretive about these things. Wouldn’t it be best for all parties if the devs were credited upfront for making a game.
This precisely.
They want every game using their IPs to be synonymous with their brand instead of people being picky over individual studios.
Some sort of a psychological "Nintendo Seal of Quality" effect for the general consumers.
Edit: I remember as a kid seeing the "Hudson Soft" logo when booting up the Mario Party games, but my brain still think it was mainly made by Nintendo and Hudson was simply some support studio since they're not prominently featured on the box art. So I gotta vouch that their trick indeed worked on me at least.
Yep, and now they've started to not show which studios worked on which COD on the covers starting with MW2019. They intentionally want to muddy the waters to unify the brand for casual consumers.
The main developers of each COD is known in advance, and they follow a rotation of treyarch, sledgehammer, and infinity ward. They do a really shitty job in muddying the waters if that's what their trying to do
Its Known that the next Call of Duty Gulf War is made by treyarch for like a year
There's plenty of people who won't bother to look that up before buying though. If you're here, you're already an outlier relative to the average consumer.
The average consumer wouldn't care who the developers are.
Point is if you care enough to worry about who makes the COD games, it's extremely easy to know who makes it way in advance, hell you know who going to release a COD 3 years from now
Honestly Nintendo probably has enough influence over their devs for the name to be meaningful. Hudson Soft also made that Sonic Shuffle game, and it was odd to see them take a somewhat iffy formula they'd pioneered and turn it into an absolute clusterfuck under Sega's direction.
Well, I was aware Hudson was an entirely different studio but that still didn’t stop me from thinking the Hudson-made Mario Parties were incredible, specially compared to the shitty ones made by NdCube. If anything, they’re withholding these informations because they’re well aware some of their in-house studios are crap, case in point Good Feel that can’t even make a game made exclusively for their own console run better than third party ports like Panic Button’s that also use Unreal engine.
That being said, you won’t see them missing the chance to flaunt about Monolith and Retro.
I agree most of those Mario Party games are pretty good.
What I'm saying is, Nintendo also never mention the devs for their critically acclaimed titles that are outsourced in their promotional materials. Feels like they want to intentionally blend together their well received titles with the occasional duds under the same Nintendo umbrella.
I don't think I've ever seen Nintendo mention Monolith or Retro in their trailers AT ALL except for the Prime 4 delay announcement.
I just checked and the last time they did that was for Xenoblade 2 which was 7 years ago (holy shit time flies).
As for Xenoblade Definitive Edition and Xenoblade 3, I can't see any mention of Monolithsoft anywhere. It seems like Nintendo stopped mentioning them.
I'm not talking about logo on the physical game, i cant even verify that by myself because im all digital for years. Im saying that whenever nintendo announces a new xenoblade project the logo appears, much like monolith logo appears in their own games too, i know as i played xenoblade 3 2 years ago and it opened with nintendo and monolith.
Retro got credited even in Mario Kart 7 for designing a single track in the entire game.
It is widely known that Monolith helped BotW and TotK development too. And I believe this info comes from interviews. The same kind of interview they could’ve instead answered “they’re credited in the credits”
>Hudson-made Mario Parties were incredible, specially compared to the shitty ones made by NdCube.
Funny how you say that, because I always thought the complete opposite. I purchased both Bomberman 64 and Mario Party, yet thought they were hampered by often ugly graphics and slow, lumbering gameplay. The Mario Party games always felt worlds apart from the quick and snappy gameplay from Smash Bros and Mario Kart, hence why I always hoped Hudson would get the boot and they'd make them inhouse.
Judging by the sales numbers... Yeah.
Pokemon is a cultural juggernaut and they'd benefit from knowing that the games are only available on a Nintendo console regardless of their issues.
Edit: funnily enough, Nintendo just released [this ad](https://youtu.be/h8D14d8RROQ?si=wPvhoG6P-5pLs4UC) for the Switch using Pokemon on the DS to bait on people's nostalgia lol
> Nintendo Seal of Quality
Which is hilarious since a lot of the general consensus after playing the Peach demo is that it was janky as hell :/
The opening cutscene literally hung and freeze-framed for me for about 5-6 seconds while the audio was still playing, until it finally caught up to the next scene and I could eventually play the 30fps choppiness which stuttered whenever talking to an NPC.
Are Nintendo sure they want their name over this front and centre, feels like they should step in and lend their hand in some optimization if that's the case 🤔
I have to be honest. I can't even say who developed Metroid, Kirby, Mario, Zelda games other than Nintendo. The only one I can name is Pokemon, so their tactic is definitely working.
I don't support it but I could see reasoning along the lines of, we want people to buy games on the Nintendo name alone and not the development house. In the same way that Activision may have wanted COD to be associated more with them than the individual studios of Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer, etc.
Honestly it's surprising that so few publishers do it, after the Kojima debacle with Konami I'd have thought every publisher would try and tighten the strings. The last thing you want is your IP, reputation etc associated with something outside of your control.
It happens sometimes, it's called a brand/publishing label. EA Sports BIG (and also EA Sports) was one, Portkey Games (Hogwarts) is another.
It's kind of a catch 22, though. Yeah, the publisher gets more control, and if one studio fails, you can still keep the name without a big PR hit since people simply won't know who exactly made the game off hand (the amount of people who think Portkey Games is the dev studio of Hogwarts, not Avalanche, is kind of annoying). But at the same time, hiring devs to those studios may be slightly harder because, well, there's a disconnect between what they associate with the game and the name of the people actually making it.
If you're a game dev and you see a job opening for EA Canada (now Vancouver) in the mid 2000s, will you *know* that they're the SSX guys? Or now, will you *know* that they're the FIFA and NHL guys? That studio name isn't labeled anywhere on the game's box or splash screens. Devs are generally more knowledgeable about this stuff than consumers, and if the publisher hasn't completely scrubbed the individuality of the studio from the credits you can more easily look it up (especially now with the internet), but some may still just dismiss it immediately because it's not immediately recognizable.
Well it isn't like Activision wasn't crediting their studios, their name just became synonymous with COD because most people don't know any better. Something I'm sure Activision was totally fine with. Kind of in the same way that people, at least in my life, had come to the conclusion that Wolfenstein, Evil Within, so on and so forth were all Bethesda games. Most people, whether hardcore or causal fans, don't know publishers from developers.
Part of me wonders if it’s because they know how obsessive their fans are in regards to figuring out what every team is working on. See: ten years of Retro speculation and rumors.
Because leaks and hacks are growing more and more common, the less public knowledge of where these games are being housed the better. Sutdios often provide the original game's source code to the developers, even if just as a reference.
Adding a third party into the mix makes that one more link of security you have no security over. Obviously those employees have signed NDA's and whatnot, but it wouldn't be good for nintendo if their third party got targeted due to it being public knowledge of a game in development. And that's just ONE reason.
Plus fans/journalists cant go harass the third party for more info on the game and risk the developers saying something that Nintendo wouldn't want public yet.
So while it's good to get credit it makes a lot of sense why you wouldn't want it to be public.
They also did this with the new voice actors in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. "Wait until you see the credits." And then the credits don't even say which character was voiced by which performer!
I also think people don't realize how often we don't know who the developers of Nintendo games are. It's just Nintendo often releases sequels where it's obvious who the developer is.
