Oh man, I remember when they used to make Extreme sports games too! Man, gaming diversity really plummeted in the 7th gen.

Nintendo needs all types of racers. Other than Mario Kart 8 and NFS MW (late port) Wii U lacks any kind of AAA racer. Arcade racers may be smaller, but they still sell a lot. Driveclub sold over 2 million units and NFS 2015 sold a lot too.

I prefer arcade racers :P

No, exclusive racing-sims are less relevant today than ever. Even MS has renounced on Forza console exclusivity.

There are many 3rd party valid alternatives, the NX would just need to have those. Nintendo should focus on other games.

if Nintenmdo can permenantly drop the kiddy / grandad gamer image then people might give them a chance

I really think that's the best way to go too actually.

Apart from eachother, each series might not have mass appeal - but if you had a racing game that continually recontextualized environments for different weather and modes of racing and really delivered some high-end visuals - that could be a huge draw.

Who was the rumored developer?

Monster Games seems the obvious choice - but there really seems like a lot of other embattled racing devs that Nintendo could go to if they wanted.

Imagine the shock if Nintendo bought up the Driveclub developer. Granted, Evolution got bought up by another company - but who's to say Ninty doesn't have another similar kind of partnership in the works?

Look at sales - they are very relevant!

And as great as the likes of Forza and GT are, none of them have really changed the formula to your standard racing sim.

I want Nintendo to do for realistic racing games what Splatoon did for shooters.

Forza Motorsport 4 - 4,6 million (85 million userbase)

Gran Turismo 6 - 3,5 million (85 million userbase)

Mario Kart 8 - 6,8 million (12 million userbase)

Also, how can you reinvent the wheel of a simulator? A simulator is supposed to be realistic by definition, can only do incremental changes on that route.

As I said, Nintendo should look elsewhere. Minecraft, League of Legends (+100 million users) those are some of the games Nintendo should try to mimick.

Something like Forza Horizon, yes please. Something like Forza Motorsport, no thanks.

But that's my point exactly right? Nintendo clearly has the #1 racing game, but they don't have another title to ride it's coattails in any way. Nintendo makes the best racing game on the market. But they only make one racing game per gen, and for the kart genre only. Couldn't an equally good racer from a different mold, be massively successful?

What makes a great sim racer isn't necessarily realism of the racing itself - it's the breathtaking environments and incredible complexity of the systems at play. Granted, you don't get dramatic last-minute position changes and madcap fun of Mario Kart - but instead you get a deep satisfaction of mastery of a car class or a track.

How might they reinvent the wheel you ask? With all the complexity of simulation and customization - there's doubtlessly plenty of untapped modes of fun which Forza and GT haven't yet tapped. You could also go for a different pair of wheels - and by that I mean rekindle lost alt-racing brands like Excite or Wave Race. Instead of stock vehicles as these franchise typically have, give deep customization options as you would in a sim.