Cliff Notes – Games Inbox: Why are Nintendo games so low budget
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Budget Discrepancies: Nintendo allocates minimal budgets for high-grossing franchises like Pokémon, raising questions about their financial priorities compared to other titles like Zelda, which receives more investment despite lower sales.
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Frustration with Production Quality: Critics argue that the lack of voice acting and poor graphics in Pokémon games is unacceptable, especially given the franchise’s success and the capabilities of modern gaming technology.
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Profit Margins and Business Strategy: With a reported development budget of £9 million for Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the potential gross profit margin is extraordinarily high, suggesting that Nintendo prioritises profit over quality, leading to consumer dissatisfaction.
Games Inbox: Why are Nintendo games so low budget?
Nintendo doesn’t like spending money (Nintendo)
The Wednesday letters page is frustrated at how few first party games Sony is producing for PS5, as a reader catches up on his Pokémon backlog.
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I liked that you called out Nintendo for their cheapness in your Pokémon Legends: Z-A review. There’s absolutely no excuse for such terrible graphics and no voice-acting. Having everything voiced is something even a lot of indie games do nowadays, so the idea that Nintendo can’t afford it for such a successful franchise as Pokémon is clearly nonsense. As is the idea that the game is somehow made better by having no one talk.
It’s strange what Nintendo does and doesn’t spend money on. Why Pokémon games are done on such a tiny budget but something like Zelda, which sells nowhere near as much, gets so much money spent on it is a mystery. I guess it’s because they were trying to elevate Zelda? And technically Nintendo don’t control Pokémon, it’s Game Freak, but it seems obvious Nintendo has the controlling say in what happens.
On the one hand, I appreciate that they know what they’re doing, and they’ve lasted this long exactly because they never overextend themselves with $300 million budgets, but there’s got to be a balance here. Having your most lucrative franchise look like an upscaled PlayStation 2 game is not acceptable and we shouldn’t treat it as such.
Glottis
One and done
I know it’s been said before, about a developer only being able to make one game per generation, but I don’t think we’ve ever had an actual example of that until now, with Sucker Punch. The crazy thing is Ghost Of Yōtei didn’t even take that long to make: five years at a maximum, depending on when they actually started.
But that’s it, they spent the first year or so messing around with a director’s cut of Ghost Of Tsushima for PlayStation 5 and now it’s going to take them five years or more to make something else. By which point the PlayStation 6 will already be three years old. Crazy, isn’t it?
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
I don’t know what the solution to this is, but as far as I understand the situation is only getting worse every generation.
Bobby
Skipping a generation
So, in the same day we get one Sony developer that’s only made one game this gen (that released this month, so only just) and one that’s made nothing at all, with Bluepoint Games. There’s almost no point saying anything else, as those facts alone shows how much Sony has dropped the ball with first party games this gen.
I really hope heads have rolled for this and I guess maybe they have with Jim Ryan leaving as the big boss, but is that really what happened? Did he leave because he was pushing live service games or was he booted out because he was fighting against them? I’d guess it was him being in favour of them, but since he left we’ve not really got a U-turn or anything. Now instead of having a bad plan for the future it’s hard to tell if they have one at all.
Anyway, I look forward to playing Bluepoint’s new game… on the PlayStation 6.
Dolt
World’s greatest hobby
Thanks for your review of Pokémon Legends: Z-A. I will probably buy it on Thursday. However, I have got a number of Pokémon games in my backlog, so I started playing Pokémon LeafGreen Version on Game Boy Advance today.
Currently playing, Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Switch 2, Wheel World on PlayStation 5, Everybody’s Golf on PlayStation 5, and Pokémon LeafGreen Version on Game Boy Advance.
Video games are such a great hobby, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do though.
Ed
Gunship 2025
The article on Call Of Duty players moving to Battlefield 6 and struggling with helicopters was interesting, as controls were blamed for most of the issues. I have played Call Of Duty and Battlefield games for 20+ years and the best thing I did, probably about 15 years ago, was to by a joystick and throttle control (Thrustmaster) and place it in front, so on getting into a helicopter meant putting my mouse to the side and switching to pre-calibrated controls.
