Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream was in development for almost a decade

Nintendo has spoken about the development of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, revealing that the game was in development for nearly a decade.

Director Ryutaro Takahashi spoke about what led to the creation of a new entry in the series as part of a recent interview. After talking things over with franchise producer Yoshio Sakamoto and feeling that they had “already squeezed all we could” from the 3DS title, and wanted to make a new game.

Takahashi said during the discussion:

“I believe development started around 2017, after things had settled down on Miitomo. The producer, Sakamoto-san, and I both have a special attachment to Tomodachi Life and have been playing the previous game on Nintendo 3DS for many years. But we’d already squeezed all we could out of that game, and Sakamoto-san said to me sadly, ‘There’s so much that I want my Mii characters to experience, but there’s nothing more that I can do for them.’ (Laughs) So, we talked about our desire to create a new Tomodachi Life game.”

Takahashi would go on to say that Nintendo “started development with the direction of leveraging user-generated content” because that fits in well with Tomodachi Life’s concept of being “the ultimate inside joke game”. The team felt this was a better approach than if they “simply continued with the existing development style and added new items because we wanted them to experience new things” since “it would’ve inevitably turned into a quest for quantity.”

And speaking of UGC, Nintendo spent around six or seven years on that feature. The original plan was to finish its tools in roughly a year and a half.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream hits Nintendo Switch on April 16, 2026. Check out the latest trailer here.