| PAOerfulone said: Now that we've got an honest-to-God, legit 2D Mario game coming this Fall, I feel much more confidant that the Switch can get there. |
Yup, the glimpses that we got of this new game allow to have positive expectations. Issues of the New Super Mario Bros. games that have been addressed already:
1. Artstyle
2. Change of the same old star coin formula
3. More interesting power-ups
What we can't say yet due to lack of info:
1. Music (there's going to be a new style, but that doesn't automatically mean that it will be better as a whole)
2. World themes (the NSMB games kept using the same eight themes)
3. Bosses (again, the NSMB games kept using pretty much the same ones throughout the entire series)
If Nintendo does it all right, the combination with the favorable release date (late October) will result in more than 20m copies shipped by the end of 2023. And since this is the first original 2D Mario game for Switch, a notable hardware boost is a given, even moreso if Nintendo launches a themed Switch SKU alongside it. The current fiscal year target of 15m shouldn't be as much of a challenge as Furukawa thought; Tears of the Kingdom put already a good amount of work in with a strong fiscal Q1, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is probably going to push Q3 to a level that makes the 15m target only a formality to complete in Q4, unless it turns out that Nintendo phones in this new 2D Mario game and have it be mostly a reskin of the NSMB formula.
As for 2024 as a whole, this Nintendo Direct didn't change the outlook for the general expectation of a fall launch of Switch's successor. A remaster of Luigi's Mansion 2, an all-new Peach game and the pending release of Metroid Prime 4 is all that's on the schedule for now. That's a mix that can be interpreted as either a late stage in the lifecycle schedule or as the typical situation for Switch where we've been left in the dark on a regular basis.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
