the_dengle on 27 June 2012
No. They can barely keep up with demand for new Mario platformers. If anything, your chart only shows that from 1997-2005 Mario games were too sparse.
I think they can stand to rely on Mario less for other games, though. Wii Party was a huge success that could easily have become the new Mario Party, but I guess Nintendo had other ideas, because a couple of years later we got Mario Party 9. Likewise, sub-IPs like Mario Tennis seem redundant with Wii Sports /Resort selling in the tens of millions. Nintendo could just make "Wii Tennis," effectively Mario Tennis, but marketed differently, and it would probably sell at least twice as well as Mario Tennis would. The Wii IP appeals more to the Mario Party & Sports market than Mario ever did.