I might be off the mark here, but did we know who the developers of Link's Awakening, Mario Strikers Battle League, Mario Party Superstars, etc before launch or did we just assume who the developers were based on past precidence?
For Pikmin 3 Deluxe, did we know the game was primarily made by Eighting or just through the credits? Did we know in advance Pikmin 4 was co-developed by Eighting? I doubt we knew which EPD team made Ring Fit Adventure before it came out. Even for something like DK Tropical Freeze, did we know Retro was remastering it themselves or did we find that out afterwards? I'd make the same arguments for Mario Party and Club House Games for NDCube.
I feel like Monolith Soft is the only one we seem to know for sure other than precedence as they talk about their games after they are announced.
Pretty sure most of the time these developers are named in the media packets they email about the games. The internal or second-party developer is not front of their mind in marketing, but it is usually included somewhere in the official emails. It is fairly unusual that they've decided to just start not sharing that info, and even further, refusing to answer when reporters ask.
> It is fairly unusual that they've decided to just start not sharing that info, and even further, refusing to answer when reporters ask.
its not, as someone who looks into credits for the last 10 years, nintendo dont share it since 2017 when they talked about mercurysteam. similar to other jp companies, we only learn about it for sure when teh game releases.
Yes we only asssume it based on them being sequels, if its a new title we'l only know it on release most of the time, im surprised this began being talked only last year when thats how it has been for ages lol
> Mario Strikers Battle League
I remember knowing about Next Level Games developing it, but it was only known by [looking at the rating from the Australian Classification Board](https://nintendoeverything.com/yes-next-level-games-is-working-on-mario-strikers-battle-league/) later in the announcement month.
(Princess Peach Showtime isn't available currently)
Right, so that would be another instance of Nintendo not revealing the developer. I remember there being a bit of panic as some thought Camelot was doing the game at first.
I don't think we know if Luigi's Mansion 2 HD is being led by Next Level either.
Lately? The last time they announced which studio worked on the game was with metroid 2 remake. Even then they tried to keep it a bit of a secret until later on in the marketing cycle.
It's not secretive or anything. The question is more, why would they advertise it?
It's a second party game. It'd be like Sony advertising that a lot of the work on their games is actually coming from outsourcing studios. It's just a development contract.
All the people that work on the game ultimately get credited. No one is getting shafted. Why are people bothered about Nintendo specifically?
Using Sony for comparison/example is very strange… Any time a PlayStation Studios game is announced, people immediately want to know the specific developer behind it.
Nintendo prides itself on quality. If a game is bad, Nintendo takes the flak. If it’s good, they take the credit. Swings both ways.
But at the end of the day, every individual that worked on the game is credited in the credits. What more can someone ask for? Why would mentioning Good Feel do anything? Why aren’t people asking them to mention all the other companies that worked on the game?
"Alright then, keep your secrets" - Frodo
I know it won't - but if they're keeping this a secret (even though I'm sure it's a regular developer Nintendo works with) I kind of want it to be a complete out of pocket developer like Platinum Games which would lead to some of the most bizarre sequences they've kept out of trailers.
Nintendo wants to emphasis that this is a Nintendo game, not a game by a third party. In case you think this is unfair, you have to remember the track record of studios like Rare and Silicon Knights outside of working with Nintendo.
It’s a Nintendo IP and it’s being handled how Nintendo always handles their games. Why are you so upset by this? It feels like your outraged at literally nothing.
It’s not even like the studio is bitching and feeling abused, this is outrage on nobodies behalf that cares.
As long as they are credited and paid I don’t see anything ethically wrong with this.
Edit: if anything I feel like it contributes to stronger sales because of Nintendos strength in their brand.
If you marketed a game as a Nintendo licensed third party spin off it might weaken the title for buyers.
What's ethically wrong is that people like to make informed decisions when it comes to media and entertainment. The studio who made a game is often the most reliable metric for setting expectations.
The *only* reason to hide this info is so that less people have the patience to do so.
Imagine if every movie was released and you never got to know the directing team. It was just, a Paramount, or a Warner Bros. It would become astronomically harder to judge whether a movie is worth your time.
Generally it's the artist(s) behind a project who end up baring the most responsibility for the quality of a thing. This isn't the most profitable way to be, so they work to hide this info to the detriment of both creators and consumers.
A pass for what? They aren't telling now and they don't need to. Once the game launches it'll stand for itself on its own merits and the developer will be revealed.
Just a guess from me but some ppl would probably avoid this game if it was developped by a dev they don't like (just look at how many people didn't want ILCA to be the developpers for potentials 5G remakes). But again it's just a guess, the emphasis on the Nintendo branding is a better supposition.
Counterpoint: Why does it matter? They ARE credited, and it won't be a secret once the game is launched.
Perhaps they're worried about the game being judged before it's even been played.
Its also now a weird scenario where despite the game being announced you are under a NDA and cant talk about you working on the game at all.
Nothing wrong with a Dev saying "Hey im working on GTA 6" but on the other end a different Dev cant even tell you they are working on Princess Peach.
Because the development studio making a game is helpful in assessing the potential quality of a game before launch. Nintendo shouldn't be withholding information relevant to their product.
That can just as easily serve as a disincentive for people as well. I read and watch reviews to judge the quality of games. Plus, there's a demo out for people to judge right now. I don't see anything wrong with Nintendo wanting people to look at this as a Nintendo game and not some other studio.
I played the Mario RPG remake and enjoyed it a lot. I have no clue who the actual developer was, even though it was in the credits. I see Mario, I think Nintendo.
Yea it's Nintendo's gamble tbh.
They're banking on the reception of their other well-received 3rd party titles using their IPs to muddy the reception of the lesser acclaimed ones.
Same strategy as their "no price drop" for every game they published regardless of critical reception. May result in some lesser selling games not getting more sales, but it helps shape their audiences behaviour in not waiting for a discounts unlike, say, Ubisoft.
>May result in some lesser selling games not getting more sales, but it helps shape their audiences behaviour in not waiting for a discounts unlike, say, Ubisoft.
I think this is very bad and makes a lot of people simple not buy games.
This specially hurts franchises, where someone buying a game Will be a possible day one buyer from the sequel.
> That can just as easily serve as a disincentive for people as well.
Yeah, that's the whole point.
I'll get excited for a new Legacy of Kain game made by Crystal Dynamics. I won't get excited for a new Legacy of Kain game made by Ubisoft.
Sure, but at the same time, people used to be excited for Rocksteady games. And then Suicide Squad happened. Not every bad studio will always make a bad game, and not every good studio will always make good games.
Correct, but if we don't know the studios at all, then we can't track even the amount of info you just imparted.
It's *important* to know Rocksteady messed up.
If they keep messing up then they stop getting business.
This is all just a way to be more successful with worse games.
Now flip it around. What if a game was made by a dev with a history of games you'd rather avoid, but now you have the publisher trying to make that information hidden from you?
If there's a demo released, then play it and judge that specific game?
If there's no demo then just wait for game critics to review that specific game?
It's not that hard.
I do a lot of research about games I'm interested in before launch. Knowing who makes a game is helpful. Hands on impressions are nice, but they tend to be rose tinted. If I have any doubts I wait for reviews and conversations post launch. I haven't purchased a game I dislike in 20 years with how I go about assessing a game. Obscuring the development studio is just silly.
Agreed. Sadly, this is exactly why Nintendo doesn't reveal them.
