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Lord Ciansworth on 23 April 2012
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supermario128 said:
Lord Ciansworth said:
You see I think in order to understand Nintendo's direction with this game we have to understand the genesis of the New Super Mario Bros. series.

When it was originally spawned on the DS in 2006 it was the first 2D side-scrolling Mario game since 1992's Super Mario Land 2. It's clear from the game's art direction that Nintendo considered the it to be something of an exercise in nostalgia. The game used simple shapes and colours, much like its NES and SNES predecessors, simply rendered with a decent resolution. The game was a tribute as much as it was a game in its own right. As we now know the game went on to be colossal success, and this is where Nintendo's problem starts.

How can you justify radically changing any game feature in a series whose previous two entries have sold in excess of 25 million units globally? Who would sign off on that? You'd have to be downright crazy. This is the same problem that COD has. The designers look at the game, its style, its content, its gameplay and know that any radical change to these elements risks destroying the delicate balance that constitutes a "hit" in the video game industry.

Nintendo, rightly so from a business perspective, doesn't shake things up too much with their two biggest selling franchises, New Super Mario Bros., and Mario Kart. After all, who would want to be the game designer that messed up one of Nintendo's most bankable streams of income?

I would argue that changing the art syle wouldn't hurt sales, but actually help sales. People will see that the game still retains the core Mario gameplay while actually looking different and new. Nintendo changes the art sytle for Zelda all the time and does that hurt sales? I don't think it does. If we look at Mario's past few games we will see the art style for NSMB DS, NSMB Wii, 3D Land, NSMB2, the Wii U game, and even Galaxy 1/2 all have the same visual art syle. Sure, Mario has an iconic look, but changing up the art syle like Nintendo did with SMB3, World, etc. isn't going to change how people precieve the games. They are going to play them no matter what. I can see where you are coming from though.

Well my personal preference would be for an alternative and more detailed art style, but that's my preference and I don't know whether that's representative of the millions of other gamers who own previous entries in the series.

As I mentioned in my original post, what constitutes a "hit" in video gaming is based on a very delicate balance of components. If you change one component too drastically, you risk alienating fans of the original games, and thus losing potential consumers. This is why many large game series such as COD, Halo, and New Super Mario Bros. only ever receive small, incremental changes to their gameplay or art direction. These series represent an important revenue stream for their developers and overhauling them represents a risk. The greater the overhaul, the greater the risk.

Secondly, you can bet your ballsack that Nintendo has done their market research on this one. We often forget that publishers, like Nintendo, have huge marketing departments that constantly work to ascertain what features make their games sell. Given the art direction they have adopted for New Super Mario Bros. 2, we can likely infer that the simplistic visual design is admired by the majority of this series' audience, according to such research.

Thirdly, at over 25 million units sold per game, this series has likely maxed out in terms of audience and it's hard to imagine any change in gameplay or art direction that would cause New Super Mario Bros. 2 to sell much more than the series' previous two outings. This makes a risky change to the game's components even more unattractive as it's unlikely to increase sales and revenue.