Mario Kart Wii 13.67 million[1]

Super Smash Bros. Brawl 8.1 million[1]

Super Mario Galaxy 7.66 million[1]

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 4.52 million[2

Animal Crossing: City Folk 3.22 million[1]

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption 1.31 million[2]

Does a game frnachise need to reinvent itself at some point? Or is it enough to please your existing fanbase? All of these games a fairly similar to games or games in the franchise that were relesed before it, and the sales numbers listed give an idea of the size of the fanbase. Is it just personal taste, on which are 'stale' and which are vibrant?

For example, I love Mario Kart Wii, and want little for the 'next' game but 16 new courses.

I would take a Mario Galaxy 2 ala Orcarina/Majora's in a heartbeat.

I could care less about Animal Crossing. Smash Brothers is fine, but unremarkable. A sequel would not excite me.

I feel Metroid and Zelda, though not stale - are straying WAY top far into the land of storytelling. Give me atmosphere over narrative anyday - Metroid Prime 1 'got' that. Its been downhill since then. Twilight Princess felt more like fanboy service than anything else, just my perspective.

What do you think?

Honestly, most of these games are pretty good to me.
Brawl stay the same
Mario kart stay the same
Galaxy wouldn't mind a sequel or a new story
Animal crossing never played
Metroid prime 3 still need to beat the first 2
Legend of zelda would really love a sequel more than a new story

Smash Bros. should turn around and go back to what it once was.
Ditto for Mario Kart.
I haven't played much of the the recent Zelda's but they look like they need a lot of help...
I don't care much about Metroid, but I agree with atmosphere over story, for it.
Animal Crossing needs to do new stuff, since it has barely changed.
Mario needs more freedom, less story, or optional, and more gameplay.

Atmosphere over narrative: Agree. (Especially in those two series.)
Care less about Animal Crossing: Agree.
Smash unremarkable: Definitely disagree, but a sequel headed by Sakurai is not going to happen, so I'm not sure I want to see a sequel anyway.

I was discussing the problems of sequelizing Galaxy earlier in another thread. How do you outdo that? That really has me stumped, though hopefully Miyamoto isn't stumped as well.

I'd gladly play a direct "Majora-esque" sequel, too, but there's still the question of where to go after that (can't stay in space forever). I just hope they make it much lighter in tone and drop the uninteresting story. There shouldn't be a story at all. It's a Mario game.

I've stopped caring about Mario Kart, personally, so I don't know. I think it's doing fine like it is, considering sales.

Zelda is the game we're most likely to see a sequel out of the soonest out of those you listed, and it's the most likely to be very different since it didn't sell nearly as well as Nintendo wanted. I doubt they'll return to cell shading, but it needs to be lighter this time. The drab look was just depressing at times. I think they'll make it more accessible like the DS games have been, which may or may not be a good thing, but I don't think you could do much worse.

I think Zelda could use reinventing, and I think Metroid should either follow the Hunters style game in the future or just return to 2D. The first Prime was good, but every time they've tried to improve on it, it just got worse. And Nintendo is selling so many more copies of their other games that I don't know if they are really that interested in the Prime series anymore.