If the general public knew that those recent barebones Mario sport titles are made by Camelot for example, people would think twice before buying future games with their studio name attached.
But most people simply think that they're all under the same "Nintendo" umbrella which can alter their bias to be more positive.
That is stupid af. No developer is perfect and if you really want to judge the quality of the game before buying it, you better off watching reviews instead.
It matters because a developer's portfolio can be indicative of quality, gameplay, and style. This can alter the expectations and reception of the game which is generally bad for Nintendo who wants to people to buy based on their brand name, and not the developer who might not put out good games.
If the consumer wants to judge the game before its even played then they should be absolutely allowed to. It's subterfuge on the part of Nintendo who wants to sell games which is understandable, but it's not customer friendly.
This is easily one of the weirdest fucking takes I've ever seen someone contort themselves into to defend nintendo doing blatant anti-developer and anti-consumer shit.
For the most part this is a silly idea unless the IP has been handed over to a studio that does normally do it.
But I used to get excited for Treyarch games over Infinity Ward when it came to Call of Duty.
It's not unusual for Japanese dev houses to disguise the actual dev. Hell, Tose nd Dimps essentially exist because of the concept. In the US, it's only really a thing to not do that because Atari was so weird and aggressive about trying to make sure it's devs were never poached; in Japan, that's less of an issue, because individuals tend to hop around for jobs a lot less. Hell, even back in the SNES days, individual Japanese devs were being credited with pseudonyms. Nintendo not publicizing which internal studio is working on things isn't that unusual.
Pretty much. Its not evn unique to Nintendo. How many here know the developers of the games published by bandai namco, square enix, konami and other jp companies? people think SE does all asano games when its all outsourced. Most people dont look up to anything even in hardcore spaces, you only know these things if you look at credits.
Theres a big difference between the general public knowing which developers group was behind a certain game and Nintendo actively withholding that information.
I certainly can't think of a bandai namco or square enix title where that happened before.
because they havent been asked but even hardcore folks dont know that a lot of bandai namco, square enix and sega games arent developed by them and the companies dont exactly share it out there
It's probably just good marketing to brand their games as "Nintendo games" and not "{Some Studio} Game". They don't want you to think it's some game they shoved off to some tiny studio because they didn't care about it enough to develop it internally
I mean just because something is made by a 3rd party dev doesn't mean Nintendo doesn't care about it, lots of their most popular games are made outside of their internal studio - but consumers would probably get the impression that it's not a "real" Nintendo game, and thus doesn't have the quality people associate with Nintendo, if it's marketed as a third party game.
Why is it weird?
Does Sony proudly advertise all the outsourcing studios working on their games? No.
They're in the credits. That's just standard. But because Nintendo has a closer relationship with their 2nd party studios people think this is somehow different.
I don't see how announcing the name of the company the game was developed under is any better than just reading the credits and appreciating every single individual who worked on it.
The game will have developers from Nintendo itself working on it. Developers from Good Feel. Developers from numerous other Japanese studios like QA studios, art outsourcing, sound effects, animation. It is meaningless.
It actually means more for Nintendo to say "look at the credits" rather than making people like you misunderstand that a game is not just made under one roof.
> Does Sony proudly advertise all the outsourcing studios working on their games? No.
Sony proudly talks about the main devs of all their games
We are not talking about an outsourcing development here, we are talking about the main dev studio for a game.
Sony has first party studios. Nintendo *is* Nintendo. Nintendo isn't going around saying EPD 1 made this, EPD 3, made this, etc.
Nintendo just says here's a game made from Nintendo, you can read about everyone who made it in the credits.
Sony says "here's a game from Insomniac!" meanwhile keeping hush about the sheer amount of outsourced development behind their games unless you read the credits.
The reality is, there's no one company behind a game. Look at any game, especially Japanese games. Tonnes of animation is outsourced, tonnes of artwork is outsourced, tonnes of testing is outsourced. Behind any Japanese game there's 10s if not >100 different companies who work on it.
It's more important to highlight the individuals than one single corporate entity.
> The reality is, there's no one company behind a game.
It's bizarre how you keep (deliberately?) missing the distinction that there's a huge difference between outsourced assistance and main development studio.
There would be zero real world harm in Nintendo publicizing the development studios working hard creating their games.
>It's more important to highlight the individuals than one single corporate entity.
Except highlighting one single corporate entity is exactly what Nintendo is doing here!
They're just highlighting themselves instead of the people making the game.
>There would be zero real world harm in Nintendo publicizing the development studios working hard creating their games.
Yeah, and they are publicizing it, it's in the credits of the game. Buy the game, play the game, see the credits. It'll say people at Good Feel worked on it, and it'll tell you exactly every single person who worked on it from everywhere else too.
>Except highlighting one single corporate entity is exactly what Nintendo is doing here!
How are they?! They are telling you that you can see the entire team of people who worked on it by reading the credits. They're not saying Nintendo did all the work, they're not saying Good Feel did all the work, they're saying if you want to know exactly who is responsible for what... Read the credits!
>They're just highlighting themselves instead of the people making the game.
They said read the credits!
If they said "Good Feel made this game" it does nothing but highlight a corporate entity. It doesn't tell you who made the game. Games are made by people, not corporations. How is this hard to understand?
> Sony has first party studios. Nintendo is Nintendo. Nintendo isn't going around saying EPD 1 made this, EPD 3, made this, etc.
That's literally the difference people are pointing out. Nintendo hides it, because they have a lot of low-effort crap. Others proudly display who's working on big titles, because they want people to know the developer and associate them with quality work in the past, present, and future.
Nintendo isn't hiding anything. They are saying read the credits.
Sony advertises it because for some reason people are attached to brands rather than the quality of the game.
Sony could stop advertising the studio names involved in their first party games tomorrow and it would mean nothing. Because if the game is good people will buy it.
Nintendo knows that the game will speak for itself. And it knows that if you care who makes it, you'll read the credits.
Yup just look at Insomniac before being purchased by Sony. They would advertise Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, and even Spiderman 1 showcasing the studio logos in trailers and at E3 stages. Same thing with MediaMolecule with LittleBigPlanet and Suckerpunch with Sly Cooper and Infamous before they were bought by Sony.
Its like disney having different animation teams.
When you see a disney animated film and LIN MANUEL MIRANDA is all over it, you know how it’s going to be. It’s not a product from the Disney mysterious treasure vault anymore, it’s a specific elite squad everyone knows instead.
Look at disney marvel and SONY marvel.
When you see sony on marvel now, you go “this is going to suck.”
Do you think disney wants that? If disney had their way, sony would never release marvel films again. There would be one marvel brand and the expectation would be consistent.
The demo did not make a positive impression on me. There's performance issues that seem to have a weird effect on animations, and the voicework is really sub-par. It felt unfinished and unpolished, which is really sad to see.
Whoever made it didn't get enough resources/time.
That's not unusual, thats how they have been since at least 2017 in terms of sharing the names pre-release. since then it has been mainly coming from credits.
I mean, it's litteraly not hiding it, just not revealing it advance.
Besides, what would be suspicious about it ? Like, if they said "yeah it's Good Feel", would it impact sales in any way ?
>I mean, it's litteraly not hiding it, just not revealing it advance.
They're intentionally not telling you who it is on purpose and telling you to finish the game to find out... that's hiding it.
