By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Slownenberg on 14 December 2022
Edit Thread
HyrulianScrolls said:

I think there’s a happy medium in modern game development where 5 years or so feels like a nice gap between mainline franchise installments given the complexity of modern games and the fact that we really don’t need “new” iterations on this stuff so often now that devs can do so much in one game. More than 5 years does start to feel long though… the wait for Zelda has only truly started feeling too long to me in the past year or so.

Something like MK8 is a unique exception though where they made such a complete version of it and then Wii U failed, why not bring it back as this gen’s MK? I do think there needs to be some real innovation with the next one, so if they feel they’ve needed a long time to crack that code, I’m ok with that.

I think a good consistency is the once-a-gen or twice-a-gen strategy.

Games like MK and Smash are once every gen. Of course they repeated MK8 on Switch, but I think that was more a stop-gap so they could have Mario Kart boost Switch's launch-period lineup. If the Switch audience had treated MK8D like a last gen port and it only racked up like 20 million lifetime then I have no doubt we would have gotten MK9 on Switch. But by like mid-2018 or so the legs of MK8D made it clear Switch gamers were accepting it as THE Switch Mario Kart, so there was no reason for Nintendo to put two Mario Kart's on a single system (not including MK Live of course which is a side thing). I'm glad they did the booster pack thing though because it was definitely starting to feel like MK needed something.

Zelda is feeling long but only because it was announced so long ago so we have been expecting it for years. Zelda games take long enough that Nintendo switches between 1 and 2 games per gen. They can't quite do two games per gen but they can do it every other gen. NES 2 zeldas, SNES 1 zelda, N64 two zelda (here they really turned around quick to make MM but I think that had to do with the time mechanic of MM making it quicker to develop), technically 2 for GC but TP was cross gen and the main game for Wii launch and much more popular for Wii so I'll count it as a Wii game so only 1 for GC, 2 for Wii, technically 1 for WiiU but same story as TP so I'll count zero for WiiU but that was obviously a very stunted generation, and now 2 for Switch. No doubt we should only expect 1 Zelda on the next system since TotK is coming out probably only a year before the next system launches so next Zelda will be mid-gen for successor. 

Back to MK, yeah definitely the next MK needs to feel like they are doing something new. Same with Smash, as how do you top Ultimate?? But I have no idea where they go with Smash without just making it feel like they are treading the same territory. With MK its much easier there are plenty of options to do a little bit of re-invention of the MK series. Most obviously being turn it into more of a Nintendo Kart (smash style) by adding in a lot more IP, which MK8 started a little bit, but they can go much much further with that concept.