Nintendo games often sell rediculous amounts of copies. And for their big heavy hitters, that's expected. But when it comes to their more niche titles, particularly new IPs. Even if they sell 1-2 million copies, they're considered failures, despite no evidence of that. This mostly has to do with their internal teams, if Nintendo's not releasing a 10+ million seller, then it's a waste of time. I never understood this mentality. Sure, games like Pikmin, ARMS, Labo, Captain Toad, and other aren't mega hits, but they sell well enough for them to exist. 

I'm just wondering if Nintendo's in-house games are being held to too high of a standard. Sure, you'd expect and want Mario Kart and Zelda to sell 10+ million sellers. But why must Nintendo be locked into ONLY making mega-hits? Shouldn't they try new things and niche products to expand their library? 1-2 million is still a success, and Nintendo still makes money off those games.

The purpose of first party games is to sell hardware. Usually that means a big selling game, but it could also mean a unique game that attracts a different kind of customer. So obviously games like Splatoon 2 and Breath of the Wild are good, because they sell a lot. But I also think Labo is a decent product, because there is really nothing else like it, and it can attract a new type of customer. On the other hand I don't think Arms should get any sequels. Anyone who likes fighting games would rather play Smash Bros instead.

So there is not much point in making more Arms games. But Labo or Metroid Prime or Advance Wars or Cadence of Hyrule are all good games because they all attract a different type of gamer than their top selling games do.

To a lower standard maybe.

By whom? There's always going to be dumb people but I've never really noticed this on a large scale.

Huh... I kind of feel like the opposite is true actually, where most Nintendo games are given a pass... because they are Nintendo...

Why? The two games play completely different from eachother, plus ARMS sold over 2 million copies, so it's more than able to get a sequel.

It has more to do with the question, "Why do people play this game?"  People play ARMS mostly for competitive fighting.  That is also the same reason they play Smash Bros.  It's kind of redundant to make another ARMS, because fighting fans just want to play Smash Bros anyway.  Nintendo would be better off making a unique type of game than making another ARMS.  ARMS doesn't really bring in new people to buy a console.

But ARMS is still a completely different game from Smash. Them both being fighting games, doesn't change that. The fact that it sold 2 million copies worldwide is enough for them to make a sequel. Even creator, Kosuke Yabuki would like to make one.

I always thought Breath Of The Wild should have been a new ip, but Nintendo needed the Zelda name to sells those consoles at launch, it’s kind of sad to think triple a games are so expensive and take so long to make that developers can’t afford to try something new, another example is resident evil 7, they put the name just to make sure the game would be a hit. I also think that Nintendo fans are usually very attached to the same franchises, do we really need so many 2d Mario and Zelda games ?, every time nintendo shows a Mario or Zelda game people go crazy and say wow I can’t wait to play something I have already played like 30 times already just with new levels and small tweaks, so if people don’t care about innovation developers won’t either.

Just as a side comment to this post.

People on this site (and most other gaming forums) are to hung up on IP. It’s not the IP that makes a game good or bad it is the mechanics and gameplay. Splatoon would still be a fun game even if it was set in the Mushroom kingdom. BotW would still be a good game if it was not a Zelda game, attaching it to Zelda just to boost the sales is totally OK with me. Same can be said about RE7, if the name boosted the sales I’m totally fine with it (to be honest what I consider a RE game hasn’t held true after the PS1 days (fixed cameras, tank controlls etc)