And yet right now "Wii" is arguably the best brand Nintendo has even with Mario still raking in the bucks. Also it seems like everything with "Training" and "Nintendogs" sells a million not to mention the pokemons.

fkusumot said: And yet right now "Wii" is arguably the best brand Nintendo has even with Mario still raking in the bucks. Also it seems like everything with "Training" and "Nintendogs" sells a million not to mention the pokemons.

Well, there's really only the one Nintendogs game so far. And their branding for what are all "training" games in Japan is inconsistent elsewhere.

But Mario and Wii-brand are possibly the two biggest software brands in the whole industry right now. Which is bigger can be argued. Pending the release of Wii Fit in the West, I'll go with Mario.

Erik Aston said: fkusumot said: And yet right now "Wii" is arguably the best brand Nintendo has even with Mario still raking in the bucks. Also it seems like everything with "Training" and "Nintendogs" sells a million not to mention the pokemons. Well, there's really only the one Nintendogs game so far. And their branding for what are all "training" games in Japan is inconsistent elsewhere. But Mario and Wii-brand are possibly the two biggest software brands in the whole industry right now. Which is bigger can be argued. Pending the release of Wii Fit in the West, I'll go with Mario.

 I predict there will be a return to this conversation, one way or the other, in a few months. We'll see how it works out!

mario is pretty much the most popular video game character ever. you can't blame nintendo for putting out so many games with him in it.Truth of the matter is mario sells and they would be dumb not to keep making mario games. I'm sure if sony or microsoft owned the rights to the mario bros. universe they would be doing the exact same thing.

fabledgamer said: mario is pretty much the most popular video game character ever. you can't blame nintendo for putting out so many games with him in it.Truth of the matter is mario sells and they would be dumb not to keep making mario games. I'm sure if sony or microsoft owned the rights to the mario bros. universe they would be doing the exact same thing.

 Indeed.  If you think the number of titles with mario is over the top just imagine what ubisoft or EA would have done with him.

There is one thing no one seems to have touched on with the sports games. Every year there are new players, therefore new football, soccer, basketball and hockey games. With Mario, there only needs to be one of each sports game per generation/system. Same players. The focus is on fun, not realistic, gameplay.

These games can sell over the life of a system, they never get dated. They can sell for years, ensuring good numbers. Even the resale market is highly lucrative for these games. Old Madden games sell for $3 where Mario Golf GC STILL sells used for over $30

Besides a few hardcores getting tired of an abundance of Mario, everyone wins. Developer, Nintendo, retailer, distributor, consumer (is almost always assured a very fun game), consumer again (gets a higher trade in value), game reseller. The only person who actually loses in this process is the buyer from the reseller, who has to pay a premium price. But they know they are getting a good game.

This also helps clueless parents at holidays avoid shovelware, Mario usually stands as a seal of high quality fun.

and i liked almost all those mario games.
and i dont think you can blame ninty for keeping such a great franchise alive for such a long time

"but the fact still remains that you are not seeing Ryu or Iori outside of the fighting genre"

Ryu: Namco X Capcom, a strategy RPG, and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, genre stated in the title.

Again, you aren't doing your research. You are just making assumptions about Mario being a special case, which is wrong, and that there is some rule about sticking in your own genre, which Mario is supposedly breaking.

Erik Aston said: Of course Mario has been in more games than any other character in history. No person will argue otherwise. Well, actually, I've seen people argue otherwise, and they need to STFU. And of course the Mario name helps the games sell. Starting with Mario Kart, people started to expect a certain type of gameplay from Mario games... The sports titles, then the party titles... And Nintendo largely delivered that type of gameplay consistently. Other than the yearly Party iterations, they still protect their star by only doing sequels once per generation. Paper Mario, Mario and Luigi, Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, Mario Kart, and the rest have only appeared once each gen so far, and have never really been low quality titles. And so they've managed to avoid wearing out consumers on the brand. And when they do something new like Mario Strikers (or whatever), consumers still trust the brand more than they would "We Love Soccer" (or whatever). I'm not sure there's really any "blame" at all. Mario games sell. The developer (rarely Nintendo), the publisher (Nintendo), the whole distribution chain, and the consumers are all a part of making them sell. And that's just a fact; it isn't necesarily a bad thing. The games are what they are and people shouldn't lament it. Nearly 100 million games sold over the last two generations alone is obviously a winning strategy.

QFT. Erik Aston nailed this one and no one even mentioned it. Mario does have a crapload of games coming out, but he's not flooding the market because they're mostly in different genres. Mario has stayed fresh all these years by not saturating any genre. Nintendo has managed what no one else has been able to do -- have a mascot that can be exploited, milked, whatever you want to call it -- and yet still have only one or two games in a given genre in a console cycle. Famine, you have a problem for some reason with seeing Mario in games ranging from his homeland of platforming to kart racing (a genre, by the way, that exists thanks to Mario) to various sports games (almost the only non-realistic ones currently being made AFAIK) et cetera et cetera. I really don't know why. But you do. You're just really bad at telling us about your dislike. "I had no qualms with the Mario franchise, just my beef was that Mario is just in so many games, in so little time." "Can you name me one game developer that has used one character in as many games?" Any reasonable person would have supposed that you are complaining about the number of games with Mario in them, not the number of game genres with Mario in them. Anyway, I think that, despite appearances, Nintendo is actually a model of restraint. Mario's lasted for a quarter century now; I doubt many other companies would have been able to refrain from overexploiting him in any [edit: or, arguably, more than one] particular genre. There are exceptions, but as a rule Mario games are good -- often very, very good. They all share the same characters that his fans love, and a certain playful style. Mario fans get to explore new genres with the same much-loved characters; Nintendo makes scads of money; sometimes (as with Mario Kart) new gaming possibilities are revealed to the industry. Who loses in this equation, aside from those who just hate Mario's face? What has Nintendo done wrong, if succeeding beyond any other company's wet dreams is not a crime?

LordTheNightKnight said: "but the fact still remains that you are not seeing Ryu or Iori outside of the fighting genre" Ryu: Namco X Capcom, a strategy RPG, and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, genre stated in the title. Again, you aren't doing your research. You are just making assumptions about Mario being a special case, which is wrong, and that there is some rule about sticking in your own genre, which Mario is supposedly breaking.

Forgot about Super Puzzle Fighter II.

It's not that I'm not doing my research, it's just that Mario has been in more various games than any game character out there; even Mario has a pinball game on the DS. Yes, Namco X Capcom and that list with Chocobo games that you provided show characters outside their realm, but they stayed in Japan, unlike for Mario.

And I'll mention another game with cross-game appeal, Ehrgeiz.