It made all the difference. I also used to go onto almost empty servers – not sure if you can do that with Battlefield 6 – and practice flying.
Jay
GC: That’s a good, if expensive, idea. The problem is Battlefield 6’s controls are relatively realistic and because flying a helicopter is really hard many people never get around to learning it properly.
A real belter
Well, Absolum has been my surprise gem of the year. After a somewhat repetitive initial two to three hours the game just opens up and becomes something really special. Playing on the Switch 2 it’s perfect. I have always been a fan of ‘belt scrollers’ – is that the term these days? The fusion of persistent upgrades after runs really elevates the genre and while Hades does storytelling better, I am more drawn to the gameplay in Absolum.
I enjoy playing as four characters and think I have settled on a favourite, but change my mind after a powerful run with a different character. It has been a while since a game has made me lose track of time, which I always a sign of excellent game design. The graphics are phenomenal, and I still spot some details I missed each run, and the soundtrack is sublime. The music that plays over the credits you can select on the main screen is a standout for me.
Playing online has been really fun and I hope there is some DLC down the line. With Silksong, Hades 2, and now Absolum, 2025 has been a great year for smaller excellent developers to shine.
Bristolpete
GC: Belt scrolling means moving up and down, as well as left and right, which doesn’t include all beat ‘em-ups, particularly some of the older ones.
Becoming a statistic
Appreciate the review of Pokémon Legends: Z-A. I’m in two minds as to whether to get it, as while I like the sound of it, I really don’t want to encourage Nintendo making so little effort when it comes to the graphics. I also agree with you on the ide of voice-acting, which Pokémon should have had since at least Sword and Shield.
Nintendo gets a lot of slack that other publishers don’t, just because they make great games, but this is greed pure and simple. Someone looked on a spreadsheet and decided that spending the money to make a better game was not worth it, if a big enough percentage of people are going to buy it anyway. I don’t really want to be one of those people.
Kendo
Gross profit
For those content enough with their lives not to bother with speculative arithmetic, here are a few fun commercial nuggets that can live rent free in our heads for the rest of the generation.
The leaks suggest Pokémon Legends: Z-A had a development budget of £9m. The game costs £40 on Switch and £59 on Switch 2. As I understand, the last Pokémon Legends game sold about 14.8 million copies.
If the new game sold as many copies as its predecessor, even at the lower Switch price, it would represent a gross profit margin of 98.5%. Meaning around £39.40 of each copy sold would be pure gross profit.
After that, they’d still have to account for other costs that aren’t included in the development budget, and of course many copies will be sold for less than £40, but I’d still say ‘ludicrously lucrative’ doesn’t begin to describe it.
For Spider-Man 2 to achieve that margin, at $70 per copy and a development budget of £236 million it would have to sell 300 million copies. But then that would result in £15.5 billion in profit, so you can see why margins don’t need to be that high when you’re spending a lot (and why even GTA 6 won’t need anywhere near that many sales).
I’m not advocating for stupidly high budgets but when The Pokémon Company are likely to be raking it in when spending so little, could they maybe consider aiming for, say, a not-much-less-obscene 95% gross profit margin, which would free up enough to almost triple the game’s budget?
Panda
GC: Less profit? That’s blasphemy as far as any businessperson is concerned. But yes, it’s an absurd situation. Especially as higher production levels would almost certainly lead to higher sales, albeit not necessarily in proportion to the money spent.
Inbox also-rans
Is Ubisoft actively trying to sabotage their plans on Switch 2? Why didn’t they announce Assassin’s Creed Shadows at the last Nintendo Direct? It’s not like there was much else of interest in it.
Kleigger
So, if Sony are aiming for 2027 for PlayStation 6, that means Xbox is going to do the same too, right? I mean, that’s the console dead already. Their only chance was coming out early, like with the Xbox 360, but if they don’t, I can’t see anyone choosing a next gen Xbox over a PlayStation 6.
Casper
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