Pokopia has been selling really well though

I find this interesting..only because there used to be discussions on whether Nintendo should allow their devs to make other games besides the mainstays. Series like Punch Out!, Star Fox (before the remake later this month), F-Zero (if you don’t count 99), Golden Sun, and Wario Land are among many IPs/series in Nintendo’s back catalogue that haven’t had a recent game in years, if not decades. It was apparent that some of the 3D Mario team members wanted to do something with DK so Bananza became a thing, and it’s doing well. Heck, Nintendo wanted Sakurai to return to Kirby Air Ride, a small racing game that has a cult following on GameCube, to develop a requested sequel before getting back into Smash. I think Mario’s time will come, eventually.

It makes it all the more impressive that the Switch 2 is doing this well despite NOT have its biggest hitters yet outside of Mario Kart. I’m sure Nintendo has an Indra on how to navigate all of this to get to the biggest hitters when they’re ready to be shown.

I did say commercially speaking; on a personal level, I love DK Bananza and I'm glad it exists. I was speaking purely in terms of sales/money here.

I don't wonder why every new Star Fox game in the 25 years was bad; I know exactly why each one was bad.

Star Fox Adventures: Temu Legend of Zelda that no one asked for from a developer that had lost its mojo before it was sold to another hardware publisher.

Star Fox Assault: Rough draft of a game developed by a third party studio that had some cool ideas that were never improved upon in sequels.

Star Fox Command: Touch screen controls with no on-rails portions that you'd expect from a SF game, instead replaced by a turn-based strategy mode. No one asked for Star Fox to be a TBS game. We wanted a shmup. Also developed by a third-party studio.

Star Fox Zero: Controversial control scheme thanks to the Wii U GamePad and Nintendo forcing Platinum (another third party studio) to build the entire game around it. People say that you can get used to them after a while, but that's far from the pick-up-and-play nature of the first two Star Fox games, and shmups in general.

Star Fox Guard: This is a tower defense game with the Star Fox name on it.

Notice how every game mentioned not only game I mentioned either is of a completely different genre you'd associate with Star Fox, or tries to incorporate a different genre you don't associate with shmups, and/or includes an unpopular control scheme that isn't intuitive by nature and turns critics and consumers off. Also notice how every single one has had a different third-party developer. The only consistency with this franchise is the inconsistency. If Nintendo was giving Star Fox a serious try, it would let someone simply develop a Star Fox game in the same vein of Star Fox 64.

You're right about Fire Emblem riding high while Star Fox has been wandering in the desert for the past quarter century, but like I said, Fire Emblem has the benefits of having quality new games on a console that people actually own. Both Star Fox games on GameCube broke a million despite both being ass; Path of Radiance sold half of their numbers despite being good (the quality of the games are just my opinion, of course). Star Fox Command and FE: Shadow Dragon sold similar numbers on the DS, so it's almost negligible discussing them. But FE Awakening, Fates, Echoes, Three Houses and Engage all have the benefit of being brand new games on consoles that were either reasonably popular (3DS) or super popular (Switch). The only Star Fox game on 3DS or Switch is the port of SF64 with a graphical update.

"I doubt Nintendo suddenly finds the magic formula to make Star Fox workable again. As I said, other franchises like Tie Fighter and Wing Commander failed as well. Nintendo is just stubborn and keeps trying against better knowledge."

Maybe Nintendo could try just making a straight up new game in which you fly down a path in a ship and shoot things with more intuitive controls like SF64 and without unwanted gimmicks like touch controls, needing two screens, or complete gameplay shifts? You're right, Nintendo keeps stubbornly trying against better knowledge to turn Star Fox into something else instead of just making a good, straightforward game. Imagine if Nintendo made a Zelda game with mandatory online that required exactly three people, or a Metroid Prime squad shooer that didn't feature Samus. How well would those games go over? Now imagine if instead of giving fans what they actually want later on, they kept chasing those kinds of ideas for three decades.

Indeed.

Hmm, the flying down a path and shooting things is pretty much what one third of the Kid Icarus: Uprising gameplay is about. Given, it has exactly gimmick touch controls, needs two screens and shifts gameplay in the other two thirds. Let's look: 1.37 million sold copies. Not exactly what I would want a great game like this to sell, but not terrible either. I think it is niche and did well in that niche.

It's just the internet,

They moaned, groaned, and whined about spiderman 2 being trash and it went on to sell 17 million copies. Most of the complaining is people hate watching Nintendo directs who spam Deltarune in live chat who don't even buy Nintendo games.

Normal people don't care.

I never said that Star Fox isn't niche. Let's not get the idea that I'm expecting it to sell A-tier numbers under any circumstances.

Regarding Uprising, I've yet to play it myself, but I've seen people in this forum and other places complain about the controls and hoped it would get a Wii U or Switch port that would fix them. Maybe that's something that held the game back from greater heights.

Mehnemtnehenem understands the exact point youre making. He is just pretending to not understand because he dug his heels earlier in the thread that nobody cares about star fox, so he refuses to acknowledge any nuance or explanation for sales numbers post star fox 64. Instead of refuting your points he decided to bring up kid icarus uprising to prove that even if star fox were done right still nobody would care about it. Lol. Dude is grasping at straws over here. 

Starfox is indeed niche, but a great entry could still sell well within that niche I think, enough to be worth doing.

It's an IP that's been highly requested by fans for many years, but again even if it was a new game it feels like a case of something that would not buck the narrative simply cos its not one of the 3-4 gigaton IPs people tend to mean when they say there are no games.

it would have shut me up. the fact that they wasted all this effort on remaking an old game is whats frustrating.

i think a good example to look at is metroid dread. you could say the same thing about this series that nobody cared because other m, samus returns (remake), and federation force didnt sell anything. but as soon as they made a kick ass new game that was worth our time, people loved it, and it got a nice little bump in sales. i bet if this star fox game were a highly acclaimed worthy successor to star fox 64, youd see it sell more than previous entries.