As in, not just a stand alone game. They should be portals, by which you recieve all of the game's respective content from. Mario Kart 8 is already approaching that point with the way it handles DLC. Nintendo could regularly and consistantly update the game with huge content packs annually. Imagine if the two DLC packs and 200cc all released at the end of this month instead of being spread across two groups of 6.

Imagine if a similar content pack came again this time next year, this time with battle mode. And the next year with a single player campaign And so on and so forth. Instead of needing to make a new game everytime, they could consistantly tweak the existing game. If they have an idea for a new gimmick, they could make it that year's expansion pack.

Same with Smash. Killer Instinct does this awesome thing where a new character is revealed every month. This keeps the game feeling fresh months after playing, as each month gets a new little tweak. Smash has started doing something similar with the recent DLC news, but pricing each character individually, as well as so expensively, makes the whole exchange much more clunky than it should be. Having the voting for characters done in game, as well as allowing each season to be purchased in "packs" of maybe 6 or 7 characters, would streamline the process. This way, more people are likely to vote, and all of the content is in one place and easy to understand. Pay like $15, and you get one character and one new stage a month for 6 months. Maybe the next year they reintroduce a Subspace Emmisary-like single player mode. Each franchise gets a short "episode" in their universe with only their characters with a boss fight at the end, releasing once a month until most franchises are accounted for. The possibilities are endless.

This would effectively make these games the "last" games in their franchises, but it would also make them the longest running, as their potencial would be unlimited.

Interesting

The games you are citing as examples (Mario Kart, Smash) release once per console.   They would never be "the last game in their franchise" as a new title is necessary for each new hardware.  What you are describing sounds too much like taking a complete game and parceling out segments of it over a longer period of time just for the sake of stretching out the player's experience with it.  I could be wrong, but that's how I'm interpreting it.  I'd rather have the complete game day one, and let me enjoy it at my leisure.  Having DLC characters and tracks etc. later is one thing.  But, releasing a game without single player mode and forcing me to wait a year for it just for the sake of having something to serve up as DLC later sounds awful to me.

Well if the next NX is what we're lead to believe, there will be only one "console" left based on a broad platform that will just be continuously updated with a forever expanding library. Just like how Counter Strike or Minecraft is basically a platform, these games would be too. Instead of releasing a completely new game, they'd just release a patch that updates the game with all the new features that would regularly appear on a newer release. No need to market a brand new game. It wouldn't be taking out anything in the initial release, just like how the games aren't leaving out content now.

Well Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros are just one game per generation, so yes.

I do believe this is a great idea for smash and mario kart, because it's going to be years before the next mario kart, and who knows how the next smash (if at all) will turn out without sakurai.

I agree and would love that type of release pattern.

Its something they are doing now anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if another 2 DLC packs are announced at the E3 press conference. I'd buy them. But they seriously need to add some battle tracks in there.

No, what I'm saying is that they should release just one game, period, and build on that foundation indefinitely.

Yes and I agree with you.