At Nintendo’s 76th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, The Legend of Zelda creator (and Nintendo’s “creative fellow”) Shigeru Miyamoto was asked to comment upon the increasing costs and timelines involved with game development.
While Nintendo do not release transcripts of their General Meetings of Shareholders, Twitter user @NStyles—who attends these meetings in Kyoto—was able to share a summary of Miyamoto’s response.
Upon being asked for his comment on increasing development costs alongside Nintendo’s other directors, Miyamoto shared that over 100 people are working directly on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. He added that when you take into account the full list of people that will eventually appear in the game’s credits, the number is 300. (Note: This obviously includes companies to which Nintendo outsource asset creation and other functions of development.)
The cost of developing the game, Miyamoto went on to say, would be recovered by Breath of the Wild selling in excess of 2 million units. Additionally, the effort that went into developing the game would assist in the development of future projects. Whether Miyamoto is talking about re-using technology developed for the game or simply the know-how acquired during development (or both) at this precise moment is unclear.
A follow-up comment by Shinya Takahashi, General Manager of Nintendo’s Entertainment Planning & Development Division, however, made it very clear that Nintendo intend to re-use tech from Zelda for the creation of other, more compact software. Takahashi cited Brain Age as an example of this kind of software—something that required fewer resources to develop, but sold well.
Nintendo, he said, have been emphasizing the re-use of technology, including game engines, to help manage development costs and times in general.
In related news, Miyamoto recently spoke with GameInformer and other publications at E3, specifically pointing to Breath of the Wild’s complex physics engine as one of the primary reasons behind its delay. He then went on to suggest that Nintendo could re-use the physics engine for the development of the next Zelda game, which might speed things up the next time. This more or less cements the idea that the tech being developed for Breath of the Wild has long-term plans in store for it, beyond a single game.
“For this physics engine, we’ve been able to really figure it out. I think if we decide to use this physics engine in future games, it’ll be a lot quicker, but if we decide to use different media or different types of gameplay mechanics, then I think it might take a little bit longer. That’s something we’ll have to figure out as it comes up.” Shigeru Miyamoto, GameInformer
Where exactly Nintendo put Zelda’s engine to use in the future should be interesting to see. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine them considering its use for, say, a physics-based Mario game.
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