Forum:The state of Smash 4's development

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A known legitimate inside source was able to give a lot of information on Smash 4's development process. Warning, it's a long read:

The full info

• Smash 4 has a HUGE advertising/promotional budget.
• Sakurai and co. likely began considerable planning for Smash 4 after Brawl came out.
• Planning for pre-production began at latest in 2010.
• Smash 4's pre-production team did a GODLIKE JOB and did better than anyone could have hoped.
• Smash 4's pre-prouduction began possibly in late 2010 but probably in 2011. That means development for Smash 4 has been about 3 1/2 years as of right now.
• Smash 4's pre-production was roughly a year, or 4 times as long as 64's, Melee's, and Brawl's pre-production (all those games had roughly 3 months of pre-production).
• Pre-production heavily involved all the directors not at Bamco as well as top Nintendo heads. This includes Sakurai and Miyamoto, and probably Iwata as well.
• Sakurai claims he wasn't fully working and programming the game until the end of pre-production in around January-March of 2012. However, he clearly was doing a lot of non-programming things during pre-production.
• Smash 4's roster was likely mostly finished early this year.
• Smash 3DS back earlier this year (2014) was said to be "going gold" sometime shortly after E3 this year.
• Smash 3DS can't be released after 2014 because the team "can't afford it."
• Until we're a bit under a month until Smash 3DS is supposed to come out, we won't know for sure about Smash 3DS, and until say October, we won't know for sure with Smash WiiU.
• Smash WiiU could very well be delayed into 2015 if the development team are going to do a lot of balancing and gameplay changes in response to fan reactions to the game and characters and how everything felt.
• The Bandai Namco staff working on Smash 4 is from all parts of Bamco.
• The Game Arts staff that worked on Brawl that Sakurai and co. liked basically all got hired to be a part of Sora.
• There is basically no part-time staff. The only part-time staff were head Nintendo honchos during pre-production, some staff that may be switching over to Tekken 7, and the staff dedicated to DLC.
• DLC, specifically DLC characters and patching, is definitely happening.

• Pre-production starting earlier, being more organized, and going so well is likely why the roster and a lot of the game was finished early.
• The work schedule is light for everyone. No one has been in overtime or working overtime, at least not yet. They might start doing that or might have just started doing that right about now.
• Smash 3DS was, according to an outside source, rumored to be "nearing the process going gold" early this year, with the set time as sometime a bit after E3.
• Based on these things, it's safe to say that we're getting additions to the roster than what was originally intended perhaps. I think it's pretty obvious Lucina was a case of this, but I doubt it ends at that.
• I think there may have been a point Lucina may have gone from an alternate costume to a DLC idea, but due to everything being ahead of schedule to this year plus of planning production going so well, they easily added it.
• I also think that DLC has been thoroughly thought through at this point, given how ahead of schedule everything is. So, if they properly looked at the best playable character standpoints from the gameplay perspective, they're gonna have quite a few left off the initial roster left.

• Melee's advertising/promotional budget was in the mid-6 digit numbers. It actually had less of a television advertising budget than Smash 64. If not for the demos, the Melee marketing budget would be less than 64's budget. (This was a common issue with the GCN; no advertising)
• Brawl's advertising/promotion budget was only roughly $1 million.
• Conversely, Smash 4's advertising/promotion budget is at least $23.5 million, including promotional events (The Invitationals, demos, advertising, the trailers, and just in general getting the game out there).
• Melee and Brawl both had about 3 months of pre-production.
• Bandai Namco wasn't fully on board until likely late 2011 or early 2012
• Smash WiiU will likely get delayed into 2014 if they change a lot of things related to programming and overall character design for multiple characters from the demos.
• The Namco staff involved are from all kinds of games and parts of Bandai Namco to develop Smash 4. It's like a trail mix of the whole company.
• Sakurai removed around 4 people at Sora and HAL Laboratories from developing Smash 4 because they refused to work on the SSE. Sakurai was later convinced by EVERYONE it was a bad idea. It is likely there was never any work on the SSE. As for those staff members, it is unknown if they were re-added later on.
• Since then Sakurai has been pretty laid back and very open to opinions. He hasn't gone full dictator mode like he did with Brawl in 2007 and 200 when crap went down when they added Sonic and cut a huge chunk of the SSE. Of course his staff is more competent at making a Smash Bros. game than the primarily JRPG staff he had at Game Arts.

• The workload is minimal given the huge full-time staff and excellent work done in pre-production.
• With Melee and Brawl everything was always overtime after the first few months, especially Melee. A few employees lived at the office for weeks during Melee's development, including Sakurai himself. Many of the Melee development team members at this time worked at different hours throughout the 24 hours days.
• This, ironically, is where in Melee's development that characters like Falco and Pikachu became truly exceptionally built. Also, EXTRA clones got into Melee because after the initial 21 characters were finished, Falco, Ganondorf, Pichu, and Dr. Mario were added. That situation could be repeated.
• With Smash 4's development, the only time people might be working overtime or anything close to overtime is from now until when Smash WiiU goes gold. Heck, it might stop when Smash 3DS goes gold, and they could "ease" their way into Smash WiiU.
• Both Robin and Chrom may have been planned to be in, before the latter was scrapped, rather than it being one or the other.

• Smash 4 only has 3 full-time companies involved known, according to said source (HAL Laboratories, Bandai Namco, and Sora). My source doesn't know of any company directly involved with development, lol.
• Capcom and SEGA have provided some content related to their franchises (similar to what SEGA and Konami did in Brawl). Also, since we got the Rayman trophy, we now know the same is true of Ubisoft to an unknown extent.
• Also, Nintendo EAD Team 3, known for their Zelda titles, submitted the Toon Link model from the Wind Waker HD for Smash 4. This is funny, since the only Brawl model they didn't give for Brawl's production was Toon Link, as he was the only character not using his Twilight Princess appearance.

TL:DR notes

• Smash 4's development process has been much more thoroughly thought out than the previous games', and has a bigger budget than ever.
  • Its development is also in much more competent hands, and is going much much smoother than the previous games' notoriously rocky development.
• Wii U version may get delayed into 2015 for farther character balancing and tweaks.
• DLC and post-release patching is definitely happening.
• Unlike the previous games', where characters got scrapped mid-development, we're going to get pretty much everyone that was planned, along with extra characters added mid-development because of how smooth and efficient everything is going.
  • This also means Lucina will likely not be the only bonus clone.
• Sakurai was fervently going to put in another SSE, up to the point of firing people who refused to work on it, until everyone else convinced him it was a very very bad idea. So we should thank the non-Sakurai development team for there being no SSE, rather than the cutscenes on youtube.
• It's likely Chrom was intended to be in the game, alongside Robin, before being scrapped for being too bland; it was never either one or the other.
• Gematsu leaker is most probably a Bamco guy, with severely outdated information, and who definitely did not have the full roster.

Comments

So there you go, definitive evidence Smash 4's development is going absolutely incredible, and should be far better than the previous games. Omega Tyrant 08:18, 24 July 2014 (EDT)