'Polish something that has never existed before:' Miyamoto explains how Nintendo is countering rising development costs

Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda co-creator Shigeru Miyamoto claims that rising development costs are somewhat "inevitable," which is why it's doubly important to champion singular experiences.

The Nintendo representative director was responding to a question about the spiraling cost of video game production during a recent investor Q&A, and suggested it's vital developers focus on what they create over how much they spend creating it.

"Our research and development expenses have been increasing each year. Since our scale of development has grown, a corresponding increase in costs is, in some respects, inevitable. However, our belief is that what we create is more important than the amount spent on development," he said.

"We continue refining our products until we are confident that we have created something that our consumers will be satisfied with. With that in mind, what is important is to find ideas that are worth honing, and this has not changed since the era of Nintendo Entertainment System."

Miyamoto refused to make sweeping statements about what ideas are worth pursuing because "everyone has different interests," but said it's important to explore concepts that feel distinct.

"The more you polish something that has never existed before, the more value it brings. We believe that it is important to nurture developers who take this unique concept to heart, allocate funds to development if necessary, and release games only after we are confident in the product–and repeat this process over and over again," he continued.

It's advice that's probably easier to follow if you're a company with Nintendo's resources, but Miyamoto suggested it's absolutely possible to create fun games with small teams and tight budgets, and implored developers "not to lose sight of this perspective."

Nintendo corporate director Ko Shiota echoed that sentiment and suggested streamlining development around the Switch has been fundamental to the company's recent success. "From a hardware and system perspective, we believe it is important to provide an environment that enables game developers to work efficiently," added Shiota.

"As explained in today's presentation, the merging of home consoles and handheld systems allowed us to integrate what previously were two separate software development environments. Because we are already familiar with Nintendo Switch, maintaining a similar basis for development environments in the future will allow us to carry over the experience we have already built, which should lead to a reduction in research and development costs over time."

Shiota reiterated that new ideas are priceless and have no relation to the size of a studio's wallet. "Bigger budgets do not necessarily equate to better ideas, so we hope to continue to focus on a process where teams of hardware an and software developers share ideas to create interesting things," he continued.

Nintendo recently lowered its fiscal forecast with Switch hardware and software sales in decline, but the console has delivered a mammoth innings with lifetime sales currently standing at over 146 million units worldwide. The Japanese company has confirmed it will reveal its (backwards compatible) Switch successor before the end of the current fiscal year in March 2025.