Nintendo has 300 developers quality checking third party games on Switch

Nintendo president Tatsumi Kmishima confirmed that Nintendo has about 300 developers working on quality control and debugging for third party games on the Switch.

[-Foxtrot]

Good luck to them on Skyrim then...

[Gemmol]

lol its probably why it got delayed

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

it never got delayed.

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

They are publishing it base on the information online.

[The 10th Rider]

Nintendo actually was initially listed as the publisher. However it was later changed:

http://www.nintendo.com/gam...

Tat's where Nintendo was originally listed as the publisher. It was most likely just an error.

[rainslacker]

And this is how you lose 3rd party support.

Not that I fault them for it....and even applaud them to some degree, but publishers aren't going to jump through hoops for Nintendo.

Compliance is a tough thing though. Hard to balance. Sony and MS really only look at game breaking, or system breaking issues, because they want to maintain the stability of their console, and make sure a game can be completed. They don't really play the games all the way through, and expect that to be done in house.

Sadly nowadays though, the consumer seems to have accepted that broken games are a norm, and almost mandatory updates seem to be perfectly acceptable, which is why the issue of "broken" games hasn't resolved itself.

Good on Nintendo for taking the extra effort, but ultimately, it's only going to harm their chances of getting 3rd party support, and likely not cause any real increase in quality to the games themselves.

It's also worth mentioning that this testing isn't about if a game is good or not, rather if the game is "broken" or not. Nintendo, or any company, shouldn't be the mediators over deciding what content is good, and therefore acceptable on their system. The market can decide that, and has for quite some time now.

[Nintendew]

True but Nintendo prides itself on quality, a quality I admire in a game making.
These last years found myself playing broken games, not as much nowadays but still, rather play something that works rather then it dosent.

[rainslacker]

I'm not faulting them for doing it. I do kind of disagree that they pride themselves on quality. The "Seal of Quality" eventually became kind of a joke, but was important for gaming after the crash of the pre-NES gaming industry.

But, realistically, if Nintendo wants support on a console which barely keeps up with the launch consoles of this generation, they need to be able to balance the wants of the developers, with their needs for the system. Having excessive hindrances on the developers to get things through compliance testing isn't going to be helpful. It may mean the games that come out run better, but it's not going to change the overall quality of the game itself, outside of making sure there are no game or system breaking bugs....which would be expected from compliance anyhow.

I guess in the end it's a matter that publishers and devs should be able to deliver this without Nintendo having to feel they need to do this, but obviously they want to get things out, and not expend resources making sure everything is "perfect" before release. Nintendo considers this "perfect" thing to be necessary, while the great gaming community doesn't seem to be fussed about it either way, as all those broken games seem to sell just fine. It sucks, but it's the market which allows it, and publishers take advantage of it. Nintendo is only removing support from it's system if they become too overbearing. It's on reason they started losing so much support to Sony back when the PS1 released in fact.

[-Foxtrot]

Yeah they seem to have this mind set like "They should consider themselves lucky if they have their games on our console" expecting them to do most of the work and go through hoops when really Nintendo should be lucky they have any interest in them at all

@Nintendew

"True but Nintendo prides itself on quality, a quality I admire in a game making"

Yeah Nintendo do...but they aren't making those games so if it had lower quality then their titles then who cares. We aren't going to blame Nintendo like how we don't blame Microsoft or Sony for third party bugs or glitches on those games.

[Nintendew]

The problem is perfect dosent exist!
Quality that ensures its consumers that game breaking bugs, glitches and so on wont be a issue on its product is a nice insurance.
Is Nintendo perfect, hell no but still having that quality product makes consumes have 1 less problem on there mind....... Will the game break or not.

@foxtrot
Why blame MS or Sony, hell even Nintendo for 3rd party developers mistakes?, but where Nintendo comes in is to make sure those problems don't exist on there products, something I'm happy about as a consumer.

Skyrim for example: bugs glitches and so on maybe ok for some, Nintendo dosent think its ok.

