Nintendo To Invest Huge Sums In Game Development And Online Infrastructure

When a video game company spends much more on online infrastructure than they do on games, yet their Online Services and offering are sh*tty and miles worse than what other competitors offers, you know that their is something wrong.

$2.64 Billion for Infrastructure and Building Relations with Consumers.... Wow. Something massive happening in that space.

They’re gonna spend 2.64 billion dollars on what a few google searches can accomplish? Along with try to be more human and not pretend the human element of Nintendo doesn’t exist. No one can really speak with people at Nintendo. It’s only the same familiar faces and no offense to them but I don’t really want to see them as much anymore. I’d rather have a more up front and DIRECT Nintendo. Pun intended. But really why does Nintendo hide in the shadows, drop games seemingly from nowhere then hide again.

gonna upgade the ol' 56k modem they have at the office I guess. good on them.

@Ocaz it works, that's why. It's the same approach Kanye uses, Apple uses it to a degree as well. Keeps fanboys fanning.

@NintendoKnight you clearly misinterpreted the article.

These investments are on top of current spendings. You should actually be happy Nintendo wants to invest in these parts, especially account offerings and online infrastructure getting the largest sum of the investments. It shows Nintendo knows.

I was very excited to see this break down. Nintendo has been putting steps in place to grow their infrastructure (really since the end of the gamespy agreement) but they are really digging in. Also happy to see the projected investments in their other entertainment areas. As well as the new Nintendo stores (both Tokyo and Osaka) rollout.

Really glad to see them dumping money into the online infrastructure more than anywhere else. It shows that there might actually be hope for online services in the future.

@NintendoKnight
Nintendo's current online infrastructure being lackluster is probably why they are going to spend up to ¥300 billion to improve it.

That 300billion yen was just the bill from Microsoft to have Banjo be part of the N64 expansion pass

Well I was hoping that they were already investing a lot into games development and online services

-we can skip the movies though, games are enough.

@NintendoKnight let's be positive. They might be trying to make it better. Remember Nintendo discovered the existence of the internet just a few years ago.

Watch the only thing to come out of this be 5 less frames of lag on Switch Online

There is no way Nintendo can improve their relationship with me and others unless they change the way they sell and price their products and stop stomping on their fans, which they are likely too afraid of losing money to do..

@NintendoKnight you do know that they WILL invest. So the improvement is in the future. Your comment makes no sense.

Some of that investment will hopefully be bringing Perfect Dark to the Expansion Pack

I wonder when we as the consumer will really start to notice some things that will come out of this... I hope it'll be good.

@Perryg92 it should have been anyway considering 90% of rare games were made on Nintendo consoles

Nintendo is likely using the subscription model to improve the online infrastructure … kind of a chicken before the egg situation

"... build a 'uniquely Nintendo service infrastructure'" sounds like they won't be tying up with Microsofts cloud, like Sony have and Sega are doing. To be honest I'd rather Nintendo did tie up with someone else (maybe Amazon?) as they don't seem to have a strong history with networking

@kepsux I personally don’t respond positively to it and I can’t imagine being the only one. If I know what’s coming and I get updates on things I’m much happier as a customer

Good! Perhaps they can stop doing their online like it’s 2005….

@maulinks I came here to say that, people can be obtuse.

@IronMan30 that’s acute answer

They're just gonna delay the heavy hitters for 4 years until the console dies out and fill the rest of the release spaces with lame low effort spinoffs.

I don't think Nintendo has mentioned a time period in which this investment will be implemented, but I'd assume this would be over the period of like 10 years, so that amounts to ¥450 billion ÷ 10 = ¥45 billion (aka ~$396 million) in additional R&D spending per year.

@fadedcolors
If you are spending ¥450 billion to delay games, you are doing something very, very, very wrong lol

People just complaing cause they're wanting free crap. I see this as a good thing. Nintendo sees the problem, and trying do something about it. What has Sony and Microsoft done? They have done nothing for us wit their only service. They're still offering trashy games for plus and gold. Plus still a glorified rental service, and the deals mostly suck. I'm not saying Nintendo isn't making mistakes, but its a step in the right direction.

@GannonBanned yes please! When I saw BK coming to the expansion pass my hopes got high for Perfect Dark as well.
Perfect Dark is Forever.
On topic: yet consumers will still find a way to blame big bad Nintendo for every thing.

@Ocaz I'm gonna be a square and say I can't keep this going.

@NintendoKnight *there

In other words they've heard our cries and they're working on a solution? Nice!

