What are Nintendo's Big 3 "core" franchises?

[Majin-Tenshinhan]

nordlead said:

Majin-Tenshinhan said:
That all depends. Generally, people like to say it's Mario, Zelda and Metroid even though Metroid-games have never had a particularly big fanbase, just a very strong fanbase among the fans it actually has.

Back in the day (like SNES) it would've been Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda. Nowadays it's Mario, Pokémon and Zelda.

Pokemon is a handheld IP (no big console games) so when talking about the "big 3" coming to Wii, it would atuomatically exclude Pokemon. The OP is right on the money for why people ignore some of the bigger sellers.

As for Metroid over DK or StarFox, I don't know maybe because both of those games went down the crapper, while Metroid maintained its quality.

Oh, I didn't know we weren't counting handhelds. Thing is, sure, Metroid is probably the biggest not counting Mario and Zelda, but there's such a gigantic difference that it feels unfair to count it (in sales - not in quality). Quality-wise all three of them are fantastic.