Nintendo: We may have underestimated the shift to HD

Nintendo has admitted that the shift to high-definition visuals on the Nintendo Wii U, and the scale of work required to make this shift, has taken the company by surprise. Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto explained as part of the company's latest shareholder meeting that the work required to create HD visuals for Nintendo games such as the upcoming Pikmin 3 was perhaps more than his company was anticipating. "When it comes to the scale of software development, Wii U with HD graphics requires about twice the human resources than before," he noted. "Please allow me to explain that we may have underestimated the scale of this change," he added. This is what led to the release delay for Pikmin 3: "The overall software development took more time than originally anticipated just as we tried to polish the software at the completion phase of development." However, the company has a plan to streamline future HD game development. The Nintendo Web Framework, first announced at the Game Developers Conference earlier this year, will lead to an easier development approach, Miyamoto said. The Nintendo Web Framework "provides a way of developing Wii U software using open web technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript" as well as Unity.