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Miyamoto "Wii U development requires twice the amount of human resources than before"

He's reiterating what was said before. Why is everyone here acting like it's something new? Yeah, it's a new interview but it's not new info. Or is this "Kneejerk reaction: OT"? Regardless of how late they are we've pretty much seen all their 1st gen software and it's coming out in the next half year/year so I think this lot is the "hump" that they were getting over
 

jaz013

Banned
I can see software development continues to be this magical, mysterious entity that happens magically by switching a button or saying "HD" . It doesn't have to do anything with projects, budgets, available platforms, annual planning or available work force. And everybody know that "programmers" are this weird entities that can go into any project and instantly start generating this "code", which is surely a key word for the black magic used to create video games.

Miscalculated man force = Nintendo doomed!

Is kinda amusing
not
.

//I facepalmed with the "Welcome to 2006" comment, really?
 

ec0ec0

Member
Well at least you could count the number of bugs on your fingers. Compared to stuff like the Witcher and Skyrim which are bug infested.

And to be honest I dont recall Twilight Princess on Gamecube having any game breaking bugs.

Is undeniable that nintendo games are in another league in terms of quality when we are taking about bugs, easy to find bugs. If after playing only on wii you try ps360 games... you will be like "why people pay fot this?", skyrim...

Still, twilit Princess does not do a favor to nintendo... if you want to know what i mean, you can pick the master sword (while also gaining the ability of changing from wolf to human when you wanted) at the begining of the game, and its extremely easy to do so. If you remember how the structure of the game worked before beeing able of picking the master sword a lot latter in the game, you only were able of being a wolf when the game let you, you can see that is a big deal.

EDIT: This is what i was taking about. Now, this video is not going to be a big deal for someone that played the game a lot ago. On the other hand, if you remember the structure of the whole game... (i mean, closing your eyes and seeing the "map" of the game, knowing were each place was and when and how you went to those places)

It happens after 18:40 in the video. But if would be a good idea to start from the beginig, so you can situate yourself: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4US0fy3LKBs
 

Fabrik

Banned
He's reiterating what was said before. Why is everyone here acting like it's something new? Yeah, it's a new interview but it's not new info. Or is this "Kneejerk reaction: OT"? Regardless of how late they are we've pretty much seen all their 1st gen software and it's coming out in the next half year/year so I think this lot is the "hump" that they were getting over

Well it means the situation hasn't changed much since then.
 
I can see software development continues to be this magical, mysterious entity that happens magically by switching a button or saying "HD" . It doesn't have to do anything with projects, budgets, available platforms, annual planning or available work force. And everybody know that "programmers" are this weird entities that can go into any project and instantly start generating this "code", which is surely a key word for the black magic used to create video games.

Miscalculated man force = Nintendo doomed!

Is kinda amusing
not
.

//I facepalmed with the "Welcome to 2006" comment, really?

This is one ignorant comment.

Every other company that wasn't directly affiliated with Nintendo had these growing pains. Miscalculations in team sizes, shit game code, not enough for budgets, no developed toolchains, etc, but Nintendo hits that same wall 7 years later. It's pathetic. They should have learned. They were stuck in the SD generation. They had an extra 7 years to get ready for HD, but they didn't.

They fucked up.
 

Pitmonkey

Junior Member
YnmJCA3.jpg


At least Nintendo uses the excuse to explain delays, not cut features.


Not to get off track, but this scene is the only part of the trailer that disappointed me. Looks lifeless, needs much more NPC's IMO.
 

BowieZ

Banned
Not to get off track, but this scene is the only part of the trailer that disappointed me. Looks lifeless, needs much more NPC's IMO.
It's looks like some sort of fascist state. With the cop harassing someone on the side and the line of people carefully walking along the set path.
 

Tookay

Member
Still, twilit Princess does not do a favor to nintendo... if you want to know what i mean, you can pick the master sword (while also gaining the ability of changing from wolf to human when you wanted) at the begining of the game, and its extremely easy to do so. If you remember how the structure of the game worked before beeing able of picking the master sword a lot latter in the game, you only were able of being a wolf when the game let you, you can see that is a big deal.

OoT has an exploit that allows you to beat Gohma, die, and skip to the final cutscene.

So what?

Weird glitches and exploits are discovered by speedrunners all the time. It didn't start with TP.
 

Tripon

Member
This is one ignorant comment.

Every other company that wasn't directly affiliated with Nintendo had these growing pains. Miscalculations in team sizes, shit game code, not enough for budgets, no developed toolchains, etc, but Nintendo hits that same way 7 years later. It's pathetic. They should have learned. They were stuck in the SD generation. They had an extra 7 years to get ready for HD, but they didn't.

They fucked up.

