Once upon a time, Nintendo was a little playing card company, located in a regular-sized office building in Kyoto, Japan. They're a bit bigger now, and you may have seen their boring-but-iconic Kyoto headquarters before: It's a big white cube covered in windows.
But it looks like there's about to be a second big cube next-door to the current one. That cube is being occupied largely by the Kyoto City Waterworks and Sewerage Bureau, and Nintendo is planning to rent the 6th and 7th floor — adding another 8,500 square metres to their space — from May 2022.
There are also plans to build another building, on the premises of the Nintendo Kyoto Research Center, where the head office used to be. In a report from Nikkei, Nintendo spoke about their future plans for these new office spaces:
"Until now, game development was often outsourced, but we will increase our employment."
Chris Scullion of Video Games Chronicle sought out a Google Maps image of the Kyoto Research Center, predicting that the new building would probably be built in the small area of land next to the existing building.
The current state of Nintendo's game development offices appears to be in flux. Game Freak recently moved in with Nintendo in Tokyo, and in early 2020 Nintendo's four separate Tokyo offices were merged into one big one to "boost operational efficiency".
Around the same time as the Game Freak move, Nintendo also announced that they would be investing huge sums — profit from the Switch's success — into "organically expand[ing]" its game development ($880 million), as well as investing in non-game entertainment like the Mario movie ($440 million) and expanding their relationship with consumers (a whopping $2.64 billion). That last one includes things like Nintendo Switch Online, My Nintendo, and potentially even new services.
What do you hope Nintendo's next big move in the world of games will be? Let us know in the comments!
[source nikkei.com, via videogameschronicle.com]
Comments 43
Whoa. Certainly a different approach to simply buying other companies for their franchises. Risky. Hope it works. (/s)
Pretty surprised they’re not considering working from home as another option.
@GrailUK nope, it won't work and never has. Nintendo should just pack it in.
Nintendo HQ 2: Electric Boogaloo
Water and sewerage bureau? Mario will feel at home with all the pipes!
what will happen with the building that house Nintendo EPD? more development building could lead to a less wait to a Legend of Zelda/3D Mario game.
@syrupdash Nintendo is working from home since the pandemic started.
@IronMan30 lol
Well alright then
I think this is a reasonably smart move because of how Nintendo's internal output (EPD) has diminished in the Switch era, but I also think it'd be smart for Nintendo to acquire some of their partner studios as they did with Next Level
@syrupdash they have enough money to not have to take that trade off
I guarantee you this is for the Switch 2, hardware and software. Things are going to start getting really busy for Nintendo, and I just have a feeling that is what all this new space is going to be for.
Good, spend some money, hire some folks. Nintendo has always been super conservative with their staff numbers
Translation: Non-Japanese developers suck. No work from home nonsense either.
Nintendo made many more games during the gamecube era, they should go back to that strategy through outsourcing
It's about damn time they've started creating more job opportunities. One of the most annoying factors, especially for today's standards, is the absurd wait time in relation to the game quality. I'm fine waiting for a game, but the lack of content to present is starting to wear on me, especially the mess that was The Game Awards 2021, where Nintendo said absolutely nothing.
I really do have to give it to them though, for taking COVID much more seriously than any other developer out there. They deserve much more recognition for that, sacrificing their participation at the Olympics and sacrificing their release schedule of games for the safety of others.
@mariopartyfan68 Possibly, but they’ve likely already started production projects for Switch 2 at this point. And it will likely take several years for them to fill out an expansion of this size. It would not surprise me if they can’t fill the new offices until the successor to the Switch is already out. And then it will be more years till we see what the new offices produce. This is a long-term investment in the company.
@PikaPhantom I agree. They’ve reached a point where they simply don’t have enough teams. They don’t seem to have enough staff to keep up with all their franchises, including several large ones. It’s pretty much just Mario and Zelda that get uninterrupted fully staffed support through development. Nearly every other project has to trade off staff. But but they also have a lot of senior staff more than capable of heading new teams.
I hope this also means they can afford to experiment a little more and maybe we get new franchises a little more often. The creativity is certainly there for it, but it seems they just don’t have time to do wholly new things as often.
@PikaPhantom Nintendo EPD must be working on games for the Switch sucessor.
Good, Nintendo could use more developers. Their output has fallen a bit because of the shift towards HD and they could use more hands on deck to compensate.
Dons analyst cap.
