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But they're there to do, as far as we've understood for years, exactly just that. manage externally developed projects, not pulling EPD programmers and artists from other groups.
Technically, the EPD development staff is mostly just one department with all the programmers, artists and designers working for each software group on a game-by-game basis, at least that's just how I've understand it. If Group 2 wants to branch out into internal software, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be allowed to?
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Groups 1 and 2's sole focus is (and their former equivalents in the SPD structure) external management of production though.
if you have it set up that these 10/11 creative groups have two set up to work with partners to realize ideas and the remaining groups are staffed from the internal pool of devs and pull-in external teams as needed, you create quite the stumbling block when one of those two external groups suddenly swoops in to take a bunch of staff from the pool instead of calling on an external partner, like they usually do.
note how the group breakdown in the OP (even when EAD Ninja ran it) has always labeled the Yamagami and Izuno groups as external dev since that is what they did under SPD and continued to do as we have seen in the EPD structure.
If Yamagami or one of his directors goes "yo, crazy idea let's do ...." they go to any of their friendly partner studios from past projects or find a new one and then shape that idea into the final product. And then nobody buys Sushi Striker or Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Poor Kaori Ando.
she scored a win with Astral Chain at least. hope she gets another game as a director
EPD Tokyo seemed to be different in that Yokota was the only composer there for a while, so he was always the lead on major titles, with some assistance from the Kyoto sound team. The exception being 3D Land as he was too busy working on OoT 3D and Skyward Sword at the time. Kondo was pretty much just a manager for years outside of a handful of Mario and Zelda tracks, but he's gotten back into things recently with Mario Maker 1/2 and Odyssey.
Now with Kubo up at the Tokyo office, Yokota may just be overseeing the music now instead of composing. I hope I'm wrong, even though Kubo is pretty good at emulating his style.
It's happened quite a bit. Wii Sports Resort, ALBW, Tank Troopers and Link's Awakening (Remake) were all done by Ryo Nagamtsu alone.
Also technically, Majora wasn't solo'd by Kondo. Toru Minegishi handled the battle themes except for the final boss. But yeah, like Yokota and Galaxy 1, it might as well have been.
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I should know this as I just scrolled past a wall of Ryo Nagamatsu in my playlist the other day for the LA Switch OST :P
Well.. let's just say It's an EPD Production Group No.02 joint through ND Cube but where ND Cube's assistant did a lot of the work. I mean they always do a lot of the work, but most of the work in this case.
Also, EPD Production Group No.02 has made use of planners and game designers - on the Yoshi games.
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Flipnote is a Tokyo joint
thread for this btw:
A Switch version of Flipnote Studios (Nintendo's drawing/clip making app) may have leaked (UP: April Fools joke)
UPDATE 2: it was an april fools joke made days before April yaaaaay UPDATE: the video has been put on private now tl;dw : SourceGaming was sent an allegedly leaked version of a dev build of Flipnote Studios on Switch. They check out the japanese and found it all looks very authentic. This...
www.resetera.com
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So if we get all those Mario things this years its thanks to group 8 right?
Would fit right in their history.
Would fit right in their history.
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Sort of relevant to this thread but it appears that Fire Emblem Cipher is coming to an end. The producer, Ryota Kawade, was the director of the first three Paper Mario games.
I was wondering what happened to Tadashi Sugiyama. The poor guy is the only EAD Kyoto producer who apparently didn't get a team under EPD and he literally disappeared after Tank Troopers. One of the directors under him, Hiroshi Matsunaga, directed Ring Fit like you'd expect (he was the director of Wii Fit U). The other one, Takaya Imamura, also disappeared. Imamura was director of Tank Troopers and Steel Diver and supervisor of the several Star Fox and F-Zero games, so maybe he's working with Sugiyama on the big AAA Star Fox open-space reboot for Miyamoto's pleasure? Or maybe they retired? Either way, it's strange we didn't hear of them three years into the Switch's lifespan.
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Sorry I got it mixed up. He's been at Retro for a while lol
They did hire a Graphics Engineer who worked at Arena Net last year.
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There was never any confirmation, but it seems like their Pokemon RPGs underperformed (the primary reason the company was formed) and some new project they were working on fell through. They eventually downsized to around 20 employees and it's been like that since.
They're still a private company that Nintendo had investment in, similar to Alphadream.
The claim that many members moved over to Game Freak seems to be exaggerated/unfounded. The only person we know who made the jump was James Turner in late 2009, well after GS downsized.
