Why Core Gamers are disappointed with Nintendo

[Shanobi]

As to the question of why some Nintendo series aren't selling like they used to, it's simply that they have existed for so long.

In gaming also, you can look at things like Tony Hawk. The last game, I hear, was quite the break through for the series, but yet it sold like dung. Now, that series has been beaten to death in it's short time on this earth, but it's simply that there have been like 10 games of it already.

Without looking, I'm not sure what numbers the best selling Zelda games have hit, but I'm willing to bet that they aren't way, way more than Twilight Princess has sold. That said, you have a series that most people view as "hard", and it's no longer new and fresh. (No matter what they do with it, that's the perception it will keep, barring an RE4-like successful reimagining.)

In comics, there are something called "spike sales". Issue number one of a new series may sell X copies. If it's "hot", issue 2 will sell more, and so on. But this only goes on for a finite amount of time, before the sales fall and level out. In order to counteract this, publishers relaunch the series under new titles, with new number 1's, and create a spike in sales. But each time this is done, the spike becomes less great.

I'm fairly certain that the basic idea of this works in games, as well. With the exception of Madden, it seems to me that every franchise in gaming goes through these types of sales phenomenon.

People can blame whatever they want on some series not selling like they once did, but the truth is, I believe, that it doesn't matter. It's not really the games themselves, but the familiarity of the brand, and once something is familiar, it's not going to attract the same curiosity that it once did.