Honestly if Xenoblade was lying on the street bleeding out and Miyamoto came across it while driving, I wouldn't put it past Miyamoto to hit the peddle and floor it as he runs over the series killing it, like he did paper mario. He would then back up and hit the series again crushing it before speeding off.
Metroid didn't get a real new game for 11 years between Other M and Dread, it got Federation Force 6 years later as a game no one wanted to the point of being taken as a joke, and Samus Returns which was a remake of 2 in 2017. Donkey Kong hasn't gotten a new game since 2014. So Metroid and Donkey Kong in these lists I wouldn't consider to be some extremely well cared for franchise compared to Bing Bing Wahoo Man and Zelda The Swordsman. They may use these icons to sell you merch crap, but they don't make games for these franchises nearly as often as Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, or Animal Crossing. At least Xenoblade and Fire Emblem get releases often that you know their series has a pulse.
They will if Treehouse or 8-4 are translating them.
Well I would say Xenoblade is more or less Monolithsoft's thing so maybe that's why, but it's Gamefreak that makes the pokemon games.
But Nintendo effectively owns Monolith, and Intelligent Systems for FE, last I checked so they still bankroll this in some way. A lot of Nintendo franchises are made by other studios so I don't see the point of the Gamefreak or Monolith distinction.
Yeah but they're not putting the franchise on equal footing with the rest of their stable of franchises. It's viewed as a lower tier of sorts despite everything.
Pokemon has been handled by many studios over the years except for mainline games, and Pokemon is in terms of sales probably bigger then Mario once we factor in merch. DK is also handled by other studios since its inception from what I recall.
Yeah I wasn't really counting the dead ones. But it's just generally odd that a series that's had a new mainline game on every single system since the wii (which is something that Zelda and Possibly Mario can't even attest to unless you count 3d World for Mario) wouldn't be more heavily featured by the company itself.
Nintendo has also not made a new mainline Mario or Zelda game since 2017. They have not made a new Mario Kart since 2014. It's an industry wide problem. How many times people going to buy GTA V, Skyrim and Mario Kart 8?
Mario Kart generally gets an single game per console. For some reason, the Switch got an deluxe version of the Wii U's entry; but I'm not sure if the current wave of DLC is enough for it to turn it into "MK 8.5"
Have they not been doing this for the last few years? This is not a new thing to speculate about.
9 is going to have a different feel to it. You have the rumored New New Toad voice being a thing and them probably working movie lore into the surroundings.
Even if you consider Deluxe a new game, this is still the longest gap between new entries. This is bigger than only getting one entry per console.
If you discount Samus Returns and Federation Force then you have to discount Amiibo Festival and Happy Home Designer as well. Prior to that Animal Crossing hadn't had an update since 2012. (EPD 5, the AC team, also does the Wii __ series and Splatoon and preferred to work on those titles instead.) Believe it or not, Nintendo seems pretty open about letting teams pitch and create whatever it is they want, without forcing people to only do a certain series. Because of that Donkey Kong tends to get neglected while other series get, perhaps, more entries than sales would otherwise dictate.
You are being willfully disingenuous if you don't. It was made by the same group of people that had made the previous main games, was sold to the public as such, was treated as such by its successor, Odyssey, is literally what the themepark ride is based on, etc. And even if you don't, you also have to factor in that the previous system got two main games and a handheld got one too (yes, 3D Land counts, for most of the same reasons I listed for World.)
ARMS is why Mario Kart 9 didn't happen. The MK Team usually has a consistent schedule of dropping Mario kart titles every few years, but it seems ARMS took 9's place probably because the team really should have more variety. Now it is going to be a toss up on whether the team wants to go back to Mario Kart fully again, or continue to build on what was a success.
All listed are cartoony franchises that are able to easily peddle merchandise and have a family image. Fire Emblem & Xenoblade are still huge IPs for Nintendo, but don't have the same merchandise draw and wider appeal. For them, merchandise would have to be simple collectables like cards, or elaborate statues that will cost a pretty penny. They also look bad in a lineup next to Mario as they are of a very different art style and tone.
Zelda is still targeted primarily towards kids and has tons of things that are merchandisable in terms of plushies and figures, to which FE or Xenoblade couldn't achieve to a wide scale. Plus, Link really doesn't look all too out of place in the image. He is still a brighter character with not much detail. He looks more inline than say, placing a Three Houses promotional art on the venue as the more 2D touches would clash hard. With Xenoblade, I could maybe see the new Definitive Edition Shulk design work, but 2's designs would be off the table for being too anime or sexual for a family store.
Yeah I was thinking of something like DE's version of Shulk myself. But yeah I agree about 2's designs.