Nintendo First Party Thread |OT3| Internal x External x Publishing - What's cooking? Nintendo - OT
Genius Sonority like Alpha Dream were spawned from Nintendo’s Q-Fund. Which was essentially Yamauchi funding a lot of RPG centered developers to make games for the Nintendo brand. This was probably an answer to the loss of final fantasy and dragon quest. GS got additional stakes bought by...
www.resetera.com
Nintendo First Party Thread |OT3| Internal x External x Publishing - What's cooking? Nintendo - OT
I know Turner moved over, but I didn't think it was some sort of exodus or anything. I don't see a lot of crossover comparing the PBR and BW credits. It feels like something happened before Turner's arrival at GF, as he didn't join until late 2009, which was well after PBR and Dragon Quest...
www.resetera.com
I know that. Like, I was looking at their website and their last release was this mobile RPG thing(?) back in 2017. Haven't done anything since but their website still seems active. It's like they're dead but not dead at the same time lolThere was never any confirmation, but it seems like their Pokemon RPGs underperformed (the primary reason the company was formed) and some new project they were working on fell through. They eventually downsized to around 20 employees and it's been like that since.
They're still a private company that Nintendo had investment in, similar to Alphadream.
The claim that many members moved over to Game Freak seems to be exaggerated/unfounded. The only person we know who made the jump was James Turner in late 2009, well after GS downsized.
Nintendo First Party Thread |OT3| Internal x External x Publishing - What's cooking? Nintendo - OT
Genius Sonority like Alpha Dream were spawned from Nintendo’s Q-Fund. Which was essentially Yamauchi funding a lot of RPG centered developers to make games for the Nintendo brand. This was probably an answer to the loss of final fantasy and dragon quest. GS got additional stakes bought by...
Nintendo First Party Thread |OT3| Internal x External x Publishing - What's cooking? Nintendo - OT
I know Turner moved over, but I didn't think it was some sort of exodus or anything. I don't see a lot of crossover comparing the PBR and BW credits. It feels like something happened before Turner's arrival at GF, as he didn't join until late 2009, which was well after PBR and Dragon Quest...
Yeah I think the CEO said they were going to release something last year, but nothing happened. Shuffle probably gave them a safety net for a while. I was expecting some sort of sequel or a similar game when that stopped getting new content.
I can't see Denpa Men continuing. The last two games weren't even localized and the most recent one was shut down after 2 years.
I could see them releasing something new on Switch since mobile didn't work out, but I wonder if their relationship with Nintendo/TPC is done.
I don't expect anything big out of Genius Sonority anymore. Basically just hoping that they have another Pokémon Shuffle game in them. Probably wouldn't be a huge investment anyway since they got all the assets in HD anyway.
they should be built up back into a spin-off company. Creatures doing Detective Pikachu, Genius Sonority doing a different style of game that leverage 3D models. hell, let them make Poke Park 3
That would require TPC to stop trying to replicate the success of Pokémon Go.
I thought that was only for Let's Go? SS has none of those talking points
Nah, I wasn't talking about the mainline games but TPC practically ignoring consoles for their spinoffs.
So, what's the current state of Camelot? I assume that Mario Tennis Aces sold decently so they should be getting more resources.
(The truth is that I've been watching too many Golden Sun videos lately and I want some hope).
(The truth is that I've been watching too many Golden Sun videos lately and I want some hope).
who knows about more resources. as we seen with Alpha Dream, Nintendo must expect the company to be able to stay afloat on their own. otherwise it's a ¯\(ツ)/¯ from Nintendo
Yeah, but the last few Mario&Luigi games bombed hard. Aces is the best selling Mario Tennis.
I mean Camelot is doing fine. There's no comparison between them and Alpha Dream
I wouldn't expect anything that isn't in the sports genre.
what I mean is, they can't be pulling a Retro Studios without being under the umbrella of someone. since they're primarily contracting companies, I wonder how far each success gets them. Nintendo doesn't let bombs deter them from working with studios, but that may only be the case if the studio can survive until Nintendo comes to them with a new project
It would be strange if a long-dormant series that was always handheld returned with a full HD game, especially when the studio is also expected to make a Mario Golf title at some point in the console's life cycle.
For these dormant series, best to be pleasantly surprised. (Our information about Golden Sun isn't like Advance Wars, where even within the past few months, Kouhei Maeda of IS said he'd never give up trying to make another one.)
Edit: Source for Maeda quote is: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/fsmhrq/i_am_kouhei_maeda_longtime_employee_at/fm2hont/ 13 days ago. Apologies for being vague.
For these dormant series, best to be pleasantly surprised. (Our information about Golden Sun isn't like Advance Wars, where even within the past few months, Kouhei Maeda of IS said he'd never give up trying to make another one.)
Edit: Source for Maeda quote is: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/fsmhrq/i_am_kouhei_maeda_longtime_employee_at/fm2hont/ 13 days ago. Apologies for being vague.
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Camelot also said they want to make a new entry by the way.
Also, I don't think Advance Wars sold as well as the Golden Sun series to be honest.
Even if I have pretty much 0 hope of Advance Wars getting a new entry, it'd be much easier for IS to develop a new one than it'd be for Camelot to return to Golden Sun. After all, modifying the Fire Emblem engine to build an Advance Wars game seems quite feasible while the style of game that Camelot develops currently couldn't be farther from Golden Sun.
