Never blame the customers. Games are a business, their art value is not why they are made.

Game companies need to "accept" that people want to buy more games like the first one they made, and that is what they need to be working on.

I've never seen great franchises die because of too many quality entries.

Video games are commercial art. All forms of art follow trends. Trends change. If something doesn't follow or set a new trend, it will fail.

Lol. I can't even.

If a game of the original type would sell well, make that. If a new game with a different formula would sell well, make that instead.

The Mario RPG series has a history of poking fun at convention. To see it succumb to all but a handful of preset notions would be the bitterest of ironies.

Arguments from artistic motivation bounce off completely. Games are money. They have art value to the consumer, and maybe the dev thinks they are making art, but they are not funded because art.

I have seen franchises die because of lack of change, but decline is more common. Tekken, Tony Hawk, Dynasty Warriors, and others have failed to keep up with trends and are forever chasing the ghosts of their ancestors.

Oh sure, if the audience wants something different then the game company has to change. But they have to change into what the customer wants, not just trying gimmicks the lead designer is in love with.

Means nothing. You dont have leveling in zelda either. Its the same principle. You will level up doing quests/tasks instead of just grinding battles for XP number.

With that said, PM Thousand year door looks more appealing to me.

There's a huge problem with making a new game with a different formula. Branding. It's almost always riskier to create a new IP than to apply a new concept to a familiar name, and shouldn't publishers try to minimize said risks? It's all about the money.

OK, true. So make it a spinoff. Super Paper Mario was pretty much branded as a spinoff and I'm OK with that. This new one is branded as main series and I am NOT happy with that because it implies we will never get a game like the original again.

Games are not funded because of art, but they sell because of it (as you said, it holds artistic value to the consumer). As such, it would be unwise to not invest in the artistic qualities of a game.

Invest in them up to the point on the curve it no longer makes sense to, yes.

Figuring out the desires of the consumer is not an exact science. What you describe is the process of finding what current fans possibly want (if you argue that fans have a hive mind). However, Nintendo is in the business of making games for as many consumers as they possibly can.

Indeed. However current fans also provide a safe market, which businesses always want. If they made another Paper Mario like the original, they could be very confident it would sell like the original. Why are they changing it on the mere promise that the changes will bring more customers? How could you say these changes are made for that purpose? All I see is some lead dev saying, "Wouldn't it be cool if XYZ?" and not thinking about markets at all.

As such, it is natural to try different approaches to see if results improve.

Yes. As spinoffs. It's worked many times in gaming history. But changing the definition of a franchise while branding it as core is pure betrayal, and Nintendo has to bear the negative sales impact and PR issue that comes with that. How is it worth it to piss off an established market?

In this case, one must ask the question why Nintendo wouldn't stick with the exact same formula as previous games. From what I see, Nintendo is attempting to move in that direction (it's certainly less of a departure than SPM) but continue to play with certain aspects. It's an attempt to find a better balance between what is expected from the franchise and bringing in newer consumers who like the sticker concept.

People buy games based on concepts? Any evidence for that? I thought people buy based on something the game does for them - an FPS because they want to shoot things, and RPG because they want to play through a story. Changing the window dressing doesn't persuade anyone who isn't already persuaded. And if it is new customers you are targeting, the Paper Mario branding does nothing for them.

Will it succeed? Only time will tell. If it doesn't, Nintendo has a few options: Give up and axe the franchise, go back to basics, or try another idea that seems appealing.

What they usually do: change something, it sells badly, blame (paraphrasing) "declining popularity of the series" (Metroid) or "customers not understanding what we want to deliver" (Wii Music) and never make a core entry again. It happened with 2D Mario, they just kept trying 3D Mario from N64 -> early Wii and when they finally made a 2D Mario again, turns out the demand had existed all along (insane NSMB sales).