Pretty sure Nintendo is making "games for the masses" (hello NSMB2 and Mario Kart).
Fanboys need to shut the f*ck up about Metroid already. It never was a big franchise, even in the NES days it was always like fourth or fifth fiddle to Mario and Zelda and Megaman etc. etc. etc. So what, Sakamoto didn't make the exact Metroid game you wanted, get over yourself, seriously. It was actually a pretty decent game minus the long winded cinemas. Even if they made the exact Metroid game the fanboys wanted it wouldn't have been some huge blockbuster, maybe it would've sold an extra 200-300k worldwide tops.
Why wouldn't Nintendo make "more 3D Mario"? SMG sold more than the precious Ocarina of Time fanboys love to worship, SMG2 was another 7+ million for them by the time the gen is up and SM3D Land is probably going to hit 10+ million itself. These are monstrous sales numbers, just because the 2D Marios are so huge doesn't diminish that.
And the fact is, 2D Mario had to go away for the hunger for that type of game to come back. The 90s-early 2000s were all about 3D games, no one wanted to play 2D games then. By the mid-late 2000s as more of the NES generation got into their 20s/30s and had kids themselves ... the time was right to bring back 2D Mario and play the nostalgia card and it payed off huge for Nintendo.
Same thing with Street Fighter IMO, it needed to go away for a long time before the nostalgia built up allowing Street Fighter IV to be a hit whereas Street Fighter III never really was.