I said at the very start of NSO, Nintendo don't have much infrastructure for this sort of thing and hoped they would invest as folk buy in to it. This sort of money is certainly looking towards the future and very exciting.

Hoping this means a persistent digital ecosystem. I need to know my digital switch games will be playable on whatever “console” they do next.

Expand Relationships with Consumers?

Hey Listen....
SORT OUT THE NSO and N64 emulation before asking for more money, didnt they play test this?

@Ocaz a few google searches?

This is really good news! Nintendo are finally addressing their online issues, and with 3 times as much investment on this area versus software, I dare say they should come up with something that doesn't just match the expectations that have been set by competitor online models, but actually creates something even better.

Key question for me is how they balance the walled garden / safety-first approach (which they clearly will not abandon) with delivering the features we want and expect. I think they could create something pretty great with this - it's an enormous amount of investment and we should all be excited about this!

Whenever corporations use strange phrases such as "expand relationship with consumers," it makes me take pause. What do they mean by that? It sounds creepy, even with the "Mario smile," in front of it. I'm not a consumer, I'm a customer.

Blimey, I know reports suggested it was going to cost a lot to have the mega drive games on the online service but this is way more than I'd have guessed

If they took more of that "Expand Relationship with Customers" money and put it into Game Development, they could achieve both.

Yes, Nintendo needs to improve their customer's experience outside of games but people are here for the games.

@TSR3 AWS has PLENNNNNNTY of issues on its own, I hope Nintendo puts their egg in a different basket

online infrastructure? Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. Its 2021 and Nintendo acts like its actually 2007

@Kimyonaakuma I’m imagining the boring white bread nightmare of a 2 hour Zelda movie

@Fudge_Fujiyama Laughed out loud at that hahaha

Also @kepsux it’s Ye not Kanye

Nintendo was already in a cash rich position from the Wii days. Switch has made this even more of a healthy position.

The future investment proposed is welcomed news.

If I was Nintendo my investment plan would be:
1) Donkey Kong
2) bananas
3) neckties and hats

@NintendoKnight actually this is how you know something is right. The reason their online has been so poor is because they haven't been investing the money they should be doing to improve their systems, now they are, so in a few years we'll be seeing big improvements presumably.

Finally! An online service that can compete with the original Xbox.

@negw definitely, checking the history of what Nintendo consumers have wanted or been asking for in the last decade. what do people want? Legacy content, better hardware, reimagine stale IPs bring back old IPs chill with the legal BS cuz no other company is as crazy as them. All found with a few google searches. The money could be spent on the outreach for those efforts. Maybe they could also do some better first party sales.

Beyond the current quality of their online experience, I question if the Switch is the ideal console to use for online play? It isn’t permanently plugged into the wall which makes online tough outside the house, not to mention us lot of fans are famously a bit suspect of online gaming with micro transactions and all the other insidious costs that come with it.

I can see Nintendo eyeing Sony and Microsoft (and Apple) selling films and TV programmes and apps on their online shops and wanting a piece of that pie, but I’m not sure if anyone would buy stuff like that from Nintendo when they’ve lived so long as solely gaming company?

They definitely to need expand their internal game developer studio sizes, they take an age to release internal AAA games. Let’s remember since the big hitters on or near the launch of the switch the true in house studios have not released much.

Now imagine for next generation they have to consider maybe 4K, HDR, higher texture assets, lots of detailed worlds etc, real surround sound.
on current form they would never get say a game like Forza Horizon 5, Horizon Zero Dawn Forbidden West out of development and to customers.
I mean BOTW is amazing and the first game would take a long time, but the second with the game engine done and assists etc all there etc, remembering this is low level graphics and sound compared to todays standards, it’s taking forever, also they are using the same Hyrule land mass.
Same could be said for Mario Odyssey.
They take to long because their studios are tiny in comparison to others.
Also not even had a new Mario Kart for Switch generation.
Perhaps they to busy building Amibo, theme parks and soft cuddles toys 😂😂😂

@NintendoKnight Yes, you do know there is something wrong and they might finally have realized that and are investing enough time and money to perhaps fix the atrocity that has been their online offerings, maybe even add something as simple as... Voice Chat.

I certainly welcome the commitment they seem to be making in these areas. With partnerships being forged all over the industry as well as consolidation, it will be imperative they ramp up their software output especially if mergers and acquisitions is not something they want to focus on.

I do think that branching out and licensing some of these characters should be a priority. However, they’ve made this statement before the Switch was even released. In that time, they have managed a Mario movie deal that still is some time away. The LEGO thing was unexpected, but two deals in five years isn’t a lot.