And they admitted that they fucked up, and are getting better at developing and releasing games.

Even if they didn't have the "HD hangups", games will still take time to develop. Mario Kart 8 is going to have a short development time, and that game will have only 18 months in development, and games like X would take a long development time no matter the format.

You can't just brute force game development unless you're willing to potentially bankrupt yourself in order to get even more riches like Activision and EA does with CoD and Battlefield respectively.
 

Petrae

Member
Nintendo is great at making games. The company also excels at making excuses.

The company deserves every bit of criticism for not being ready for the HD transition. Was Nintendo living in a bubble while other companies went through the same thing? Was no research done, no outside attention paid? Apparently so.

"We may have underestimated the scale", Mr. Miyamoto says. No kidding.
 

JordanN

Banned
I wonder what would happen if Nintendo still had Rare or actually invested in Western Studios? No way should those studios struggle unless Nintendo deliberately held them back like some kind of asshole.

Still, it's disappointing all around Nintendo has actually fallen this low. I once regarded them as being able to survive any tech leap (see N64 and Gamecube).

Instead, they've really let greed and arrogance corrupt them into not even thinking about the future and now we're left with this mess of a console (or management? Since they don't know how to even use the damn thing).
 

ec0ec0

Member
OoT has an exploit that allows you to beat Gohma, die, and skip to the final cutscene.

So what?

Weird glitches and exploits are discovered by speedrunners all the time. It didn't start with TP.

I know that better than anyone... i have watched (and i still do) a lot of speedruns of OOT in both youtube and twitch.tv. I only posted that because of this:

"And to be honest I dont recall Twilight Princess on Gamecube having any game breaking bugs."

I thought that he would like to see it. The first time that you see things like that for the first time you are like... wait, WHAT!!?

EDIT: Also, what kind of comparation is that!!? no one playing casually is going to find and beeing able to do that OOT glitch. But is TP one... anyone can pick the game now and do it first try.
 

Dunlop

Member
They have had seven years to see how everyone else did it, and they still fucked it up.
Pretty much and they had massive profits for the first few years to make the transition and not overly hurt the company.

The WiiU is the result of this arrogance
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Good thing they anticipated this and spent the years before the Wii U's release to hire new developers and prepare for the launch.

Because if you double your headcount and sell less units than your original headcount, you lose a ton of money... And most of the time go out of business?

Which happened to a hundred studios this generation.
Cmon people. This always comes down to being a business. You can only increase headcount when you can financially afford to do so. 3DS had a slow start so they initially couldn't justify the growth, they needed to drive up revenue first. They are just struggling, as everyone did, so the question is, can they get profitable fast enough or invest wisely enough to keep people caring long enough to stabilize and grow.
 

BlackJace

Member
Because if you double your headcount and sell less units than your original headcount, you lose a ton of money... And most of the time go out of business?

Which happened to a hundred studios this generation.
Cmon people. This always comes down to being a business. You can only increase headcount when you can financially afford to do so. 3DS had a slow start so they initially couldn't justify the growth, they needed to drive up revenue first. They are just struggling, as everyone did, so the question is, can they get profitable fast enough or invest wisely enough to keep people caring long enough to stabilize and grow.

Do you think that no amount of preparation would've prevented them from going through their growing pains? I understand them shifting focus to the 3DS, but I can't help but imagine that they could have done quite a bit more housekeeping in preparation for this.
 
Because if you double your headcount and sell less units than your original headcount, you lose a ton of money... And most of the time go out of business?

Which happened to a hundred studios this generation.
Cmon people. This always comes down to being a business. You can only increase headcount when you can financially afford to do so. 3DS had a slow start so they initially couldn't justify the growth, they needed to drive up revenue first. They are just struggling, as everyone did, so the question is, can they get profitable fast enough or invest wisely enough to keep people caring long enough to stabilize and grow.

So, the delays, low console sales, and absolute lack of taking advantage of the year they had of being the only next gen console on the market is much better?
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Do you think that no amount of preparation would've prevented them from going through their growing pains? I understand them shifting focus to the 3DS, but I can't help but imagine that they could have done quite a bit more housekeeping in preparation for this.

Oh they could have. They should have. Likely first place arrogance and all that. But to say it was inept and they don't know what they are doing is not accurate, it was clearly a strategy. Just is a conservative one.
 
Oh they could have. They should have. Likely first place arrogance and all that. But to say it was inept and they don't know what they are doing is not accurate, it was clearly a strategy. Just is a conservative one.

It's not a conservative strategy but a lack of strategic planning.

Making video games is the core competence of Nintendo, so either they improve their own software department because HD software developement needs more know-how and manpower or they look for something new.

But Nintendo did nothing.
 
This is one ignorant comment.

