It will stay the old format until you reach 4GB.
As I understand it yes. It will stay in the original RIFF format.
From the official info:
Projects saved in the older 32-bit format will remain in that format unless specific conditions are met, as detailed in the Help Center article."
Hope this helps 
FWIW, I created a Nuendo 14 project from an older template originally created in 12, and that resulting project could not be opened by Nuendo 12 after it was saved. Templates may work differently than older, regular projects from different versions numbers, but thought Iād mention it.
Tried the same here and it opened as expected in N12. As you say it could be the precise version number has an influence on this.
Are you an orchestral mockup composer (or as I like to say āone of the orchester peopleā 
) with hundreds of tracks in your template?
The switch from the old format to the new one should only happen on project files with a large file size as to my knowledge. It would be interesting to learn what other reason could cause Nuendo to change the format.
No, Iām a sound designer / mix engineer. I use a few VIs here and there, but 99% of my work is game audio development, linear post production, and music mixing. So far, Nuendo 14 is running really smoothly for me. Thatās nice to see after updating from 12.
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Hmmā¦ interesting. Thanks. I assume your template and project is not exceeding 4GB in size then? (Maybe a lot of ARA usage.)
If you have a nice text editor app you could open the .npr, that wonāt load in N12, in the editor. Are the first four characters āRIFFā or āRIF2ā?
Ah.. Just ran into this post after I had very bad experience today as my supervising sound editor couldnāt open a project I sent him (and Iām on vacation nowš« ā¦ ) N14 project tried in N10ā¦ Workaround for now is to send just the track archives.
Yes, itās a real pain.
I have Nuendo 14 in my studio, but at another place I work, they have Nuendo 12. If I want to get a head start on a project in my studio, I first have to create the project in Nuendo 12, making sure it doesnāt exceed a certain size so it stays in ā32-bit.ā
I think it would have been very simple to allow saving as older projects. Or even to create an application that converts the project from 64-bit to 32-bit, truncating what isnāt compatible, of course.
Iād also add that Nuendo 14 has many improvements over its previous versions that are very welcome, in my opinion.