Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Was Made With A Staff of Only 40 Developers, Plus Outsourcers

And only three of those were programmers!

One of the best games of last year, and one of the best games currently available on the Nintendo Switch – and owners of that platform know very well that there is no shortage of great games to play on that system – is Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the incredible follow up to the Wii exclusive JRPG that launched late last year.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a massive, full fledged, systems driven open world JRPG that came out just two years after Xenoblade Chronicles X came out on the Wii U- which is an incredibly impressive feat to begin with. But what makes it even more impressive is that apparently, the game was developed with a core staff of just forty developers- only three of them were programmers!

Speaking in an interview with Katsura Hashino:, the director of the Persona series, Monolith’s Tetsuya Takahashi said that between pre-production for Monolith’s upcoming new IP, and the development of Breath of the Wild, for which Monolith was heavily involved, the development studio was left with a shell staff to work on the game.

“Monolith Tokyo has a little less than 100 developers,” Takahashi-san said. “Of that group, between 50% to 60% was helping Nintendo with Zelda (Breath of the Wild). Of the remaining 40 to 50 people, several were part of R&D (Research & Development), and the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 staff was made of the remaining 40-plus members.”

It’s absolutely staggering that they managed this- Xenoblade 2 is a massive game, and it’s a really great game (in spite of some really obvious issues). The fact that it was developed with such minimal staffing demonstrates that Monolith is hugely talented- and that, once they are working on their own game with resources and budget, they could be a force to contend with. Meanwhile, I urge you to play Xenoblade 2– it’s an incredible game. It’s out now, only on Switch.

[Translation via Siliconera]

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