Nintendo Underestimated the Cost of Going HD

[Cognimancer]

Nintendo Underestimated the Cost of Going HD

Nintendo's own Shigeru Miyamoto has admitted that the company didn't expect the world of high definition to be so resource-intensive.

While Sony and Microsoft perpetuate the console hardware arms race, Nintendo is generally content to do its own thing. Still, now that HD graphics are all but expected, the big N has had to get with the times and go high-def with the Wii U. Unfortunately for the company, its policy of ignoring the squabbles of the competition means that it didn't learn from their mistakes, and now Wii U development is suffering. In a translated Q&A session with investors, senior managing director Shigeru Miyamoto explained that Nintendo underestimated the cost of developing in HD.

"When it comes to the scale of software development, Wii U with HD graphics requires about twice the human resources than before," says Miyamoto. "Please allow me to explain that we may have underestimated the scale of this change and as a result, the overall software development took more time than originally anticipated just as we tried to polish the software at the completion phase of development. However, we are almost out of this phase."

Miyamoto is currently in charge of Pikmin 3, which was intended to be release around the time of the Wii U's launch but has been continually delayed - perhaps in large part due to this mistake. It seems that Nintendo still has a lot to learn if the Wii U aims to compete with its HD rivals.

Source: Games Industry [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-05-miyamoto-we-underestimated-cost-of-hd-development]

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[Bleidd Whitefalcon]

Welp, they goofed - and unlike most companies, they admitted it too. Still, looks like they're starting to get themselves sorted

 

[Dragonbums]

If anything, Nintendo are a very frugal company.
They don't like wasting money if there is a way to make it cheaper.

I can imagine in due time once they get used to doing HD, they will find a way to make it less man heavy, and more efficient.

 

[Innegativeion]

Welp, they goofed - and unlike most companies, they admitted it too. Still, looks like they're starting to get themselves sorted

It's almost as if demanding half a dozen million people buy your games is less reasonable than a company sorting its expenses on its own end.

 

[Roxas1359]

If anything, Nintendo are a very frugal company.
They don't like wasting money if there is a way to make it cheaper.

I can imagine in due time once they get used to doing HD, they will find a way to make it less man heavy, and more efficient.

Problem in this case was their stubbornness to really not do at least some research about HD because they should have a least realized that sooner or later they were going to have to upgrade seeing as how TVs nowadays are going to HD more.
At least they admitted that they goofed, but it really could have been prevented.

 

[IshimaruHayato]

Will Nintendo freak out when we tell them after HD is Blu-ray?

 

[Vivi22]

If anything, Nintendo are a very frugal company.
They don't like wasting money if there is a way to make it cheaper.

I can imagine in due time once they get used to doing HD, they will find a way to make it less man heavy, and more efficient.

Problem in this case was their stubbornness to really not do at least some research about HD because they should have a least realized that sooner or later they were going to have to upgrade seeing as how TVs nowadays are going to HD more.
At least they admitted that they goofed, but it really could have been prevented.

Couldn't it though. You'd think they might have paid attention to the growing pains that other developers were starting to go through seven years ago. If they honestly underestimated it then they didn't do their research.

But then, they are a company that tends to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks lately. I don't think their biggest problem was underestimating the cost of going HD, it was overestimating how many people who bought the Wii would care about the Wii U.

 

[Dragonbums]

If anything, Nintendo are a very frugal company.
They don't like wasting money if there is a way to make it cheaper.

I can imagine in due time once they get used to doing HD, they will find a way to make it less man heavy, and more efficient.

Problem in this case was their stubbornness to really not do at least some research about HD because they should have a least realized that sooner or later they were going to have to upgrade seeing as how TVs nowadays are going to HD more.
At least they admitted that they goofed, but it really could have been prevented.

That I can agree with.
But hey, let them blunder on their own mistakes.
It's not like their non HD games looked abysmal anyway.

 

[Roxas1359]

If anything, Nintendo are a very frugal company.
They don't like wasting money if there is a way to make it cheaper.

I can imagine in due time once they get used to doing HD, they will find a way to make it less man heavy, and more efficient.

Problem in this case was their stubbornness to really not do at least some research about HD because they should have a least realized that sooner or later they were going to have to upgrade seeing as how TVs nowadays are going to HD more.
At least they admitted that they goofed, but it really could have been prevented.

