Nintendo Reveals How It Plans to Deal With "Unavoidable" Wait Between Sequels
Video games take a long time to make, but Nintendo is looking for workarounds.
As technological leaps become greater, it's taking studios more and more time to finish highly-anticipated sequels. This has been particularly noticeable in the Nintendo Switch generation; six years passed between the releases of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and it will have been eight years or more between the original announcement of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and the game's actual release in 2025. In a recent shareholder Q&A, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said that these wait times are "unavoidable" but also revealed that steps are being taken to deal with the issue.
"Game development today is more prolonged, more complex, and more advanced. That is unavoidable. To deal with this, we are continually expanding our development resources and making the necessary investments," said Furukawa.
While Furukawa did not go into further detail, those development resources and investments seem to include spin-off games and other related projects. The wait between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom still saw several Zelda games released on Switch, including Skyward Sword HD, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, and Cadence of Hyrule. All of those games were developed in collaboration with outside studios, including Tantalus Media, Omega Force, and Brace Yourself Games. Meanwhile, Metroid Dread was developed as part of a collaboration between Nintendo EPD and MercurySteam, and Iron Galaxy was involved with Metroid Prime Remastered. These games might not be exactly what fans were waiting for, but they did keep fans of Zelda and Metroid engaged with the system.
These types of investments have helped Nintendo maintain a steady stream of first-party releases on Switch, while maintaining the level of quality players have come to expect from the company's biggest releases. It remains to be seen whether Metroid Prime 4 will prove worth the wait, but Tears of the Kingdom seemed to live up to expectations.
With a new Nintendo System set to be revealed within the next year, it will be interesting to see if this strategy continues. We have no idea what to expect in terms of the system's first year of games, but it's a safe bet that a new 3D Mario will be available close to launch, given the fact that nearly eight years will have passed since the release of Super Mario Odyssey. Thankfully, Mario fans have had a lot to keep them busy since, and they'll have even more this year with games like Super Mario Party Jamboree and Mario & Luigi: Brothership.
Do you think the wait time between Nintendo sequels is too long? Has Nintendo's current strategy made it easier to wait? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp, on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!
