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curl-6 on 05 August 2018
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TheMisterManGuy said:
curl-6 said: They're in a difficult position though, where they are responsible for pretty much single handedly drive hardware sales because unlike Sony and MS they can't rely on third parties to do a lot of the heavy lifting for them. As such, there is immense pressure on EPD to produce games that sell gangbusters and move consoles. Under these circumstances, committing one of their flagship teams to make a sequel to a game that sold only modestly and didn't shift hardware is unwise.

Thing is, Nintendo games rely heavily on evergreen sales. Their games routinely top charts and sell consoles even years after release. This is one of the reasons why their games take forever to climb down in price compared to most publishers. In Nintendo's eyes, Super Mario Odyssey is as much a system seller now as it was almost a year ago. So while they do need to provide the system sellers themselves, it's not to the point where they can't afford to develop anything but the most surefire mega-hits, especially when the console is successful. If the console is a big success, then Nintendo can afford to experiment with games that have lesser sales potential because the user-base is big and diverse enough that somebody will like it. Nintendo still regularly promotes ARMS all the time, so they do consider it a success, maybe not to the extent of Splatoon, but it still made a good profit, enough for a sequel to be made if the team wants to. I'm going to make a wild guess and say that the team is working on ARMS II as we speak for a 2019 release. I mean, why else would they cut updates for the game less than a year after its release, when the game was a success? 

It's still sinking the same resources into a 3 million seller as could be spent on a 10 million seller, which just isn't good for business. Nintendo still promoting ARMS occasionally doesn't tell us much; as of the last quarterly report sales have slowed to a crawl, it's on track to sell less than 1-2 Switch and in the eyes of the general audience it's already forgotten. That's the thing about rolling the dice on a new IP, sometimes you get a new breakout megaton hit like Splatoon, and other times you don't. Honestly, rolling the dice again on a Nintendo FPS along the lines of Paladins or Overwatch would probably be a better use of their resources, that could have far more sales potential than ARMS 2.