[rainslacker]

@Fox

I wouldn't say that the console makers never get blamed. Just look at Skyrim for PS3. But that was more console war BS, and the dev got plenty of grief IMO....but in the end, it is just another example of how "broken" games still sell, and if Nintendo pushes this too far, then it's likely to push away developers. While that could be a good same to some people who are tired of broken games, and who isn't around here....it still isn't good to push away support for a new console.

As of right now though, it's all speculation, because we don't know how much Nintendo is going to make a big deal about this, or if it's just the same as everyone else....which is more likely the case. Maybe a bit more stringent on what's considered game breaking, but I doubt NIntendo is going to be returning games because of some graphics glitch which turns a characters face inside out....or the like.

@Nintendew

I'm aware there is no perfect, and I highly doubt Nintendo is going to expect that.

I'm not trying to be harsh against Nintendo or anything. I'm happy they take compliance seriously. But I do remember what their quality seal entailed back in the day, and I'd hate to see them get to that extreme again, as the development community has grown past that since then. Nintendp wrote the book on compliance testing, and made it a thing. That is what the quality seal means. It was required for the time, and became a standard of game development because it worked. Each company has their own policies, but a general hands off except for "breaking" stuff is the general expectation from the industry nowadays.

[RosweeSon]

Jump through hoops? It's quality testing, if your product can't do basic quality testing it shouldn't be getting a release. Hence why day1 patches with Nintendo games are few and far between because they are tested before being released to the public st our expense and then time as we wait for matches to make the game load work properly or even patching in whole chunks of the game. I'll stick with Nintendos quality over say Ubisofts any day.

[rainslacker]

@Rowee

That's fair. I even agree to some extent. And I will admit that much of my intiial comment was more exaggeration and possibly knee jerk than my follow up comments.

But at the same time, the nature of development today is that it's release now, patch later, and if Nintendo wants more 3rd party support, they have to manage to balance what you are saying you want, and what the developers are likely to give them.

I will state again though, since we don't know just how far they test the game, it's may just be over analyzing the situation to assume what I did, or even assume that games will release unbroken. 300 QA people doesn't mean they have people testing every aspect of the game all the way through. That would require more than 300 people, and compliance testing for the most part means making sure that games don't crash the system, do something to the system they aren't supposed to, and don't have bugs which cause the game to crash.

This may very well be the extent of Nintendo's testing, and likely is.

If it's more, then my initial statement holds true, and it doesn't matter that you want "unbroken" games. Pubs and devs aren't going to jump through those hoops unless Nintendo has a significant install base, and 3rd party software sells a lot on their system. At this point they aren't at there yet.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

300 developers good support Nintendo

[InTheZoneAC]

Instead of micromanaging 3rd party spend that time making new games

[Zeldafan64]

You do realize that Nintendo has a few thousand developers working on first party titles, right? Having maybe 10% of their developers help oversee third party development isn't a big deal.

[QUIMICOMORTAL]

Yeah, and do you realize those have produced only one top quality game in the last 3 years?

[septemberindecember]

@QUIMICOMORTAL

Define "top quality" please.

[rocketpanda]

Yeah, damn Nintendo for wanting quality products running on their hardware.

[LOL_WUT]

They need the games first before they can worry about the quality of it ;)

[TheColbertinator]

@LOL

Sony and Microsoft must have skipped that reminder with their pitiful E3 conferences.

[Prince_TFK]

New exclusive games almost every months since the Switch release. Do you think they are just sitting on their asses doing nothing and prey to God the Switch would sell?

[blawren4]

Have you ever thought that Developers may want this? If I were a developer, I would certainly love this offered by Nintendo.

[RosweeSon]

Is Mario not new?

[kevnb]

do microsoft and sony have this many?

[Eldyraen]

Going by some of the Indie games releasing on theirs, no. Even the Indies we've seen on Switch so far have been pretty good games.

[LOL_WUT]

That's because the Switch has less than a handful of indies as oppose to what the PS4 offers ;)

[rainslacker]

Most compliance testing is just making sure there is no code which when run, breaks the game, or causes the system or OS to fail in some way. Content testing is more just a list provided by the developer which explains the content in the game to make sure it meets whatever criteria is set in place by the respective companies policies. The policies themselves don't stipulate that a game must work without major bugs at all.