As for what they plan to invest the most of the money on, it is needed. I just don’t know where to begin. They’ve had a problem online for years. It doesn’t seem to be getting any better. In today’s world, that makes no sense at all.

While I love Nintendo, I think I sit firmly in the cautiously optimistic category.

@Gwynbleidd yeah, you can wait till results are there, true. But if one feels that a company is lacking in a specific field of expertise, it’s good to see the company is willing to at least invest in that field, no?

So much hate around here. Smile for a change

Are they listening?

@Leksa Too much to ask, even on the weekend!

Give us real gamer profiles. Link our Wii and Wii U profiles and such too.

Incoming price increase

@GannonBanned tbh hopefully part of that money goes into dissolving the expansion pak and replacing it with something we want. Like instead of having an expansion pak we have the ability to pick individual consoles and pay extra for those

I say wait and see... I have no plans to see the mario movie as i have boycotted it due to some of the actors in the film who i hate and as for online this should have been done years ago and they need to stick making more games and less talk.. and please finally make a console that is atleast powerful enough to play 3rd parties maybe near xbox series s level as i hear that console is a good console too

@NintendoKnight It's almost like they have to spend more money to make it better 😲

Oh this is encouraging news, maybe they'll actually do it right this time!

I suppose it's good news. The 'proof will be in the pudding' though of course

Hope they can spare a little to develop a new Golden Sun or at least a remake.

I’m stoked that they will be spending money on online infrastructure. I think voicechat should be a incorporated in to the switch and the app scrubbed away. Able to send messages to friends, create chat groups, send emojis. Etc….

There is a lot they can improve upon. Just look at Xbox and Steam community.

They'd like to expand development funding so they can take a look into this HD phenomenon they've been hearing about lately...

"Expand Relationship With Consumers". Wow. I mean, we've been bending over and taking it for over 35 years with a smile. Can the relationship expand more than that?

I feel the same people complaining Nintendo needs to invest more in their online infrastructure are the same ones immediately complaining about this in some stupid way.

Can I donate a nickel for better Netcode?

This is their plans for the upcoming year? Quarter? Other time frame?

The budget for non-gaming is still way too low, that's the budget for two movies max if you include their marketing, maybe 4 if they get good co-financing deals.

It should be 10 times higher without any exaggeration, Nintendo needs streaming shows on all popular characters, not only movies. This will make Nintendo exponential amounts of money if the content isn't complete garbage, it doesn't even need to be really good to make money.

There should be a Mario cartoon, a Peach cartoon, a Donkey Kong cartoon, Zelda anime, Metroid live-action series, they're already doing a Pokémon live-action series.

The gaming investment sounds like Nintendo gearing up to develop for more powerful hardware. Modern 4K game development requires a ton of man-power

Boy do they ever need to get better at their online experience.

Use that money and make Mario Kart 9.

Will we finally have something that’s more advanced than the DS online? Are we really leaving 2008?

to me it sounds like the company is getting a few stability updates

@NintendoKnight You're comment makes no sense because they haven't actually spent any of that money yet. If the service is still terrible AFTER they spend the money, you'd actually have a point

This should be cool

@NintendoKnight servers don't run on unicorn farts you know?

@HenHiro animated movies are far less expensive than live action

This is enough for more movies than you think
But the big question is the time frame for this investment

@Tantani not necessarily these days, it really depends. Spider-verse was a very expensive movie.

Yes the time frame is unclear, but it sounds like a long-time plan, since they're not gonna invest 800 million dollars in one year for games, Nintendo games are very cheap to make compared to other AAAs, I don't think Nintendo ever invested a 100 million in a single game, considering how BOTW, the biggest game in j
the history of the company broke even after 2m.

Even for next-gen AAA this would be too much for just one year.

@Hellburner918 not all games on Plus and Gold suck. And for it being an extended rental it's a great idea for trying games you might be hesitant to buy before actually buying them.

Funny maybe others on have said what about making better Joy-Cons. You have to notice nothing was mention about controller performance to be had?

Here after the Mario Kart 8 DLC announcement. Their strategy is slowly "unfolding" before our eyes.

Edit: I think Mario Party DLC is next following Mario Kart 8 DLC and their goal is to move closer to the Just Dance style of content relaying for each iteration of the game. For Party, they can have an Expansion Pass that adds boards to BOTH their current games as well as future games to come which future adds to the value of the subscription as well as making Mario Party games easier, more frequent and sell better.