Mario is to blame for Nintendo's financial troubles?

[IIIIITHE1IIIII]

ryuzaki57 said:

IIIIITHE1IIIII said:

ryuzaki57 said:
This article has it right. The growing domination of Mario games on Nintendo's systems hurts third parties and thus makes it difficult to broaden the audience. 3DS is a perfect example : Mario games are still in the top 10 in every market while smaller releases drop like a rock (when they can manage a decent opening).

But they did try to "broaden the audience" before the Mario games released and look how that went. If anything I'd say that Mario moves hardware which in turn moves third party sales. Not many who buy a 3DS for Mario ignores every third party title (1)

The reason to Mario being in the top 10 is because there are extremely few quality software for the 3DS (2) aside from first party titles, and historically Mario games has always sold really well throughout its consoles cycle. Monster Hunter and Resident Evil: Revelations are two examples of actual non-Nintendo quality titles that even moves hardware.

(1) I just had a look to the global 2011 and 2010 top 100. There 8 Mario games in 2011 and 12 in 2010, the rest is a mix of Nintendo first party titles and dancing games. I didn't see Xenoblade, Monster Hunter, Goldeneye or any core 3rd party game. Actually, as years passed Nintendo actually released more Mario games to sustain profits and it lead to the software drought we know.

(2) That alone could suggest Mario games hinder the release of major software on 3DS. And again I must stress that Revelations dropped like a rock in Europe (see my previous post)

You do have a point, but currently there's only two Mario games for the 3DS. Without them the 3DS sales would have been extremely low and third parties would have left the system (like Ubisoft did with Assassins Creed, THQ with Saint's Row: Drive By and Capcom with Megaman Legends 3 when Mario wasn't there to help).

Mario has to be there (although only to some extend) to keep the third party support up.