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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Nintendo Not Offering Annual Mario Kart And Super Smash Bros. Releases For A Reason

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zorg1000 on 25 August 2015
Soundwave said:
Nintendo's never really offered annual releases of any franchise.

DKC, DKC2, DKC3 in three consecutive years from 94-96 is about the only time I can remember them doing that.


Mario Party was during the N64/GC days



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pokoko on 25 August 2015

All that article said was, basically, "it depends."



Lawlight on 26 August 2015
Screamapillar said:

If Nintendo released Mario Kart or Smash Bros every year, I would stop buying them.  One of the many great things about those two franchises is that they only come around once per console cycle.  They go all in and make the best possible version they can, every time.  You know what you're getting is going to be amazing, and that you'll be playing it for literally years.

Nintendo couldn't possibly, at all, make a full Smash Bros every year. It takes hundreds of people two to three years.

Nintendo is smart. Annualized franchises are horrible.


But they do it for Pokemon though and Mario in general.



Samus Aran on 26 August 2015
LuckyTrouble said:
This article says basically nothing. They only release Mario Kart and Smash Bros around once a generation because development times are too long to manage otherwise. New Pokemon gets released often because it's basically all Game Freak works on, so it's either be making Pokemon, or make something else. Even with Tembo, they only allocated a small team to make it.

Why does the article make it sound like Nintendo has been doing DLC for two decades? They say what they're doing with Mario Kart 8 is a standard, yet, it's completely new to this generation. Continued content for a game is not the reason they only do one release a generation, considering they've been doing this stuff since the SNES and N64.

All in all, this article smells like BS at best. I guarantee, Nintendo would turn out annual releases for everything if they could just because people would keep buying them anyways.

Every CoD or Ass Creed game has a 3 year development cycle with HUGE teams allocated to it. Ubisoft is almost twice as big as Nintendo...

Nintendo doesn't own Gamefreak... Pokémon would be better off if Nintendo fully owned the franchise though.



Samus Aran on 26 August 2015
Lawlight said:
Screamapillar said:

If Nintendo released Mario Kart or Smash Bros every year, I would stop buying them.  One of the many great things about those two franchises is that they only come around once per console cycle.  They go all in and make the best possible version they can, every time.  You know what you're getting is going to be amazing, and that you'll be playing it for literally years.

Nintendo couldn't possibly, at all, make a full Smash Bros every year. It takes hundreds of people two to three years.

Nintendo is smart. Annualized franchises are horrible.


But they do it for Pokemon though and Mario in general.

Pokémon is owned by The Pokémon Company. The Pokémon Company is owned by Nintendo, Gamefreak and Creatures Inc.

Nintendo only owns 1/3th of the Pokémon franchise basically.



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archer9234 on 26 August 2015

Smash can't even be annualized. If they did. They reach DBZ trouble. And have no one new to add. And force a reset.



I3LuEI3omI3eR on 26 August 2015
Samus Aran said:
Lawlight said:
Screamapillar said:

If Nintendo released Mario Kart or Smash Bros every year, I would stop buying them.  One of the many great things about those two franchises is that they only come around once per console cycle.  They go all in and make the best possible version they can, every time.  You know what you're getting is going to be amazing, and that you'll be playing it for literally years.

Nintendo couldn't possibly, at all, make a full Smash Bros every year. It takes hundreds of people two to three years.

Nintendo is smart. Annualized franchises are horrible.


But they do it for Pokemon though and Mario in general.

Pokémon is owned by The Pokémon Company. The Pokémon Company is owned by Nintendo, Gamefreak and Creatures Inc.

Nintendo only owns 1/3th of the Pokémon franchise basically.

Pretty much also explains why Pokémon is also an annual thing... 3 times the man power plus 3 times the quality...



Proxy-Pie on 26 August 2015

Annualize Pokemon, "generationalize" Smash :3



outlawauron on 26 August 2015

Nintendo doesn't do it because they don't have the teams to do what Ubisoft and Activision do. They also don't need to pump them out, so there's not a big reason to amp up the size of their teams.

Using the "Seal of Quality" is a joke as it gets slapped on anything published from Nintendo. I also don't get how you can really single out Call of Duty for its minimal changes when the very same can be argued. The real franchises where the argument can be made against annualized series are the sports games, but they're necessary with the need to have seasonal updates + contractual obligations.



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DevilRising on 26 August 2015

NO franchise honestly warrants annual releases. Not even sports games. They could easily, say, release Madden or FIFA or whatever, every couple of years, or even few years, and just do roster updates and things of that nature through DLC. But because people still go out by the millions and waste money on EACH new edition of Madden, etc., they will keep on pumping them out, $60 a pop, year after year.

I like that we only get one MK and SB per console. That makes the most sense. It just sucks when the one you get, is sub par (such as SB with no Adventure Mode, etc).