Every other company that wasn't directly affiliated with Nintendo had these growing pains. Miscalculations in team sizes, shit game code, not enough for budgets, no developed toolchains, etc, but Nintendo hits that same wall 7 years later. It's pathetic. They should have learned. They were stuck in the SD generation. They had an extra 7 years to get ready for HD, but they didn't.

They fucked up.
This is such a specious argument. There is literally no way to "get ready for HD". Either you have a methodology to develop games in HD, which you form by developing HD games, or you don't.

How the hell do you guys think software development works?
 
It doesn't make sense, Nintendo aren't followers, they're innovators. They don't try to run after some hidden fan base that exists only on PS4one, they bring the fanbase to their consoles.
And their biggest problem is that they're stubborn and refuse to break old and pointless traditions.

Something isn't working for them right now. They need to change something for once besides their controller.
 
This is such a specious argument. There is literally no way to "get ready for HD". Either you have a methodology to develop games in HD, which you form by developing HD games, or you don't.

How the hell do you guys think software development works?

There was a 7 year gap between 360 and PS3. There is a plethora of documentation available for devs. GDC is a great venue. Not only that, but they can talk to 3rd party developers to ask or work together on developing tool chains.

Sure, if they were the first to go HD, you can't expect them to be "ready" when you don't really know what to be ready for. But countless other developers have had this issue already.

"A wise man learns from others mistakes, while a fool learns from his own."

Clearly they are learning the hard way.
 

Shion

Member
This is such a specious argument. There is literally no way to "get ready for HD". Either you have a methodology to develop games in HD, which you form by developing HD games, or you don't.

How the hell do you guys think software development works?

The thing here, though, is that, unlike what most developers had to go through back in 2005/2006, Nintendo didn't have to reinvent the wheel.

The whole situation demonstrates just how mismanaged this company is.
 
omgawd it just occured to me that hd games actually have more pixels than sd games :eek:

Ubisoft has each employee focus only on an individual pixel of the final game, as well as its horizontal brethren. That's seven hundred and twenty developers for all future games that are displaying in 720p.

They don't know what game there's making but all the pixels come together and it just works.
 

bomblord

Banned
There was a 7 year gap between 360 and PS3. There is a plethora of documentation available for devs. GDC is a great venue. Not only that, but they can talk to 3rd party developers to ask or work together on developing tool chains.

Sure, if they were the first to go HD, you can't expect them to be "ready" when you don't really know what to be ready for. But countless other developers have had this issue already.

"A wise man learns from others mistakes, while a fool learns from his own."

Clearly they are learning the hard way.

For some people (myself included) programming workflow and methodologies can only learned by doing. I can sit for hours listening to a lecture on stacks and "first in last out" and "last in first out" ways of setting up database structures but until I actually sit down and do it it just flies over my head.

Of course documentation helps but to
1. assume they have access to all the documentation that other developers have created regarding HD development (do you really think a company would release any of that information?) and too
2. Assume documentation will make you as capable as someone whose done it for 6 years is ridiculous.
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
No shit Sherlock, we just assumed that the reason Wii got no games in its last two years was Nintendo preparing for the transition.
Exactly. I'd love to hear their excuse for the terrible drought.

What the fuck were they doing in that time?
 

Kyon

Banned
Smfh

All I know is they need to catch up with everyone else in tech cause they are already being left behind next gen making a console on par with PS360. A lot of multiplats won't be possible on it now. A mess
 
For some people (myself included) programming workflow and methodologies can only learned by doing. I can sit for hours listening to a lecture on stacks and "first in last out" and "last in first out" ways of setting up database structures but until I actually sit down and do it it just flies over my head.

Of course documentation helps but to
1. assume they have access to all the documentation that other developers have created regarding HD development (do you really think a company would release any of that information?) and too
2. Assume documentation will make you as capable as someone whose done it for 6 years is ridiculous.

I've only done programming for 2.5 years. I'm probably no where near as experience as you, but I agree. I learned shit from lectures. It's when the professor threw us into the deep end is when I got shit done.

The problem still exists...

Is that they had 7 YEARS to start doing something for their next gen. They had to have thought "Hmm, we are eventually going to hit next gen, and it'll be our biggest jump ever. What can we work on to get some things going?"
 
When small teams can crank out games with the visuals of Hawken and Eastern Europe has no problems being on the absolute cutting edge of graphics tech and rendering Nintendo and all their knowhow and cash has no excuses.
 

PhantomR

Banned
1) Nintendo has a highly insular, secretive, tight-knit development ecosystem with 100% proprietary tools and engines

2) Miyamoto is old and he admits to not actively playing other video games

3) Nintendo admits to not taking their competition seriously


What do you get when you let that build up for years and years? A bunch of whining and a host of problems.