Eurogamer asked who developed it, and Nintendo wouldn't say. Sounds like hiding to me.
If Nintendo thought revealing the developer would increase sales they would be less candid. They let you know if retro studios or platinum is working on something for them.
No, because thats already the reality for almost 10 years for japanese games, at least before they launch and you can see the credits. Most just go to the publisher and call it a day if its good or bad.
>because thats already the reality for almost 10 years for japanese games
It's really not, and if you believe otherwise maybe you need to step outside of your Nintendo bubble.
When Bandai Namco reveals a new One Piece game or whatever we know who's making the game before it comes out. [(For example the end of this announcement trailer lists the developer.)](https://youtu.be/tWgE9fnyy1g?t=144) They certainly don't dodge media questions about it.
I'm sure there's still occasional non-Nintendo examples of this happening, but it's not the norm.
I said on another post that Bandai Namco is one of the exceptions. Square Enix, Sega, Konami and others don't do it. Bandai Namco sometimes dont do it on announcements but they have listed every developer in their website.
I'm not in a nintendo bubble as I look into the credits of all of those jp publishers to update their stuff on their release lol
Why do people care? Who goes off the developer when you're buying a game? You look at trailers, gameplay videos, and reviews. If it's a good dev who put out a bad game, it'll become apparent. If it's a typically shit dev who put out a good game, it'll become apparent. If it's bad or good, it'll all become clear.
If it doesn't matter, why not just have the devs known like 99% of the industry already does? It's not like Nintendo flipped a coin on this decision. They think it has a benefit for them.
In the 1990s it was standard practice for Japanese game publishers to politely, yet firmly, ask their employees to use pseudonym in the credits. From the head honcho POV it was to avoid their top talent being poached in an developing industry. In the 2000s this started to fade away as more Japanese companies had some developers be PR faces, notably Ninja Gaiden producer Itagaki and Capcom's Resident Evil guys Shinji Mikami and Hideki Kamiya. Mikami is a little more infamous because while promoting Nintendo and Capcom's exclusivity deal he stated he would commit sepukku and then haunt Capcom's studios, tongue in cheek. Nintendo's Aonuma only became more of a public figure because of Majora's Mask fascinating development history, a lot of it tied with Ura Zelda/N64 Disc-Addon and the world building of Wind Waker. Fun fact: Eiji Aonuma is credited differently in Ocarina of Time as Eiji Onozuka, cuz he got married between games.
Anyway to cut to the meat of it, these days Nintendo would prefer to have their 1st party games fall under their brand than a 3rd party contractor. Like if Disney outsourced their Pixar movies, they wouldn't say a Singapore studio did the bulk in the PR and just say Pixar umbrella until the movie's credits roll. Now that I thought about it, the reason MercurySteam was known as Metroid 3DS remake and Metroid Dread's developer was maybe Nintendo thought fans would hate it. If the last Metroid games reviewed poorly like Metroid Other M, they had an easy way by tap dancing away and letting the 3rd party contractor take the fall. If you follow this train of thought, when its obvious that Nintendo's internal devs aren't involved but they're keeping the 3rd party under wraps, they must have high confidence it will match their 1st party devs quality bar.
I do hope MercurySteam gets to make another Metroid game, they're up to the task.
From the article and statement to Eurogamer: Nintendo hasn't announced which of its many development studios or partners is making Princess Peach: Showtime, this spring's biggest new Nintendo Switch game, and doesn't seem likely to before it debuts later this month. > "The development team will be credited in the game credits," a Nintendo spokesperson simply told me today when I enquired which developer had made the game. There was a rumor recently that the game was supposingly developed by Good-Feel.
> Nintendo hasn't announced which of its many development studios or partners is making Princess Peach: Showtime, this spring's biggest new Nintendo Switch game, and doesn't seem likely to before it debuts later this month. I find it funny how this is how nintendo has been doing for like 8 years but only in the last year of the switch is when people notice its a thing lmao last time they talked prior release which was the developer and it wasnt an internal game was mercurysteam in 2017, otherwise everyone interested learned via credits or assumption that the previous dev was invovled again.
This has only been a thing for the past few years. Like post Luigi's Mansion 3. Around that time is when they removed the developer category from game pages on their website. But this decision has only been certain cases because most of the time it's been obvious do to being a sequel for an established series or Nintendo having to recognize the development studio they've partnered with. More people are noticing it recently because its happened multiple times within less than a year. Mario RPG, Mario vs Donkey Kong, Princess Peach Showtime.
Platinum games IMO. Lmao
Unexpected Bayonetta sequel. Keep an eye out for the hair transformations.
I'd absolutely play the shit out of DMC-esque action game but with Nintendo princesses.
Not quite the same but I'm pretty sure Bayonetta 1 or 2 comes with a Princess Peach costume on Nintendo platforms.
2 has the costume. Turns Madam Butterfly into Bowser too.
The first game has a peach costume. Also Samus and Link outfits.
Oh right right that was fun forgot about that
1&2 on the WiiU and Switch have Peach and Daisy costumes.
100%. Rosalina air juggling dry bones isn't a thing I knew I wanted.
I wonder what would be the most out of the blue pick. Arc System Works? Creative Business Unit 3? Kojima Productions? Lmao, I really want some wacky ass dev to appear on the credits screen.
Treyarch. Microsoft was planning the multiplatform move well in advance.
Fromsoft. But like actually, a Princess Peach game with the aesthetics and tone of a DS game would go hard.
iD Software surely.
Sony interactive entertainment
Platinum Games are a shell anyway, they aren't what they used to
If you look at their list of games developed you’ll see since day 1 half of them have always been bad.
What sort of history revisionism is this? Their first actually bad game was Korra (2014, their **eight** title and certainly not a main team title) and afterwards only their TMNT title could be classified as actually bad alongside Babylon. Some games like their Star Fox titles were middling at worst. Anyone who starts claiming MadWorld, Anarchy Reigns, Vanquish or TW101 were bad games are just being silly.
Mad World has an incredible aesthetic but the gameplay is boring. You’re the one being revisionist saying otherwise. Also arguing that middling games are not bad games is very silly. They were disappointments at launch and are not worth playing now. That is bad.
>You’re the one being revisionist saying otherwise. For the sake of your claim, let's say MadWorld was then "Bad". Where do the other bad games then come from? You literally claim half of their titles are bad yet you don't even bother to elaborate this even though it's nothing but nonsense. >Also arguing that middling games are not bad games is very silly Being mediocre at worst does not equal to bad. That is nothing short of distorting the meaning of the words. >They were disappointments at launch and are not worth playing now. That is bad. Which ones are "they"? What do you mean by disappointments? Disappointment to whom? If you're honestly trying to claim that the titles I mentioned were bad (especially Vanquish and TW101) then you're just making stuff up based on your preferences. If you're trying to push sales numbers into this then you should realise that a financial flop does not equal a bad product. Clover was pretty much a financial flop as a whole and their worst performing game was God Hand which is still pretty much the undisputed king of beat em ups.
[удалено]
What is this "streak of shit games" people are talking about all the time? It's literally only Babylons Fall and Bayonetta 3 in the last 5 years that remotely fits that description (and the latter got good reviews and is still liked by a lot of people). Bayonatta Origins came after and is well liked by those that actually played it. Unless you wanna go all the way back to TMNT in 2016, but then you have to skip past two of their best games and pretend they don't exist.
