A) Hand-drawn graphics instead of 3D models; think of Wario Land: The Shake Dimension, but with more detail and in higher resolution. Music doesn't need to be explained, because you know that there's a world of difference between the NSMB games and the efforts Nintendo made for 3D Mario games. The AAA treatment naturally means a big boost in production values over the NSMB games. B) You are giving Miyamoto way too much credit. For one, the timeline doesn't add up. NSMB for the DS released in mid-2006, so about 1.5 years before Super Mario Galaxy in late 2007. NSMB Wii was not an attempt at creating a more accessible 3D Mario game when the same flawed logic would already apply to NSMB on the DS as this more accessible 3D Mario game. And two, you recognize how indefensible it is to call a game 3D Mario based on nothing more than 3D models being used. D) Don't forget that NSMB was created at a time when Nintendo had run its home console business into trouble and Sony was looking to threaten Nintendo's handheld business too. The whole company had to make a conscious effort to do the things again that made Nintendo popular in the first place. E) It isn't unusual, but it's a bad thing in the long run. Someone who surrounds himself with yes-men becomes prone to live in a bubble and increasingly disconnected from reality. F) Let me explain. Aonuma's first Zelda game was The Wind Waker which featured a controversial artstyle; TWW may be fondly remembered today, but it didn't do Nintendo's business good when it released. The reaction of Nintendo's business side was to take cues from Ocarina of Time which resulted in Twilight Princess with a darker artstyle and mood. With Zelda's selling power restored, Aonuma had more freedom again which not only brought us a sequel to The Wind Waker (Phantom Hourglass), but the content-wise highly questionable Spirit Tracks where trains were a major theme despite not being a good fit for the Zelda universe. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2009/12/childrens_book_was_inspiration_for_spirit_tracks Skyward Sword was more of a different take on The Wind Waker than another Twilight Princess. The wide ocean was replaced by a similarly empty sky and there was the idea to turn combat into puzzles. Which it kind of is due to commonly necessitating certain angles to hit enemies with the sword at all. Much of this direction stems from Aonuma not being any good in action games, hence why he doesn't like the original Zelda games and would rather have the player solve more puzzles (this is apparent from interviews and speeches at the Games Developers Conference). This also showed in A Link Between Worlds which is supposed to be a lot like A Link to the Past, but the actual dungeon content is light on enemies; this is why ALBW's hard mode quadruples damage. After the sales disappointment of Skyward Sword, the following home console Zelda must have been tough for Aonuma. Because this time Nintendo didn't want to go back to Ocarina of Time, but the true origins of the Zelda series. A prototype was built in 8-bit to test the ideas that were going to go into Breath of the Wild. A Zelda game with little to no story-telling, a lot of exploration and combat, and a lot of player freedom is basically the opposite of what Skyward Sword was. In all of what I am saying here, it's not about personal enjoyment of entries in the Zelda series, it's about the ramifications for Nintendo's business, so the individual games' sales as well as the impact or lack thereof on hardware sales, because as Nintendo's most expensive series it absolutely has to sell hardware to justify the resources that get poured into it. Less Aonuma influence consistently means more sales. G) I'll copy-paste from another post of mine in this thread: "As far as I know, when Nintendo's business is doing well, Nintendo's business gives its inhouse teams a bunch of options for games to make and the teams can pick what they are most interested in. That's what Furukawa alluded to a couple of years ago. Problem is that no team will pick 2D Mario when none of the directors and producers are interested in it. The situation is like that because Miyamoto had a lot of say when it comes to who got promoted to higher positions. So the next 2D Mario isn't going to be ordered to be made unless Nintendo's business goes really south and Nintendo has to do everything they can to get back on track, but that's not going to happen anytime soon." So the business has the power, but it chooses when to use that power. Right now is not a time where the business would enforce its full power because Nintendo is raking in huge profits from its console. The personal happiness of developers is also a consideration, as in, getting to choose which games they would rather want to develop. Happy employees create better products, that's the thinking. This happiness can be threatened by low hardware sales, because that creates a situation of a lot of pressure on all developers to deliver a really big hit game at all times. So during the dire times Nintendo went through as a business, forcing certain games on developers served the happiness of developers too, because a return to a well-run business allows for more relaxed work again. In closing, I hope the points make sense because I've been distracted a lot while writing this and been sitting way too long for my liking at this one post. |
Thank you, that certainly made everything a lot clearer. So, we can agree that Miyamoto's statement doesn't mean that there won't be a new 2D Mario soon because he is not in the power to decide that. However, we can also agree that there still won't be a new 2D Mario game soon because there's no need for one right now.
Concerning Skyward Sword, I would like to respond that the game still managed to sell nearly four million units on the Wii alone. We know that Breath of the Wild had the biggest budget of any Nintendo game so far and only needed two million units to break even. I guess it's reasonable to think that Skyward Sword's budget must have been significantly lower and therefore returned a nice profit. Maybe there is an offcial statement somewhere in which Nintendo speaks of a dissapointment, I don't know, and I didn't check. Then again, we will want to consider the Wi's huge install base and then things look a bit different again. Anyway, I certainly would not call these numbers a dissapointment, honestly, but I'm merely a forum dweller.
Also, as a quick addendum, Phantom Hourglass sold 5m, which is the highest number for any handheld Zelda. Not too shabby if you ask me.
Also, as another addendum, Aonuma might not be the best action gamer but I think it's still good enough. Wikipedia states that Aonuma was the director of Twilight Princess and that is pretty action packed, I guess. Wind Waker and Skyward Sword were not directed by him. Now I think it's exhausting to discuss how much influence the producer and the director have had on each game because we would barely be able to know for sure, but it's just something that I find worth noting.
