User blog:Astrogamer/Road to E3: Part 2 - Internal Nintendo

Welcome back to Road to E3. For this week's article, we are going to discuss the teams owned by Nintendo 100% and what games they could be making.

EPD Structure
The Entertainment Planning and Development Department is a bit complex so, this part will explain the structure of EPD and its differences from the previous structure. First of all, EPD is composed of both EAD and SPD combined so all Nintendo software developers are in this department, all under Shinya Takahashi, the general manager of the department. EPD is still divided into the internal production and external groups so I'll be only covering the internal production groups. In total, there are 10 EPD production groups divided between the two deputy managers; Katsuya Eguchi and Yoshiaki Koizumi. Eguchi is in charge of 6 of those based in kyoto while Koizumi is in charge of 3 with one of those being the 7th Kyoto group. The 10th group is the mobile development group, under Hideki Konno. Each group has a group manager, deputy group managers (for each series the group works on mostly) and project leaders (also known as directors). On top of this, there are 3 executive officers who are senior staff and are not exactly bound to a group and lead groups. These guys are Yoshio Sakamoto, Kensuke Tanabe and Takashi Tezuka.

The first EPD group is the Mario Kart team led by Kosuke Yabuki and it seems Yasuyuki Oyagi is coproducer. They are also the team on ARMS.

The second EPD group is both the Animal Crossing and Splatoon teams led by Hisashi Nogami. The Animal Crossing team's coproducer is Aya Kyogoku and the Splatoon team's coproducer was recently confirmed to Shintaro Sato. In the EAD days, the Wii Sports was in EAD2 but this team has been spun off into a separate group that will be mentioned later

The third EPD group is the Zelda team led by Eiji Aonuma. The main coproducer is Makoto Miyanaga though there seems to be a team of supervisors on Zelda now.

The fourth EPD group is mainly the 2D Mario team though it also contains the Pikmin team. It's a bit of a mystery as it appears the group's former producer ,Hiroyuki Kimura, has been promoted and there has not been much with the group's apparent sbumanager Akio Terui.

The fifth EPD group is a mix of various series, most notably Star Fox and Wii Fit. The group is led by Tadashi Sugiyama and the coproducer is Hiroshi Matsunaga.

The sixth EPD group is the WarioWare/Rhythm Heaven/Tomodachi series group. Yoshio Sakamoto leads it but Katsuya Yamano is the actual group manager.

The seventh EPD is a mixture of the Nintendo SDD and the Wii Sports team. The group is led Kouichi Kawamoto with Takayuki Shimamura as co-producer.

The first EPD Tokyo team is of little note. They supervised the 3DS Zelda remakes and created some apps for the 3DS. It is led by Takao Shimizu.

The second EPD Tokyo team is the 3D Mario team and is led by Koichi Hayashida

Games that could come from EPD
Now understanding the general structure of EPD, we can conclude some exclusions and conclusions. First of all, we can assume nothing new will come from EPD1 and EPD7 since both those groups have had team occupied with already announced games (Mario Kart and ARMS for the former and Miitopia and 1-2-Switch for the latter). We should probably have low expectations for EPD3, as Breath of the Wild was big and took most of their resources though there are a few members on the handheld team not fully accounted for, and EPD5, since they released Star Fox Zero and Tank Troopers last year (though since they codevelop titles, they can likely get a quick production cycle). They may be working on new games but, I don't think they are in presentable form yet.

Of announced titles that are going to be there, EPD2 has Splatoon 2 and EPD Tokyo 2 has Super Mario Odyssey. As state in the last part, these will get decent chunks of the Spotlight. However, the teams to look out for EPD2's Animal Crossing team, EPD4 and EPD6 since they haven't had a title in a while. The Animal Crossing team probably has been working on a HD Animal Crossing since New Leaf released (with the assets from Animal Crossing Plaza and amiibo Festival as proof) but it got shelved since the Wii U was underperforming. Since most of the art assets seem to be done, I fully expect Animal Crossing to come out by the first half of 2018. For EPD4, they probably have a title for the Fall though I'm not sure if it would be a deluxe version of Super Mario Maker or Pikmin 4. Both are equally likely since the last title they were fully involved with was the original Super Mario Maker. It's a similar thing with EPD6 as their last titles were Rhythm Heaven Megamix and Miitomo. I expect they are working a Tomodachi Life successor though as it was a massive hit on the 3DS.

Monolith Soft
Monolith Soft is relatively simple since they seem to only have one active development team despite having two offices. The Monolith Kyoto team is basically all just artists and was formed to help Nintendo finish their games. The main studio is Monolith Soft Tokyo with all the creative leads. This team is working on Xenoblade Chronicles 2. That said, it isn't that extreme for them to have some of their other leads involved with a side project seeing as it is incredibly likely Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is coming by this Winter. Several notable members of the Monolith Soft team have been giving signs that the game is progressing well and unlike Xenoblade Chronicles X, we have a definitive initial trailer showing off several areas and having proper cutscenes. For the side project, it's hard to say what it would be though Baiten Kaitos probably isn't getting a sequel since that has rights tied up with Bandai Namco. I doubt it would be at E3 anyway. A Xenoblade Chronicles X port has been thrown around but it seems a bit off for this year with the overlap with but maybe late next year.

Retro Studios
Retro Studios is a tough one as it has been over 3 years their last game but no word about it has come out. They have around 100 developers and yet very little has come out from this studio though they are all quality games. I fully expect their next title to be announced at E3 and release before next year's E3. Retro Studios seem to plug up any leaks so nothing has come out about what game their making. I feel though if it was a Donkey Kong 2D platformer, it would have been announced by now. Instead, I expect it to be a new IP / IP revival to give the studio new life and direction like Metroid Prime did when the studio started out. Outside of that, I have no idea though I expect it to be more Western orientated.

Nintendo Software Technology
This is Nintendo of America's in house software team. They are most known for titles like Wave Race: Blue Storm, Metroid Prime: Hunters and Mario vs. Donkey Kong though that last franchise seems to make the majority of their work gameswise. They also contribute to hardware applications like working on the Wii U video chat app. Most recently they codeveloped Snipperclips and ported Super Mario Maker to the 3DS. From just this, it would be safe to assume they wouldn't be ready for E3 but back in fall 2016, kyoto report reported that NST was working on 3 games at the time, with the two of those released, it is expected that the third game isn't too far off. It was suggested to be a bit big for them and Nintendo has been hiring a lot for NST the past few months so we could see something at E3 though I'm kind of expecting it to be revealed in a Summer / early fall Nintendo Direct.

And those are my views of internal Nintendo developed games. The next part will cover Nintendo's partners