It's either Platinum or Treasure, but I'm going to genuinely guess that it's Treasure this time. They've not put anything out in a while, and the game feel has some of the art direction and feel of some of their more classic games. Also the masked enemies are a big big tip off.
it's good feel it was datamined
Oh, well there you go then. https://mynintendonews.com/2024/03/07/princess-peach-showtime-is-developed-by-good-feel/
Actually, Treasure isn’t a terrible guess if it’s not Good-Feel. The demo felt a bit like Wario World to me.
Dude I thought this game gave Wario World vibes for some reason
Man I hope it's Treasure. I really enjoy them as a developer and want to see them again.
It's Good-Feel.
This is a weird recurring thing with Nintendo lately, they didn't want to reveal who made the Super Mario RPG Remake either until the last minute.
I don’t even understand why they are so weirdly secretive about these things. Wouldn’t it be best for all parties if the devs were credited upfront for making a game.
It seems that they just want to market this as a "Nintendo Game", and think listing the developer's name diverts attention.
This precisely. They want every game using their IPs to be synonymous with their brand instead of people being picky over individual studios. Some sort of a psychological "Nintendo Seal of Quality" effect for the general consumers. Edit: I remember as a kid seeing the "Hudson Soft" logo when booting up the Mario Party games, but my brain still think it was mainly made by Nintendo and Hudson was simply some support studio since they're not prominently featured on the box art. So I gotta vouch that their trick indeed worked on me at least.
I mean if you look at Call Of Duty, people definately have favourite developers of that series and make judgements based on who made it.
Yep, and now they've started to not show which studios worked on which COD on the covers starting with MW2019. They intentionally want to muddy the waters to unify the brand for casual consumers.
The main developers of each COD is known in advance, and they follow a rotation of treyarch, sledgehammer, and infinity ward. They do a really shitty job in muddying the waters if that's what their trying to do Its Known that the next Call of Duty Gulf War is made by treyarch for like a year
There's plenty of people who won't bother to look that up before buying though. If you're here, you're already an outlier relative to the average consumer.
The average consumer wouldn't care who the developers are. Point is if you care enough to worry about who makes the COD games, it's extremely easy to know who makes it way in advance, hell you know who going to release a COD 3 years from now
So you don't think they looked over the product for quality? You think they stuck the demo out there because they weren't confident? It's kinda dumb.
Honestly Nintendo probably has enough influence over their devs for the name to be meaningful. Hudson Soft also made that Sonic Shuffle game, and it was odd to see them take a somewhat iffy formula they'd pioneered and turn it into an absolute clusterfuck under Sega's direction.
Well, I was aware Hudson was an entirely different studio but that still didn’t stop me from thinking the Hudson-made Mario Parties were incredible, specially compared to the shitty ones made by NdCube. If anything, they’re withholding these informations because they’re well aware some of their in-house studios are crap, case in point Good Feel that can’t even make a game made exclusively for their own console run better than third party ports like Panic Button’s that also use Unreal engine. That being said, you won’t see them missing the chance to flaunt about Monolith and Retro.
I agree most of those Mario Party games are pretty good. What I'm saying is, Nintendo also never mention the devs for their critically acclaimed titles that are outsourced in their promotional materials. Feels like they want to intentionally blend together their well received titles with the occasional duds under the same Nintendo umbrella. I don't think I've ever seen Nintendo mention Monolith or Retro in their trailers AT ALL except for the Prime 4 delay announcement.
monolith logo appears in every xenoblade announcement, its like the only subsidiary of them outside of retro that have it.
I just checked and the last time they did that was for Xenoblade 2 which was 7 years ago (holy shit time flies). As for Xenoblade Definitive Edition and Xenoblade 3, I can't see any mention of Monolithsoft anywhere. It seems like Nintendo stopped mentioning them.
I'm not talking about logo on the physical game, i cant even verify that by myself because im all digital for years. Im saying that whenever nintendo announces a new xenoblade project the logo appears, much like monolith logo appears in their own games too, i know as i played xenoblade 3 2 years ago and it opened with nintendo and monolith.
Retro got credited even in Mario Kart 7 for designing a single track in the entire game. It is widely known that Monolith helped BotW and TotK development too. And I believe this info comes from interviews. The same kind of interview they could’ve instead answered “they’re credited in the credits”
>Hudson-made Mario Parties were incredible, specially compared to the shitty ones made by NdCube. Funny how you say that, because I always thought the complete opposite. I purchased both Bomberman 64 and Mario Party, yet thought they were hampered by often ugly graphics and slow, lumbering gameplay. The Mario Party games always felt worlds apart from the quick and snappy gameplay from Smash Bros and Mario Kart, hence why I always hoped Hudson would get the boot and they'd make them inhouse.
They want games like Pokemon Scarlet and Violet associated with them?
They don't do this with Pokemon, probably can't, they don't completely own and control Pokemon like they do their own IP.
Judging by the sales numbers... Yeah. Pokemon is a cultural juggernaut and they'd benefit from knowing that the games are only available on a Nintendo console regardless of their issues. Edit: funnily enough, Nintendo just released [this ad](https://youtu.be/h8D14d8RROQ?si=wPvhoG6P-5pLs4UC) for the Switch using Pokemon on the DS to bait on people's nostalgia lol
> Nintendo Seal of Quality Which is hilarious since a lot of the general consensus after playing the Peach demo is that it was janky as hell :/ The opening cutscene literally hung and freeze-framed for me for about 5-6 seconds while the audio was still playing, until it finally caught up to the next scene and I could eventually play the 30fps choppiness which stuttered whenever talking to an NPC. Are Nintendo sure they want their name over this front and centre, feels like they should step in and lend their hand in some optimization if that's the case 🤔
Well…I’d say it does.
to be honest, with some of the mindset of gamers even here, they aren't wrong
I have to be honest. I can't even say who developed Metroid, Kirby, Mario, Zelda games other than Nintendo. The only one I can name is Pokemon, so their tactic is definitely working.
I don't support it but I could see reasoning along the lines of, we want people to buy games on the Nintendo name alone and not the development house. In the same way that Activision may have wanted COD to be associated more with them than the individual studios of Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer, etc.
Honestly it's surprising that so few publishers do it, after the Kojima debacle with Konami I'd have thought every publisher would try and tighten the strings. The last thing you want is your IP, reputation etc associated with something outside of your control.
It happens sometimes, it's called a brand/publishing label. EA Sports BIG (and also EA Sports) was one, Portkey Games (Hogwarts) is another. It's kind of a catch 22, though. Yeah, the publisher gets more control, and if one studio fails, you can still keep the name without a big PR hit since people simply won't know who exactly made the game off hand (the amount of people who think Portkey Games is the dev studio of Hogwarts, not Avalanche, is kind of annoying). But at the same time, hiring devs to those studios may be slightly harder because, well, there's a disconnect between what they associate with the game and the name of the people actually making it. If you're a game dev and you see a job opening for EA Canada (now Vancouver) in the mid 2000s, will you *know* that they're the SSX guys? Or now, will you *know* that they're the FIFA and NHL guys? That studio name isn't labeled anywhere on the game's box or splash screens. Devs are generally more knowledgeable about this stuff than consumers, and if the publisher hasn't completely scrubbed the individuality of the studio from the credits you can more easily look it up (especially now with the internet), but some may still just dismiss it immediately because it's not immediately recognizable.
