What was holding Nintendo back?

[JWR]

I am sure this topic has arisen several times, but I was wondering why Nintendo didn't incorporate even more characters into Brawl.

Before the game was released, I saw a *fake* video (though at the time I thought it was real and was overjoyed) and in that vid it showed a screen shot of the 'Brawl' character select screen. This consisted of...many, many characters, such as other characters from F Zero, Sonic, Hammer Bro etc.

Why did Nintendo not create more characters? It doesn't make sense to me.
In fact, the majority of Assist Trophies could easily be converted into characters. That would be much better.
And add characters like Knuckles...and maybe some Square characters like Cloud and Sora. I just think that would have made the game so much better.

Maybe next time, eh?

 

[Fayt_0774_4133_6454]

true but i think the CD's only hold so much data. with the added characters ill bet thats y online lags and isnt very good. they probably didnt have enough room to put good online technology onto the CD.

i say this because MKWii doesnt have much, in fact i think less than mkdd did, which is y it doesnt lag as badly.

idk thats just my theory.

 

[Sad Panda323]

Any Square or anime characters would completely ruin the feel of Smash. IMO, there shouldn't have been ANY 3rd party characters in the first place.

 

[Zanoske]

Adding more characters will most likely make it harder for Sakurai to balance the game.

 

[Sosuke]

Because we wanted to play Brawl sometime this century.
I want Knuckles too man....But just accept it didn't happen.

 

[TheSundanceKid]

Especially with Cloud in it. I don't think he'll ever be in a Smash game...

 

[LP4Life666]

I am sure this topic has arisen several times, but I was wondering why Nintendo didn't incorporate even more characters into Brawl.

Before the game was released, I saw a *fake* video (though at the time I thought it was real and was overjoyed) and in that vid it showed a screen shot of the 'Brawl' character select screen. This consisted of...many, many characters, such as other characters from F Zero, Sonic, Hammer Bro etc.

Why did Nintendo not create more characters? It doesn't make sense to me.
In fact, the majority of Assist Trophies could easily be converted into characters. That would be much better.
And add characters like Knuckles...and maybe some Square characters like Cloud and Sora. I just think that would have made the game so much better.

Maybe next time, eh?

Its the same reason for pretty much every game, not just Smash Bros. The developers usually end up running out of these two things: time and resources. As much as developers want to make their games as best as they can, they also have to please the publishers. After all, they are the ones funding the game.

 

[JWR]

Ok, something else I don't get then.
The European version of Brawl was released late last month - months after Japan and America. But what has changed from America to the PAL version? Next to nothing. The odd things like spelling mistakes or correcting trophy information, but nothing really notable.
Meh...

 

[Iron Thorn]

Any Square or anime characters would completely ruin the feel of Smash.

This.

/10cloudfanbrats

 

[Crow!]

Tails I fully expected.. And I think I would put more effort into learning him than I do into Sonic.

Anyway, there does come a point where adding more characters makes developing the game increasingly harder. Remember, Melee had 26 or 27 characters, many of which were clones, and now we have 35 or 39 characters, depending on how you count, very few of which could be considered clones and even fewer which should be considered clones.

As characters are added, a lot of things happen from the developer's view. First there's the obvious - you must draw the art and program the moves for each action (final smash included) the characters can do. But each action from each character is going to have to interact with all the other moves of all the other characters you have designed so far. Relative priorities, corner cases, and possible bugs in more complicated actions must be considered for each collision of moves. Similarly, Beta testing also increases as each pair (and even each triple and each quadruple for casual play) of characters must be tested to make sure no one character is too good (unless they mean it to be that way). Development time, then, increases combinatorially with number of characters - and that's a pretty steep climb indeed.

There is, of course, legitimate question as to how effective their beta testing was with the number of characters that are in the game. One can defend them by saying that they were more concerned for how things played out in the casual crowd and figured that we competitive types would work out what we want to work out on our own as far as balance goes, but that is an argument for a different thread. And I'm pretty sure there are several such threads already.

And then there's business. Involving Square or some other third party requires that the companies strike a deal; most likely a deal involving Nintendo shelling out some cash. Given how many good characters there are in Nintendo's IPs, this isn't something they from a business point of view are likely to feel compelled to do. They got two high profile third party names to put on the box; how much would a third help them sell the game? Obviously, they decided the answer was "not much."

 

[LordZero]

The one and only answer is money:

Nintendo has to pay to use third party characters.

There is only so much time a Publisher will wait before they want to see their hard invested money.

Making video games is extremely hard work and to get even the amount of characters they did, and have them be all somewhat different is amazing.

Memory is extremely hard to come by, and all the cinema in the game take up half of it.

 

[Golem the Stern Father]

Ok, something else I don't get then.
The European version of Brawl was released late last month - months after Japan and America. But what has changed from America to the PAL version? Next to nothing. The odd things like spelling mistakes or correcting trophy information, but nothing really notable.
Meh...

Five language settings and localization, that is all. Though localizing a game is harder than it sounds, the game should have been in Europe way earlier.