Beyond it all, I do wonder at what point Nintendo will begin to get less payoff from its current big franchises, because they really haven’t had a successful new franchise in maybe 10 years plus (Splatoon) and even in the decade before its pretty much only Pikmin or Luigi’s Mansion and both these are very niche games.
Don’t get me wrong, Mario Kart and the 2D / 3D Mario games, Zelda, Smash Bros, Animal Crossing etc are always huge games, but in many ways they remain iterations of games dating back to the N64 era or before and at some point, particularly with rising barriers to entry (the £99 DS / GBA SP basically every kid had is a distant memory) I am curious if the reliance upon new versions of these games will lose their appeal because the numbers who will have good memories and experience of the prior games will begin the decline. I’d love to see Nintendo really do something new from a franchise or genre perspective and fully commit to it as a partial justification for its current money hungry approach.
Or of course, the Waluigi game I’m desperately hoping for.
