Andrew Webster for The Verge: Nintendo wants to keep ‘traditional approach’ to development as costs skyrocket

In response to a question during a recent shareholders meeting about the increased costs of making games for its new console, Nintendo president Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa admitted that “recent game software development has become larger in scale and longer in duration, resulting in higher development costs. The game business has always been a high-risk business, and we recognize that rising development costs are increasing that risk.”
However, he said that Nintendo’s development teams are “currently devising various ways to maintain our traditional approach to creating games amidst the increasing scale and length of development. We believe it is important to make the necessary investments for more efficient development.”

I love to hear Nintendo say this, as I really do think video game budgets have gotten completely out of hand, especially at the biggest studios, where we tend to only see one or two games per decade from them at this point. These massive costs and extended delivery timelines are making it so that game studios are risk-averse and need every single game to be a massive hit. Otherwise, they may go out of business. In the case of Microsoft-owned studios, they may put out simply a "big hit" and still get shut down soon after.

This is also a bit of a funny statement to hear from Nintendo at this moment in time, a company that released Mario Kart World, the first mainstream $80 video game, just a month ago.