Not focusing on what their competition does, doesn't equate to "doesn't take their competition seriously".


When Jack Tretton said on Gametrailers that Sony wasn't pricing the PS4 based on what Microsoft is doing with their system, were you also saying "Sony doesn't take Microsoft seriously!!!". Of course you didn't. So why would you pull that BS here?
 
Those investors really don't give a flying duck about their money, don't they?
If i was one of them i already voted to lay off some of the CEO's
 
Nintendo shouldn't have been so naive. It's like they just waltzed into this gen thinking it would be easy even though they had zero skills at developing HD games on a programmable shader gpu.

This is why I never would say Nintendo "won" this generation. They sold a lot of consoles, but they alienated the core gamer who is the group that actually keep buying games, not the casuals and then they also didn't get the necessary experience with HD that everyone else went through. All they did was delay the issue until today and it's showing right now with all the delays.

I would have though they would have been spending time since 2010 developing and learning but it seems like they just started last year.
 

B.O.O.M

Member
Not focusing on what their competition does, doesn't equate to "doesn't take their competition seriously".


When Jack Tretton said on Gametrailers that Sony wasn't pricing the PS4 based on what Microsoft is doing with their system, were you also saying "Sony doesn't take Microsoft seriously!!!". Of course you didn't. So why would you pull that BS here?

That makes absolutely no sense. Pricing is a different ball game and one you does not 'know' beforehand what the competition will do. There is no choice in the matter and it certainly isn't about taking the competition seriously or not focusing on them.

A better example would be something like the XBOne 180 or progress of PSN compared to XBL.
 
The thing here, though, is that, unlike what most developers had to go through back in 2005/2006, Nintendo didn't have to reinvent the wheel.

The whole situation demonstrates just how mismanaged this company is.
So, they were supposed to adopt other developers' methodologies on a wholesale, unilateral basis? Because that wouldn't have been a culture shock resulting in a long learning curve...

The sort of things Nintendo could learn from others are the silly high level sort of things that sound important ("assets take longer to develop"), but are ultimately meaningless in from the perspective of software methodology. Nintendo, just as any other developer, had to go through the process themselves to be able to adapt their methods.
 

Septimius

Junior Member
d[-_-]b;68330216 said:
Awesome thanks dude...
The Nintendo Web Framework is a development environment based on WebKit technologies, supporting application development on the Wii U system using HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS.
Lol well that's not going to make games, Nintendo d00med :O.

If I had to make a game with this, I'd just.. die. No need for suicide. It'd just wither away within the first 5 minutes.

For some people (myself included) programming workflow and methodologies can only learned by doing. I can sit for hours listening to a lecture on stacks and "first in last out" and "last in first out" ways of setting up database structures but until I actually sit down and do it it just flies over my head.

Of course documentation helps but to
1. assume they have access to all the documentation that other developers have created regarding HD development (do you really think a company would release any of that information?) and too
2. Assume documentation will make you as capable as someone whose done it for 6 years is ridiculous.

But that no one on the Nintendo team have come from other HD developments, or otherwise have hands on experience with the development type is just ridiculous.

HD is for all intents and purposes just stepping up what you've done. You might need twice the labor, but if you have good infrastructure, it's not like "well shit, what are we gonna do NOW?"
 

PhantomR

Banned
That makes absolutely no sense. Pricing is a different ball game and one you does not 'know' beforehand what the competition will do. There is no choice in the matter and it certainly isn't about taking the competition seriously or not focusing on them.

A better example would be something like the XBOne 180 or progress of PSN compared to XBL.

Geoff asked Jack if the Xbox One's priced influenced the PS4s...he SPECIFICALLY said that it did not, because you cannot run a business based on trying to react to what your competition does.

So again, does this mean that Sony doesn't take Microsoft seriously? No.

So the argument that Nintendo doesn't take their competition SERIOUSLY (seriously being the key word here) is bullshit.
 

Kurtofan

Member
When small teams can crank out games with the visuals of Hawken and Eastern Europe has no problems being on the absolute cutting edge of graphics tech and rendering Nintendo and all their knowhow and cash has no excuses.

Small studios focused on a few games aren't comparable to Nintendo, who has to deal with 2 consoles and a ton of games per year.
 

onipex

Member
He's reiterating what was said before. Why is everyone here acting like it's something new? Yeah, it's a new interview but it's not new info. Or is this "Kneejerk reaction: OT"? Regardless of how late they are we've pretty much seen all their 1st gen software and it's coming out in the next half year/year so I think this lot is the "hump" that they were getting over

Its another chance to bash Nintendo so people will jump on it. It made them delay their games by 6-8 months and from looking what they have shown of the upcoming games it looks like they have a decent grasp of HD now.
 
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