Tony Niu: “What we tried to do with the studio was try to make sure that there is a game out next week and you get to play it the weekend after, and that you get a chance to play this next new game that’s coming out, because it’s the next big thing on the market.”
On the subject of games that launched earlier than expected, Niu says the only one not to see success was the new Wii U installment Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, due out Jan. 17.
“We were hopeful for the game,” Niu says of the title. “We were really looking into it as our next game. And we lost the opportunity to launch it early, to see how the community would react to the game.”
Niu has since come up with a better plan for handling new launch games.
“I think we tried to keep it as simple and seamless as possible,” he says. “So it’s going to be very easy for the player to get into the game and start playing as soon as they download it, and when a game takes off I think it’s because it’s fresh and something that doesn’t have anything similar in it.”
Nintendo will host a livestream on Dec. 1 at 8 p.m. ET to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Donkey Kong Country, and it will feature commentary from the original creator of the Mario character, Dr. Cero. Watch a new trailer (below) for the game and its sequel, called Super Mario Maker, below.
GamesBeat: That’s going to be incredible, right?
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime: Yes.
GamesBeat: Are you at all sad that Donkey Kong Country took so long to get a game?
Fils-Aime: It’s hard to say. It’s a game that’s been in development for so long that it was really easy to get it out to the market before it was ready because of its size, I would say.
But, yeah, when you think about the fact that Donkey Kong Country has been the company’s flagship franchise, there were some things that were just inevitable that we couldn’t put out before it was ready — we were going to have to just wait until it was ready. And we weren’t ready then.
But, yes, we were sad for maybe, a month or two in advance.