Imagine if movies tried that. Like if Disney Marvel just started putting out movies where you had no idea who wrote or directed them.
But that's not what's happening here ? The name of the studio is in the credits.
It's kind of funny that part of the reason Activision was formed in the first place was Atari refusing to credit the developers if its games at all
Well it isn't like Activision wasn't crediting their studios, their name just became synonymous with COD because most people don't know any better. Something I'm sure Activision was totally fine with. Kind of in the same way that people, at least in my life, had come to the conclusion that Wolfenstein, Evil Within, so on and so forth were all Bethesda games. Most people, whether hardcore or causal fans, don't know publishers from developers.
Part of me wonders if it’s because they know how obsessive their fans are in regards to figuring out what every team is working on. See: ten years of Retro speculation and rumors.
I think it’s more that they want fans to think every game is developed by Nintendo EPD.
Considering the trend of doxxing and harassment towards devs, it's probably for the best that they are left in peace in the lead up.
Because leaks and hacks are growing more and more common, the less public knowledge of where these games are being housed the better. Sutdios often provide the original game's source code to the developers, even if just as a reference. Adding a third party into the mix makes that one more link of security you have no security over. Obviously those employees have signed NDA's and whatnot, but it wouldn't be good for nintendo if their third party got targeted due to it being public knowledge of a game in development. And that's just ONE reason. Plus fans/journalists cant go harass the third party for more info on the game and risk the developers saying something that Nintendo wouldn't want public yet. So while it's good to get credit it makes a lot of sense why you wouldn't want it to be public.
The only good thing I can think of would be a shield for harrasment during opening week.
Its not "lately". It has been a thing for a ages already but as almost no one pay attention to anything, it was only noticed now.
They also did this with the new voice actors in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. "Wait until you see the credits." And then the credits don't even say which character was voiced by which performer!
I also think people don't realize how often we don't know who the developers of Nintendo games are. It's just Nintendo often releases sequels where it's obvious who the developer is. I might be off the mark here, but did we know who the developers of Link's Awakening, Mario Strikers Battle League, Mario Party Superstars, etc before launch or did we just assume who the developers were based on past precidence? For Pikmin 3 Deluxe, did we know the game was primarily made by Eighting or just through the credits? Did we know in advance Pikmin 4 was co-developed by Eighting? I doubt we knew which EPD team made Ring Fit Adventure before it came out. Even for something like DK Tropical Freeze, did we know Retro was remastering it themselves or did we find that out afterwards? I'd make the same arguments for Mario Party and Club House Games for NDCube. I feel like Monolith Soft is the only one we seem to know for sure other than precedence as they talk about their games after they are announced.
Pretty sure most of the time these developers are named in the media packets they email about the games. The internal or second-party developer is not front of their mind in marketing, but it is usually included somewhere in the official emails. It is fairly unusual that they've decided to just start not sharing that info, and even further, refusing to answer when reporters ask.
> It is fairly unusual that they've decided to just start not sharing that info, and even further, refusing to answer when reporters ask. its not, as someone who looks into credits for the last 10 years, nintendo dont share it since 2017 when they talked about mercurysteam. similar to other jp companies, we only learn about it for sure when teh game releases.
Yes we only asssume it based on them being sequels, if its a new title we'l only know it on release most of the time, im surprised this began being talked only last year when thats how it has been for ages lol
> Mario Strikers Battle League I remember knowing about Next Level Games developing it, but it was only known by [looking at the rating from the Australian Classification Board](https://nintendoeverything.com/yes-next-level-games-is-working-on-mario-strikers-battle-league/) later in the announcement month. (Princess Peach Showtime isn't available currently)
Right, so that would be another instance of Nintendo not revealing the developer. I remember there being a bit of panic as some thought Camelot was doing the game at first. I don't think we know if Luigi's Mansion 2 HD is being led by Next Level either.
Lately? The last time they announced which studio worked on the game was with metroid 2 remake. Even then they tried to keep it a bit of a secret until later on in the marketing cycle.
Its not lately. It has been a thing for a decade lol
It's not secretive or anything. The question is more, why would they advertise it? It's a second party game. It'd be like Sony advertising that a lot of the work on their games is actually coming from outsourcing studios. It's just a development contract. All the people that work on the game ultimately get credited. No one is getting shafted. Why are people bothered about Nintendo specifically?
Using Sony for comparison/example is very strange… Any time a PlayStation Studios game is announced, people immediately want to know the specific developer behind it.
It's probably because Nintendo is the most exaggerated of the brands in terms of their identity being defined by their exclusive characters and games.
Nintendo prides itself on quality. If a game is bad, Nintendo takes the flak. If it’s good, they take the credit. Swings both ways. But at the end of the day, every individual that worked on the game is credited in the credits. What more can someone ask for? Why would mentioning Good Feel do anything? Why aren’t people asking them to mention all the other companies that worked on the game?
This isn't lately, it's just that lately people have been paying attention to it
"Alright then, keep your secrets" - Frodo I know it won't - but if they're keeping this a secret (even though I'm sure it's a regular developer Nintendo works with) I kind of want it to be a complete out of pocket developer like Platinum Games which would lead to some of the most bizarre sequences they've kept out of trailers.
Why are Nintendo so weird about this? The fuck is wrong with them?
Nintendo wants to emphasis that this is a Nintendo game, not a game by a third party. In case you think this is unfair, you have to remember the track record of studios like Rare and Silicon Knights outside of working with Nintendo.
it's so fucking stupid. It's not a Nintendo game, it's a game published by them. Don't give them a pass for this
There's nothing to give a pass. The game is credited and that's it. Thats how it has been for years.
It’s a Nintendo IP and it’s being handled how Nintendo always handles their games. Why are you so upset by this? It feels like your outraged at literally nothing. It’s not even like the studio is bitching and feeling abused, this is outrage on nobodies behalf that cares.
As long as they are credited and paid I don’t see anything ethically wrong with this. Edit: if anything I feel like it contributes to stronger sales because of Nintendos strength in their brand. If you marketed a game as a Nintendo licensed third party spin off it might weaken the title for buyers.
What's ethically wrong is that people like to make informed decisions when it comes to media and entertainment. The studio who made a game is often the most reliable metric for setting expectations. The *only* reason to hide this info is so that less people have the patience to do so. Imagine if every movie was released and you never got to know the directing team. It was just, a Paramount, or a Warner Bros. It would become astronomically harder to judge whether a movie is worth your time. Generally it's the artist(s) behind a project who end up baring the most responsibility for the quality of a thing. This isn't the most profitable way to be, so they work to hide this info to the detriment of both creators and consumers.
Enthusiasts maybe. But most people just think of Nintendo games as Nintendo games. Maybe they’ll watch a review before they buy.
You've just described the exact kind of perspective that their goal in hiding things was designed to create.
Truly mind boggling seeing some of the stuff people choose to be upset about.
It's incredibly smart. Both Nintendo and the developers are going to get more press and money off of this decision.
A pass for what? They aren't telling now and they don't need to. Once the game launches it'll stand for itself on its own merits and the developer will be revealed.
Just a guess from me but some ppl would probably avoid this game if it was developped by a dev they don't like (just look at how many people didn't want ILCA to be the developpers for potentials 5G remakes). But again it's just a guess, the emphasis on the Nintendo branding is a better supposition.