Golden Sun I feel has so much potential to become another tent-pole JRPG series under Nintendo's cap. My guess was just that the GBA's short lifespan, coupled with literally all attention from fans being towards Pokemon *raises hand* may have contributed to it not being as big as Nintendo wanted. And Dark Dawn's poor reception SO LATE into the DS's lifespan was extremely bad for it.
My ideal revival is a full-fledged remake of the two GBA games into full 3D games as they were two halves of a whole game (surely they can reuse Mario Tennis Aces' engine if need be for ease). That way they have proven games to build off of, and hopefully they won't ruin what folks liked about them (seemingly unlike AlphaDream with their M&L remakes).
My ideal revival is a full-fledged remake of the two GBA games into full 3D games as they were two halves of a whole game (surely they can reuse Mario Tennis Aces' engine if need be for ease). That way they have proven games to build off of, and hopefully they won't ruin what folks liked about them (seemingly unlike AlphaDream with their M&L remakes).
I definitely think he retired or is on casual "senior" duty.
It's definitely not done.
Know anything about Genius Sonority you can share? Heard anything about their mystery project that Manabu Yamana talked about a year or so ago?
My guess is that the series was screwed over the change of leadership. Iwata wasn't very keen on supporting it.
Later 90s / early 00s was a weird period for Nintendo, with Yamauchi funding a lot of projects from smaller companies. We got the likes of Custom Robot, Starfy, Tomato Adventures, Kororinpa, Magical Starsign... and Golden Sun, from Camelot, which was already trusted with Mario sports spin-offs.
Then Iwata became CEO and restructured the whole company. He wasn't really interested in funding those projects. Over the course of his tenure, the smaller companies become dedicated developers of Mario spin-offs (like Alphadream), support studios (Brownie Brown becoming 1UP) or they simply stopped being associated with Nintendo (e.g. Noise).
I think (and that's 100% a supposition on my part) Iwata wanted Camelot to focus on Mario spin-offs. I guess Camelot wasn't very happy with this and after a 7-year partnership with Nintendo, in 2006 they announced a Golf game for Yahoo PC service. The game was never released. In 2007 they released with Capcom We Love Golf on Wii, which was very good but kinda flopped.
Then in 2009-2010, they went back to Nintendo with the New Play Control version of Mario Tennis GC and Golden Sun Dark Dawn. Despite being a port, Mario Tennis sold very well, while Golden Sun was a big flop. The series already lost its momentum and Xenoblade, released the same year, became "the" Nintendo flagship RPG franchise.
Nowadays they aren't big enough to develop a big reboot of Golden Sun, and Nintendo seems happy to use them as a Mario Tennis/Golf factory.
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That's not really true. Iwata was very supportive of working with independent companies on niche projects. Things like The Last Story and Sin & Punishment: Star Successor all happened under him. My guess is that was against the way Yamuchi handled it, which was throwing money at convoluted ventures with no actual plan or consistency. Which led to things like the Marigul mess, where some studios were using Nintendo money to develop games on rival platforms.
the first game was the driest shit I ever bore witnessed to. the writing was terrible. I sat there wondering what the fuck people saw in this game
It's a game with a fairly competent combat system, Zelda dungeons and the collection-aspect with the djinns.
Not that difficult to figure out what people see in the series.
You are right, of course. I didn't want to imply that Iwata wasn't supportive of independent devs. Rather, he wasn't really interested in working with that specific set of companies Yamauchi helped establishing in later 90s / early 00s.
Do you remember which studio? I didn't know that.
I don't remember the specific studio, but I remember that one of them who partnered with Marigul, ended up making a canceled PS1 RTS.
Nintendo Indirectly Co-Funded A PlayStation Game That Never Made It To Market
"The money situation was unusual"
www.nintendolife.com
Iwata wanted to get away from the convoluted Second-Party investment strategy of Yamauchi, and move more towards simple, straight-forward partnerships and relationships with smaller studios.
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Thanks the li
Thanks for the link, very interesting.I don't remember the specific studio, but I remember that one of them who partnered with Marigul, ended up making a canceled PS1 RTS.
Nintendo Indirectly Co-Funded A PlayStation Game That Never Made It To Market
"The money situation was unusual"
Iwata wanted to get away from the convoluted Second-Party investment strategy of Yamauchi, and move more towards simple, straight-forward partnerships and relationships with smaller studios.
Marigul was set-up for Nintendo to fund and produce titles for the 64DD from a variety of independent creators from Japan. The problem was that the 64DD went from a killer app to vaporware after years of dragged on development. Many games were cancelled and dropped - so it's no surprise that one or two attempted to continue on another platform.
I don't think it was this idea of ending "second-party" affiliates as much as Western style of development / budgets not fitting in with the vision that Iwata and co had for the Wii and DS. Specifically RARE, Left Field, and Silicon Knights - were all creating specific types of games that Nintendo (Japan) devalued for risk of exclusively funding the studios.