Among the big Japanese publishers, is Nintendo the least creatively risk-averse?

[DonFerrari]

pokoko said:
I don't see much point in that comparison, to be honest. Nintendo has far more money to spend, a build-in platform for pushing their own content, and a need to produce software to sell their console. Not even close to the same starting point.

And as far as comparing game budgets between third-party and first-party efforts, first-party titles do not have the same overhead. It's not the same situation and people need to stop acting like it's not going to be more expensive for a third-party publisher to produce the same content.

Besides, you can't much fault companies for Yakuza or Monster Hunter when Nintendo has developed over 11,000 Mario-themed games in the same timespan.

Not to forget that 3rd parties pays royalties so the number of games solds needs to be much higher than 1st party on the same investment.

Jumpin said:

VAMatt said:
I generally agree with the OP. But, it must be remembered that Nintendo's whoring out of Mario is in a whole different ballpark than everyone else in gaming. They shoehorned him into racing, fighting, sports, turn based RPGs, action RPGs, puzzles, party games, and just about every major genre out there, excluding shooters. I'm surprised Splatoon isn't set in the Mario universe, frankly.

Nobody else does anything like this. So, in some senses, Nintendo is the least adventurous.

You’re conflating branding with conventional mechanics. They’re two separate things. Also, Nintendo has one of the widest arrays of brand success, criticizing them for not expanding that further is silly.

In addition, saying other Japanese companies don’t do anything like this is blatantly false. Most Japanese companies will highlight their brands across multiple different sorts of games, there are even Final a fantasy fighting and musical rhythm games.

Sorry, but no company uses as much as Nintendo the image of one of its protagonists.