Nintendo used to always have several completed games it could use to "plug" the gaps between major releases. Now the situation is completely different.
Nintendo managed to build an almost uninterrupted stream of first-party game releases, largely thanks to a well-tuned production process. As noted, the Japanese platform holder often completed development of projects long before their launch, shelving them and releasing them at the most appropriate moment.
In their podcast, former company employees Kit and Krysta said that this strategy was actively used during the Switch era. According to them, remakes and ports were created relatively quickly and then sent to a kind of "Nintendo vault". When gaps appeared in the release calendar, the company would simply pull out a finished product and release it, avoiding long periods without new titles. In their view, this is exactly what helped significantly extend the console's life cycle and maintain audience interest.
However, with the transition to Nintendo Switch 2, the situation may change. According to the former employees, developing games for the new platform has turned out to be more difficult and more time-consuming. In particular, technical limitations are mentioned, such as the amount of RAM, which third-party studios are already encountering.
Kit and Krysta suggest that Nintendo may have exhausted its stockpile of pre-prepared projects, and now the company's studios are working under greater pressure. They need to release new games more quickly while also meeting the increased requirements for the scale and quality of projects for Switch 2. As a result, as the former employees note, the company has found itself in "a completely different reality" compared with the era of the original Switch.
I think they have already used up everything they had in their vault. They are not experiencing financial difficulties, but they are under the same pressure as PlayStation to release the next game and make sure it is developed at the scale required for Switch 2. It seems to me that they are now living in a completely different reality.
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