Nintendo comments on its rising R&D costs

When Nintendo held its financial call last week, one investor asked about the company’s rising costs when it comes to research and development. The Big N is expecting these expenses to be at nearly 100 billion yen for the fiscal year. President Shuntaro Furukawa offered up some insight.

[BrainSyphoned]

Making games out of cardboard, Mario Legos and Mario Kart RC sure is expensive, for the consumer.

[Fntastic]

And they have a habit of having less content in newer games. Mario Kart DS had a good mission mode then for some reason excluded it from future titles. Mario Tennis supposedly has a short campaign, why didn't they make it longer? Could have easily done so. I hope they don't do the same mistake with the upcoming golf game.

It's not like their games are very cheap to begin with, they should have more content

[RosweeSon]

I guess 900 Korok seeds or 900 moons aren’t enough for some people 😅🤣

[roadkillers]

It is back and forth. Their big titles are full of content. Super Mario Party was a huge letdown in terms of content.

[XxINFERNUSxX]

Nintendo will probably increase the price of their games now to about 70$. As to when they would, time will tell.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I hope not, out of the three, their games are by far the most expensive, not that I don't like them, it's just the pricing that sucks.

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

Of all the big publishers Nintendo probably makes the lowest budget games.

[swifty1]

They make the smallest effort needed games...Mario 3D Allstars. Didn’t bother to remaster/remake, too much effort and cost when you can just make it fomo “limited time only bs”

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

Well most Nintendo games use simplistic animations, lack voice acting, non-demanding cartoon graphics,etc.

[-Foxtrot]

Personally since Metroid 4 is no where in sight and even second party like Bayonetta 3 are also missing, I think they are having trouble making non-cute styled games, most which aren’t side scrollers

[Zhipp]

I actually suspect they're sitting on complete/near complete games just waiting for the right moment to launch to maximize sales.

Metroid Prime only started development at Retro Studios 2.5yrs ago, which just isn't enough time for almost any game these days -- least of all 3D metroid. I'm sure they have something to show, but the way Nintendo has been handling announcements lately, they're not going to show anything until it's less than 6months from launch.

I dunno why you bring up Bayo3. Platinum has already proven countless times that they have no issues developing this style of game.

[thesoftware730]

But Nintendo is not developing bayo3..and why would Retro have trouble after they made 3 prime games?

I'm not sure what u mean.

[Knushwood Butt]

The R & D costs for recycling old IPs are getting higher.

It's tough porting 3DS games to Switch.

[Zhipp]

R&D costs are likely going up because they won't be able to rely as much on ports going forward. That plus the Switch Pro are what I would guess are driving up costs.

[Knushwood Butt]

I personally don't see them releasing a Pro that runs games that the standard Switch cannot run.

[lnfiniteLoop]

R&D how to get more cash out of the consumer for less effort... did they patent the research...

[NextGenCeo]

Nintendo and their contents always overprice and someday gamers will be punish them for that. I'm pretty sure of that.

[1nsomniac]

What the hell does Nintendo even need an R&D team for!?

Over the last decade they have changed from one of the greatest gaming companies in the world. To a company who’s sole purpose is to extort children. Progressively proving that they are no longer about creating fun entertainment but pure commercial greed, even then they’ve proved they’re not very good at either anymore.