N.N.N.F. (Nintendo Needs New Franchises)

[QUOTE="Dr_Corndog"]

Nintendo doesn't need new franchises so much as it needs to make use of the ones it has. The Wii's about to be laid to rest, and it never saw an F-Zero, a Star Fox, a Wave Race, a Pikmin, or a Pilotwings. We haven't seen a true sequel to Excitebike 64, and the the Wii's Animal Crossing was just a port with a few new features.

nameless12345

Exactly. When they'll do a new F-Zero (online enabled and with a track editor of course), Wave Race and Star Fox, we can talk new IPs.

I finally got to play F-Zero GX a few months ago (picked up a used copy for $5 at Gamestop) and was amazed at how great it was considering how relatively little attention it got. Honestly, I'm afraid a new F-Zero would be wasted on the Wii, considering how weak the system is and how poor its online is, but on the Wii U I'd love to see an F-Zero with online play supporting a full 30 racers at once. I'd also love a machine editor, like GX had, but with the ability to "draw" your machine instead of selecting from pre-made parts, and perhaps a limited number of points you could allocate to the machine's attributes like speed and handling.

Nintendo doesn't need new franchises so much as it needs to make use of the ones it has. The Wii's about to be laid to rest, and it never saw an F-Zero, a Star Fox, a Wave Race, a Pikmin, or a Pilotwings. We haven't seen a true sequel to Excitebike 64, and the the Wii's Animal Crossing was just a port with a few new features.

Dr_Corndog

Instead, the Wii saw a new Punch-Out, two unique twists to the Excitebike formula (plus a WiiWare Excitebike installment), two new Kirby platformers, a new Donkey Kong Country, a new Sin&Punishment, and plenty of new series and sequels that made up for what IPs Nintendo didn't use.

I just think it's very unrealistic to expect Nintendo to use all of its brands within the average console life span of five years, especially since the expectations of these games in terms of quality are also usually quite high (and perhaps too high for a few of the franchises). Outside of Mario and Pokemon, I honestly don't believe that any Nintendo IP is immune to the idea of not being used every now and again, and this is likely a situation that will only get worse as time goes on. With the rising of developing costs, time, and resources plus with the uncertainty of market appeal concerning any Nintendo series outside of Mario and Pokemon, it's only going to become more difficult for Nintendo to use certain franchises.

I think it safe to say now that Nintendo's first party showing on the Wii has become much stronger than it was on the GCN, and possibly, any other Nintendo system to date. With the increased developing resources (including time and money) that the Wii U and any subsequent Nintendo system is going to require, I don't know if we'll see anything will ever top what we've seen from Nintendo this gen. While the Wii U may give Nintendo more motivation to use specific franchises over others, it doesn't ensure that we'll see the quantity or even quality of games that the Wii has seen from Nintendo's camps. In fact, just Nintendo's lack of presence when it comes to first party titles on the Wii U already can be seen as an alarming sign.