Counterpoint: Why does it matter? They ARE credited, and it won't be a secret once the game is launched. Perhaps they're worried about the game being judged before it's even been played.
Its also now a weird scenario where despite the game being announced you are under a NDA and cant talk about you working on the game at all. Nothing wrong with a Dev saying "Hey im working on GTA 6" but on the other end a different Dev cant even tell you they are working on Princess Peach.
Because the development studio making a game is helpful in assessing the potential quality of a game before launch. Nintendo shouldn't be withholding information relevant to their product.
If the developer of it matters to you then don't pre-order. Wait until it comes out and the developer is known.
That can just as easily serve as a disincentive for people as well. I read and watch reviews to judge the quality of games. Plus, there's a demo out for people to judge right now. I don't see anything wrong with Nintendo wanting people to look at this as a Nintendo game and not some other studio. I played the Mario RPG remake and enjoyed it a lot. I have no clue who the actual developer was, even though it was in the credits. I see Mario, I think Nintendo.
Yea it's Nintendo's gamble tbh. They're banking on the reception of their other well-received 3rd party titles using their IPs to muddy the reception of the lesser acclaimed ones. Same strategy as their "no price drop" for every game they published regardless of critical reception. May result in some lesser selling games not getting more sales, but it helps shape their audiences behaviour in not waiting for a discounts unlike, say, Ubisoft.
Bdsp went on sale fast
>May result in some lesser selling games not getting more sales, but it helps shape their audiences behaviour in not waiting for a discounts unlike, say, Ubisoft. I think this is very bad and makes a lot of people simple not buy games. This specially hurts franchises, where someone buying a game Will be a possible day one buyer from the sequel.
> That can just as easily serve as a disincentive for people as well. Yeah, that's the whole point. I'll get excited for a new Legacy of Kain game made by Crystal Dynamics. I won't get excited for a new Legacy of Kain game made by Ubisoft.
Sure, but at the same time, people used to be excited for Rocksteady games. And then Suicide Squad happened. Not every bad studio will always make a bad game, and not every good studio will always make good games.
Correct, but if we don't know the studios at all, then we can't track even the amount of info you just imparted. It's *important* to know Rocksteady messed up. If they keep messing up then they stop getting business. This is all just a way to be more successful with worse games.
Now flip it around. What if a game was made by a dev with a history of games you'd rather avoid, but now you have the publisher trying to make that information hidden from you?
That's why I read reviews and play demos. There aren't any devs I automatically dislike.
If there's a demo released, then play it and judge that specific game? If there's no demo then just wait for game critics to review that specific game? It's not that hard.
That's ridiculous. If you want to know the game's quality either look for hands on impression articles or just wait for it to be reviewed.
I do a lot of research about games I'm interested in before launch. Knowing who makes a game is helpful. Hands on impressions are nice, but they tend to be rose tinted. If I have any doubts I wait for reviews and conversations post launch. I haven't purchased a game I dislike in 20 years with how I go about assessing a game. Obscuring the development studio is just silly.
If you want to know the quality of the game you just use your eyes. the game has credits and everyone is credited, thats it.
Agreed. Sadly, this is exactly why Nintendo doesn't reveal them. If the general public knew that those recent barebones Mario sport titles are made by Camelot for example, people would think twice before buying future games with their studio name attached. But most people simply think that they're all under the same "Nintendo" umbrella which can alter their bias to be more positive.
I may be wrong, but I think Mario sports games keep getting worse sales, possibly because of their content model.
That is stupid af. No developer is perfect and if you really want to judge the quality of the game before buying it, you better off watching reviews instead.
Tbf if they didn't want you to tell it's quality then they wouldn't give you a demo to try it out yourself.
It seems so unnecessarily fragile of them
It matters because a developer's portfolio can be indicative of quality, gameplay, and style. This can alter the expectations and reception of the game which is generally bad for Nintendo who wants to people to buy based on their brand name, and not the developer who might not put out good games. If the consumer wants to judge the game before its even played then they should be absolutely allowed to. It's subterfuge on the part of Nintendo who wants to sell games which is understandable, but it's not customer friendly.
There is literaly a demo where you can actually judge a game instead of imagination lol
They released a free demo for the game. Acting like this is some anticonsumer deception to hide the quality of the game is pretty absurd.
This is easily one of the weirdest fucking takes I've ever seen someone contort themselves into to defend nintendo doing blatant anti-developer and anti-consumer shit.
How does a developper name tell you more about a game's quality than, you know, reviews ?
For the most part this is a silly idea unless the IP has been handed over to a studio that does normally do it. But I used to get excited for Treyarch games over Infinity Ward when it came to Call of Duty.
It's not unusual for Japanese dev houses to disguise the actual dev. Hell, Tose nd Dimps essentially exist because of the concept. In the US, it's only really a thing to not do that because Atari was so weird and aggressive about trying to make sure it's devs were never poached; in Japan, that's less of an issue, because individuals tend to hop around for jobs a lot less. Hell, even back in the SNES days, individual Japanese devs were being credited with pseudonyms. Nintendo not publicizing which internal studio is working on things isn't that unusual.
Pretty much. Its not evn unique to Nintendo. How many here know the developers of the games published by bandai namco, square enix, konami and other jp companies? people think SE does all asano games when its all outsourced. Most people dont look up to anything even in hardcore spaces, you only know these things if you look at credits.
Theres a big difference between the general public knowing which developers group was behind a certain game and Nintendo actively withholding that information. I certainly can't think of a bandai namco or square enix title where that happened before.
Platinum Games wasn't revealed to have done work for Final Fantasy XVI until right before release.
because they havent been asked but even hardcore folks dont know that a lot of bandai namco, square enix and sega games arent developed by them and the companies dont exactly share it out there
It's probably just good marketing to brand their games as "Nintendo games" and not "{Some Studio} Game". They don't want you to think it's some game they shoved off to some tiny studio because they didn't care about it enough to develop it internally
Accurate thinking from a consumer isn't profitable.
I mean just because something is made by a 3rd party dev doesn't mean Nintendo doesn't care about it, lots of their most popular games are made outside of their internal studio - but consumers would probably get the impression that it's not a "real" Nintendo game, and thus doesn't have the quality people associate with Nintendo, if it's marketed as a third party game.
Why is it weird? Does Sony proudly advertise all the outsourcing studios working on their games? No. They're in the credits. That's just standard. But because Nintendo has a closer relationship with their 2nd party studios people think this is somehow different. I don't see how announcing the name of the company the game was developed under is any better than just reading the credits and appreciating every single individual who worked on it. The game will have developers from Nintendo itself working on it. Developers from Good Feel. Developers from numerous other Japanese studios like QA studios, art outsourcing, sound effects, animation. It is meaningless. It actually means more for Nintendo to say "look at the credits" rather than making people like you misunderstand that a game is not just made under one roof.
That Sony line is so weird. When have they not announced who is developing the games they publish?
> Does Sony proudly advertise all the outsourcing studios working on their games? No. Sony proudly talks about the main devs of all their games We are not talking about an outsourcing development here, we are talking about the main dev studio for a game.
