According to a recent "Iwata Asks" interview by Nintendo, the company was willing to sacrifice its normal slow development policy on games to ensure Mario Kart 7 was rushed out before Christmas of this year.
The decision was originally made in March before the US debut of the 3DS but once the 3DS started to struggle selling in terms of both hardware sales and a steady supply of software, the company went into full panic mode.
To help speed up the process, Nintendo pooled the other 3DS development teams together and even brought in Retro Studios to take care of the work on the classic courses.
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During the latest "Iwata Asks," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that the game almost didn't make the desired Christmas time deadline, so Nintendo treated it as an emergency situation and put the development team in full panic mode and even called in Retro Studios (the team behind Donkey Country Returns) to lend a hand, all in effort to get the game finished in time.
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* Konno explains that with several production designers joining to finish Nintendogs+Cats for launch, and other "developments at Nintendo taking up other staff" there was "an act of emergency" to have Mario Kart finished by the end of the year. Konno needed more people to get this done.
* Designers from Retro Studios Inc who worked on Donkey Kong Country were called to help design and model some courses.
* Retro concentrated on redoing the classic courses while EAD Group No. 1 concentrated on the new courses.
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Nintendo was expecting Mario Kart 7 to be the last big chance at having a true killer app had Super Mario 3D Land failed to sell hardware while also ensuring the company would have a big title available for the Christmas shopping period.
http://www.screwattack.com/news/nint...rt-7-christmas
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Daily Recap:
1) Black Friday results were revealed by Microsoft and Nintendo with Microsoft selling 800,000 Xbox 360s on Friday (960,000 overall for the week) and Nintendo selling about 500,000 Wiis on Friday but haven't released the total amount for the week yet for both the Wii and 3DS (expected in the 350,000+ range).
http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/...of-sales-ever/
2) Nintendo announces the 3DS firmware update which includes 3D recording ability has been delayed from its original end of November release to now a December 8 release due to the company needing more time to prepare both the update itself and the new services for the 3DS.
http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/...mware-delayed/
3) The next set of games in the Gears of War series are currently rumored to be a prequel to the main series (Pendulum Wars) and would be developed by People Can Fly (Bulletstorm, Painkiller).
http://www.screwattack.com/news/rumo...-pendulum-wars