Hmm...The current CEO did mention that Nintendo were looking at state of the art. Common sense would infer that would require more manpower. So, I don't think this is anything to do with increasing output for the Nintendo Switch (it's not like it will be all ready a week on Tuesday!) Could be Nintendo are going all in with their NVidia partnership in a couple of years (for the love of God, if you haven't twigged Switch still has 4 solid years left, then I can't help you)
Throws analyst cap away.
Nintendo EPD + Expansion Pack is looking pretty good.
@GrailUK
I'm pretty sure that "state of the art" quote was mistranslated.
I don't think Nintendo bought out more office space to continue their Nvidia hardware partnership - they are doing so to increase the capacity of first party development at Nintendo EPD.
They can probably still pack in Level 5 into the new offices.
"Phone call for you Furukawa"
"Is it about my cube?"
Hopefully to fix the emulation problems on the N64 games
@westman98 I reckon it's long term thinking and NVdia feature heavily in their roadmap. Games are going to get bigger for them (they are no different in that regard than anyone else.) Granted, state of the art usually doesn't mean the same to Nintendo as most. Anyhoo, I think it's reason to get excited
@Freddyfred HD development takes way more time and is way more expensive than GBA and GC level games.
All just to remaster Wii U games and think of mobile games.
@GrailUK
Nvidia will undoubtedly supply the SoC and some basic development APIs for the Switch's successor, but that has nothing to do with this expansion in office space at Nintendo EPD.
@thaimbomb
LOL stay mad 😂
@DylanMcGrann you could be right, I was just guessing. Well I wish these ventures just brings us more great games to play.
@westman98 I hope you didn't read that like I meant NVidia was moving in lol. Simply, those 2 companies will be working closely on the next console (and not relying percieved left overs) and as a result, games will require more development. Don't think I said anything outlandish.
Maybe they're getting more office space to buy out their second-party Japanese studio partners and have them work in-house along with the other Nintendo devs. Monolith Soft already looks like a studio ready to be a part of Nintendo already. I can see the office space for not only more games, but also to hire more people to bolster better hardware and software integration into their online network services.
@GrailUK
No, that's definitely not what I thought 😂
This (to me) shows a level of confidence in their long term plans that I don't think we've seen from Nintendo HQ in a long time.
It looks a lot more promising than all of the downsizing and consolidation we have become accustomed to in the gaming world the last few years.
I wonder if nintendo could be creating a new metroid team?
@PikaPhantom If only they had the insight to aquire Rare (the greatest game developers ever to exist), we'd be living in quite a different world now. I mean like NSOX with Konker and Diddy Kong Racing, day-one, not to mention better Star Fox and probably a myriad other franchises.
The game company now called Rare (post MS) is just a name and copyrights, nothing more. The developers all moved to other studios, some of which develop games for Nintendo consoles.
Maybe this will be a new warehouse/distribution centre, Nintendo like other big companies might be looking to implement their own order fulfilment services and logistics.
Relying soley on other suppliers for this isn't really a reliable thing anymore, with the pandemic having slowed global trade down and continuing to do so, with scalpers running rampant.
This wouldn't be a bad idea but we'll have to see what they do.
I posted about the fact that job listings has been hinting to this for a while, and how it looked like Monolith Soft was being moved to this office when we first heard about Game Freak moving in to the Tokyo office. "Project Two" (rumoured to be the next Xenoblades) keeps changing it's mind, saying applicants needed to be available to work in Tokyo, Kyoto or Iidabashi then just Tokyo, and now Tokyo and Kyoto again. "Project One" (all but confirmed to be BOTW2) hasn't had any job postings recently, but the last ones were all for Kyoto.
It's kinda disappointing to not see Nintendo embrace remote working as much as some other companies, but it's not really surprizing. Building a huge mega complex is a good plan "B" though.
In other words beefer Switch is coming along just fine....
That sounds to me like Nintendo is gonna hire more people and better organize their current development teams
https://i.imgur.com/LOiqTjJ_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium
Nintendo will soon occupy 4 office buildings in Kyoto:
1) Nintendo Headquarters: This building is Nintendo's HQ for company management.
2) Nintendo Development Center: This building is the main office for Nintendo EPD and PTD.
3) Nintendo Kyoto Research Institute: This building is currently the main office for Mario Club Co. This institute is currently being renovated and a new building will be added as an additional office for Nintendo EPD.
4) Kyoto City Waterworks Bureau's Southern Base: This building is currently being constructed, and once completed, Nintendo will rent the 6th + 7th floors of this building as additional office space for Nintendo EPD.
The additional office space from the Kyoto City Waterworks Bureau's Southern Base will occupy 8500m^2 of space. This is actually considerably larger than Nintendo's Tokyo EPD division, which currently occupies 3500m^2 of space.
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