Exactly. A new hero shooter with new characters gets the “new IP” label despite being a clone of every other hero shooter out there.

On the other hand, re-inventing a game and its mechanics is somehow meant to be less impactful or meaningful because the characters are familiar.

Thankfully, Nintendo is less concerned with “new IP” than the gamers.

Yeah, creativity should be the goal. Sometimes that involves a new IP, sometimes not.

Ideally, talking as a consumer, then yes, id very much like it if they focused more on new IPs.

But realistically, theyve got a lot of running IPs that are immensely successful, so if theyd rather focus on them, Id understand.

This sums up my thoughts perfectly. Nintendo arguably creates whole IPs within its own IPs all the time. Now we have folks hoping for top down Zeldas, 3D Zeldas, Open Air Zeldas, Open Water Zeldas, side scroll Zeldas, etc, etc. 

On top of that, while I love new and creative ideas, there’s no denying that with each new IP Nintendo creates you have a new set of games that have to be made each gen to satisfy these often disparate audiences. I’m all for this, but not just because “Nintendo is stagnating and we want new ideas.”

id rather Nintendo just continue to focus on fun, whether that’s in the form of new games within existing IPs or new IPs created from scratch. 

Well, first off, their IPs are amazing, so it's hard to justify making new ones. Sure, some of us older gamers may crave freshness, but when you consider the fact that a college-aged player's first memories are of the Wii, you can see why Nintendo wouldn't really see the problem.

But yeah. I mean, Zelda, Mario and Metroid were created in the mid-80's. Most of their IP is ancient, great or not. So there is definitely a case, imo. I know I welcome new IP from them, so long as it's up to their standards.

I don't see where the OP is getting the idea that they aren't coming up with new IPs.

Arms, Game Builder Garage, Astral Chain, Ring Fit, Labo.

I mean, however many IPs do you want them to come up with every generation?? They already have a ton of different franchises to maintain and tons of spinoff franchises from those (mostly from Mario of course). In fact they have so many franchises, in addition to coming up with new ones every gen, that some fan favorites get ignored for far too long.

I think the amount of new IP they came out with this gen was perfectly fine. In terms of none of them being huge sellers, well, Ring Fit certainly was a huge game sitting at over 15 million now. Not every new game is going to be a huge seller. You can't exactly fault them for coming out with several new IP this gen and only one of them being a huge seller.

As far as them focusing on "sequels, remakes, remasters, and ports" as the OP claimed, well the rest of the industry does that much more than Nintendo! And the only reason you are saying that right now is because we are nearing the end of Switch's life so yes indeed the past year or so they are filling in the software lineup gaps with remakes/remasters/ports because all the big new games are next gen titles.

I fail to see where the problem is.

2-4 new IPs a gen is healthy, but it's far less important than being consistent in quality and release schedules of existing IPs.
Some oversights on Switch after nearly 8 years
-Star Fox
-Rhythm Heaven
-A new DK game. DK as an IP just has two ports.
-Wario Land
-Kid Icarus - not even a port or remake of Uprising
And that doesn't even encompass everything. they could revive
-Chibi-Robo
-Wave Race
-1080
-Excite
-Pushmo
-Pilotwings
-Nintendogs

Nintendo is better at keeping IPs alive than Sony or Microsoft, but there's still work to be done.

I always read that Nintendo needs new IPs. Meanwhile, they have tons of unused IPs that are collecting dust for at least a decade or so.

While we're at it, how many new IPs did Sony and Microsoft brought to the table this gen so far? Because not many really spring into my mind right now.