| Soundwave said: Mario Kart and NSMB are pretty even I'd say as franchises. NSMB2 is quickly catching up to Mario Kart 7 for example. Nintendo's biggest mistake with the Wii/DS era was not investing enough in sustainable new character properties during that generation. Instead they banked almost entirely on things like Wii Sports/Fit/Party and Brain Training and Nintendogs ... franchises that likely have lost a lot (if not even all) of their appeal. So basically there's nothing from Wii/DS eras that really helping Nintendo now in terms of being new, so they're stuck having to ride Mario for every problem they have because there's no other answer they can come up with quickly. DKC is really the only other franchise besides 2D Mario that Nintendo revived to big numbers that they can now carry over to the Wii U/3DS. |
3D Mario and Zelda are still big, system selling franchises, even if they're not Mario Kart big. And let's not forget Smash Bros.
And then there's the cumulative effect of smaller ones like Pikmin, X, Yoshi, and possibly Metroid, Starfox, F Zero, etc, which may not be huge on their own but can form a considerable collective draw.