Most of the compliance testing for making sure the game works with the system is automated. There is some random playing of games, usually to look at bugs or specific content which might be on the line of inappropriate, but it's pretty rare, or probably never, that a full testing of a game will be done at Sony itself. That's a lot of resources to expend on such a thing, and Sony's or MS responsibility isn't to test for internal bugs for every game.

How many exist for each company I couldn't say. I know a AAA game probably takes 1-2 weeks for compliance testing. Sometimes those review builds come back rather quickly to fix things for compliance, while others get sent through if they meet all the criteria and pass all the tests....although less frequent. More often than not, only certain parts will be sent back for changes to the dev, and the dev changes it, and the compliance is approved, or failed based on the situation.

The head of the testing department in a development house is typically responsible for making sure that it'll pass compliance, and such things are built into the design of the game during pre-production so the rest of the development staff doesn't have to go back and do things. I'd imagine the actual compliance testing department at MS or Sony is at least 100 people, maybe closer to 200. It's a pretty big task, and there's a lot of bureaucracy and technical knowledge to be dealt with.

None of the compliance testing for any company is about the quality of the content, game play, or game design itself. Sony and MS are not mediators over what is a good or bad game. They just want to make sure the game runs, because that is what they are basically selling.... a console where the game runs without screwing up the system itself. Crappy games can still get made, but Sony and MS tend to not get involved in the design of the game itself.

[RosweeSon]

I'd be suprised if Microsoft even has a quality department ;)

[feraldrgn]

Hope they don't remove the hidden chests in Skyrim.

[Kaiou]

They don't want another Ninjahax especially this early in the life cycle

[sk8ofmnd]

Still waiting to see 1 single AAA 3rd party game... You need those first before you "quality check" it.

[LOL_WUT]

That's what i'm saying ;)

[Gemmol]

nba 2k18 is that for me......usually get it on ps4.......i can finally play on the go

[Prince_TFK]

Umm a quick google search resulted in Skyrim, Payday 2, and Bayonetta. Granted, those are old games, but AAA games nonetheless.

[sk8ofmnd]

Ok my bad... Current gen (2013-).

[Nintendew]

Quality is nice!
Would rather have a quality game over a broken game.

[SquareBurgers]

they didn't look over Bomberman very well

[Officialxandr]

Good. Gives us a better product.

[segamaniaco]

Quality? Wii U had the worst indies ever. Devs like ddrmax or something flooded the eshop

I hope they improve the overall quality with the switch

PC is the plat for this kind of trash

[QUIMICOMORTAL]

If only they had 300 developers working on DEVELOPING 3rd party GAMES...

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

They had over 70 during Jan. 2017. Now it has doubled. So they have over 140 developers working on Switch. With Japanese and Indie taking up 95% of it/

[QUIMICOMORTAL]

so where are the games then? they sure didnt spent time and effort working on wiiu last two years.

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

@QUIMICOMORTAL
You really need to do your research.
Only Square Enix, Sega,, Bethseda, Ubisoft, Konami, Namco, KOEI Tecmo, Capcom and Atlus had dev kits from the start.

Every other publishers who jumped on board got theirs last year or earlier this year.
Not only that Unreal Engine 4 CEO in Japan said that there are over 20 Unreal Engine 4 games in Japan in development.

Tokyo Game Show will be the time they will be announced.

[TheOttomatic91]

Well words and stats are nice but I still need to see actual games like Mario Xcom and not ports on the Switch.

[pundrang]

SFANS?

[no_ripley]

Nintendo is a blessing in this 4k 60fps bs generation withouth real innovation.
the lack of 3rd party games is not a threat on Nintendo consoles. Their 1st party games are just so damn good.

[Prince_TFK]

I have to agree. So far in the first year we had (and will have) BOTW, MK8D, Arms, Splatoon 2, Mario+Rabbids, Pokken Tournament, and Mario Oddssey, and (potentially) Xenoblade 2, Bayonetta 2, and the Wonderful 101. That is a great first year for Switch's exclusive.

[Nintendew]

Imagine what next year will have!