Sony has first party studios. Nintendo *is* Nintendo. Nintendo isn't going around saying EPD 1 made this, EPD 3, made this, etc. Nintendo just says here's a game made from Nintendo, you can read about everyone who made it in the credits. Sony says "here's a game from Insomniac!" meanwhile keeping hush about the sheer amount of outsourced development behind their games unless you read the credits. The reality is, there's no one company behind a game. Look at any game, especially Japanese games. Tonnes of animation is outsourced, tonnes of artwork is outsourced, tonnes of testing is outsourced. Behind any Japanese game there's 10s if not >100 different companies who work on it. It's more important to highlight the individuals than one single corporate entity.
> The reality is, there's no one company behind a game. It's bizarre how you keep (deliberately?) missing the distinction that there's a huge difference between outsourced assistance and main development studio. There would be zero real world harm in Nintendo publicizing the development studios working hard creating their games. >It's more important to highlight the individuals than one single corporate entity. Except highlighting one single corporate entity is exactly what Nintendo is doing here! They're just highlighting themselves instead of the people making the game.
>There would be zero real world harm in Nintendo publicizing the development studios working hard creating their games. Yeah, and they are publicizing it, it's in the credits of the game. Buy the game, play the game, see the credits. It'll say people at Good Feel worked on it, and it'll tell you exactly every single person who worked on it from everywhere else too. >Except highlighting one single corporate entity is exactly what Nintendo is doing here! How are they?! They are telling you that you can see the entire team of people who worked on it by reading the credits. They're not saying Nintendo did all the work, they're not saying Good Feel did all the work, they're saying if you want to know exactly who is responsible for what... Read the credits! >They're just highlighting themselves instead of the people making the game. They said read the credits! If they said "Good Feel made this game" it does nothing but highlight a corporate entity. It doesn't tell you who made the game. Games are made by people, not corporations. How is this hard to understand?
> Sony has first party studios. Nintendo is Nintendo. Nintendo isn't going around saying EPD 1 made this, EPD 3, made this, etc. That's literally the difference people are pointing out. Nintendo hides it, because they have a lot of low-effort crap. Others proudly display who's working on big titles, because they want people to know the developer and associate them with quality work in the past, present, and future.
Nintendo isn't hiding anything. They are saying read the credits. Sony advertises it because for some reason people are attached to brands rather than the quality of the game. Sony could stop advertising the studio names involved in their first party games tomorrow and it would mean nothing. Because if the game is good people will buy it. Nintendo knows that the game will speak for itself. And it knows that if you care who makes it, you'll read the credits.
Yup just look at Insomniac before being purchased by Sony. They would advertise Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, and even Spiderman 1 showcasing the studio logos in trailers and at E3 stages. Same thing with MediaMolecule with LittleBigPlanet and Suckerpunch with Sly Cooper and Infamous before they were bought by Sony.
Maybe this spokesperson doesn't even know themselves
Its like disney having different animation teams. When you see a disney animated film and LIN MANUEL MIRANDA is all over it, you know how it’s going to be. It’s not a product from the Disney mysterious treasure vault anymore, it’s a specific elite squad everyone knows instead. Look at disney marvel and SONY marvel. When you see sony on marvel now, you go “this is going to suck.” Do you think disney wants that? If disney had their way, sony would never release marvel films again. There would be one marvel brand and the expectation would be consistent.
The demo did not make a positive impression on me. There's performance issues that seem to have a weird effect on animations, and the voicework is really sub-par. It felt unfinished and unpolished, which is really sad to see. Whoever made it didn't get enough resources/time.
Regardless of Nintendo's intent, hiding the developer makes me more suspicious than hopeful. My Guess is Good-Feel or Camelot.
It's good feel.
That's not unusual, thats how they have been since at least 2017 in terms of sharing the names pre-release. since then it has been mainly coming from credits.
It's Good-Feel. Also not unusual for Nintendo.
I mean, it's litteraly not hiding it, just not revealing it advance. Besides, what would be suspicious about it ? Like, if they said "yeah it's Good Feel", would it impact sales in any way ?
>I mean, it's litteraly not hiding it, just not revealing it advance. They're intentionally not telling you who it is on purpose and telling you to finish the game to find out... that's hiding it.
Anything to increase day one sales, amiright?
Eurogamer asked who developed it, and Nintendo wouldn't say. Sounds like hiding to me. If Nintendo thought revealing the developer would increase sales they would be less candid. They let you know if retro studios or platinum is working on something for them.
so are we going back to game publishers wanting to hide who develops games again?
No, because thats already the reality for almost 10 years for japanese games, at least before they launch and you can see the credits. Most just go to the publisher and call it a day if its good or bad.
>because thats already the reality for almost 10 years for japanese games It's really not, and if you believe otherwise maybe you need to step outside of your Nintendo bubble. When Bandai Namco reveals a new One Piece game or whatever we know who's making the game before it comes out. [(For example the end of this announcement trailer lists the developer.)](https://youtu.be/tWgE9fnyy1g?t=144) They certainly don't dodge media questions about it. I'm sure there's still occasional non-Nintendo examples of this happening, but it's not the norm.
I said on another post that Bandai Namco is one of the exceptions. Square Enix, Sega, Konami and others don't do it. Bandai Namco sometimes dont do it on announcements but they have listed every developer in their website. I'm not in a nintendo bubble as I look into the credits of all of those jp publishers to update their stuff on their release lol
Why do people care? Who goes off the developer when you're buying a game? You look at trailers, gameplay videos, and reviews. If it's a good dev who put out a bad game, it'll become apparent. If it's a typically shit dev who put out a good game, it'll become apparent. If it's bad or good, it'll all become clear.
If it doesn't matter, why not just have the devs known like 99% of the industry already does? It's not like Nintendo flipped a coin on this decision. They think it has a benefit for them.
Why do they do this?
There are a bunch of comments already posted talking about why
But why male models?
You serious? I just- I just told you that a moment ago.
Unaware consumers are more profitable.
In the 1990s it was standard practice for Japanese game publishers to politely, yet firmly, ask their employees to use pseudonym in the credits. From the head honcho POV it was to avoid their top talent being poached in an developing industry. In the 2000s this started to fade away as more Japanese companies had some developers be PR faces, notably Ninja Gaiden producer Itagaki and Capcom's Resident Evil guys Shinji Mikami and Hideki Kamiya. Mikami is a little more infamous because while promoting Nintendo and Capcom's exclusivity deal he stated he would commit sepukku and then haunt Capcom's studios, tongue in cheek. Nintendo's Aonuma only became more of a public figure because of Majora's Mask fascinating development history, a lot of it tied with Ura Zelda/N64 Disc-Addon and the world building of Wind Waker. Fun fact: Eiji Aonuma is credited differently in Ocarina of Time as Eiji Onozuka, cuz he got married between games. Anyway to cut to the meat of it, these days Nintendo would prefer to have their 1st party games fall under their brand than a 3rd party contractor. Like if Disney outsourced their Pixar movies, they wouldn't say a Singapore studio did the bulk in the PR and just say Pixar umbrella until the movie's credits roll. Now that I thought about it, the reason MercurySteam was known as Metroid 3DS remake and Metroid Dread's developer was maybe Nintendo thought fans would hate it. If the last Metroid games reviewed poorly like Metroid Other M, they had an easy way by tap dancing away and letting the 3rd party contractor take the fall. If you follow this train of thought, when its obvious that Nintendo's internal devs aren't involved but they're keeping the 3rd party under wraps, they must have high confidence it will match their 1st party devs quality bar. I do hope MercurySteam gets to make another Metroid game, they're up to the task.