That I can agree with.
But hey, let them blunder on their own mistakes.
It's not like their non HD games looked abysmal anyway.

True, and I find that this situation can show that ignoring something will only come to bite you in the but later. On the bright side at least they didn't HDCP encrypt their HDMI port. I wanna be able to use my HD PVR 2's HDMI recording for more than my 360, PC, and Wii.

I have the Wii 2 HDMI upscaler that allows me to use HDMI cables on my Wii. It's good in the case of the HD PVR 2 because it makes it so that I can record GCN/Wii gameplay in 1080p without having to stretch out the screen and pixels in my editor. Only problem is that it won't let me change the brightness settings on my recordings. Luckily that wasn't a problem in Luigi's Mansion since the game is dark anyway. XD

 

[Bleidd Whitefalcon]

Welp, they goofed - and unlike most companies, they admitted it too. Still, looks like they're starting to get themselves sorted

It's almost as if demanding half a dozen million people buy your games is less reasonable than a company sorting its expenses on its own end.

I know! It's sad that this is increasingly rare these days >.>

 

[FoolKiller]

If anything, Nintendo are a very frugal company.
They don't like wasting money if there is a way to make it cheaper.

I can imagine in due time once they get used to doing HD, they will find a way to make it less man heavy, and more efficient.

Problem in this case was their stubbornness to really not do at least some research about HD because they should have a least realized that sooner or later they were going to have to upgrade seeing as how TVs nowadays are going to HD more.
At least they admitted that they goofed, but it really could have been prevented.

It's a recurring theme for Nintendo, sadly enough. They're always a generation or so behind on the times with where their consoles are at, in terms of features/hardware/capabilities.
When the Gamecube was out, Dreamcast already had online built in, Xbox later came out with online built in, PS2 had the feature added as an addon. What did Nintendo do? Implemented a very annoying, confusing addon for the gamecube so that the one or two games capable of online play could actually go online. I doubt anyone really used it, because it was one giant pain in the ass.

Wii comes out. Every other system is online capable from the start, easy to set up friends lists and play online alongside online chat. Nintendo? Implements friend codes, perhaps the single worst concept they could of gone with. Games support exactly zero online chat, and remains so until they release the room-wide microphone. Again, not exactly efficient.

And now? HD issues!

Yea.. but the truth is they are a guppy in a sea of sharks. They may have these stumbles but don't have the backing of the rest of a zillion dollar company to let them rush in anywhere. They also managed to stay in a market that Sega could not.

 

[Severian]

They should still be able to compete with the ps3 and xbox360.

 

[Grabehn]

Is it just me or "Nintendo underestimated *blank*" sounds like something really common? I do like that they go out of their way to say "we though it was a bit easier" Unlike the pretty familiar "IT WASN'T TEH NEXT COD, THIS FRANCHISE'S WORTHLESS"

 

[The Apple BOOM]

Is it just me or "Nintendo underestimated *blank*" sounds like something really common? I do like that they go out of their way to say "we though it was a bit easier" Unlike the pretty familiar "IT WASN'T TEH NEXT COD, THIS FRANCHISE'S WORTHLESS"

Part of it is that they don't toot their own horn too much when they do fine, so you only hear about the screw ups, which they are incredibly transparent about compared to other companies.

 

[Something Amyss]

Wow, their outlook was dumber than I had thought.

Nintendo has been remarkably out of touch with the consumer, historically. When they catch with the public, it's usually coincidence. This is why they couldn't recapture the glory of the Wii. Meanwhile, they spent all this time telling us we didn't want online or HD or integrated storage....It's almost as dickish as Microsoft's whole scphiel about THA FEWCHUR!

 

[Grabehn]

skip

Part of it is that they don't toot their own horn too much when they do fine, so you only hear about the screw ups, which they are incredibly transparent about compared to other companies.

WOW! Thanks for quoting that, I just realized that I erased too much of my comment. But yeah, I really like it that they admit they had problems with certain parts of whatever they did.

 

[Reaper195]

Does this mean that the next Nintendo console will be as powerful as the next generation of consoles (9th)? Because Nintendo seem to have a knack of creating things that just print money.