Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

I think the really interesting question in the 'do we need a 3d Mario soon' debate is — how much will Bananza sell?

The craziest aspect of the Switch 2017 lineup is the fact that 3 of the games are in the top 5 best selling Switch games 8 years later.

Mario Kart World will inevitably stay a top selling Switch 2 game over time. But will DK soar evergreen for years or will it merely do ok?

@VoidofLight I mean if you count spinoffs yeah, but as far as main series platformers? The last 3D platformer was in 2021 and the last NEW 3D platformer was in 2017. We're definitely not oversaturated there. The "oversaturation" of content you're feeling has more to do with how Mario has an ungodly amount of spinoffs to the point where the IP is pretty much a yearly occurrence.

As for whether or not it would "kill" them, of course it wouldn't, but they'd be in a much worse sales position by putting 3D Mario on the back burner simply because it is THE flagship IP for Nintendo and sells bucketloads.

@Tayrailbridge I mean 3D Marios tend to be some of the highest sellers on their consoles and Odyssey was the 5th highest at 29 million, so it should be a high priority. Both the 3D platformers and Mario Kart are both high selling games that appeal to very different styles of gameplay with very different audiences, so there's definitely room for both (and there's been instances where they released relatively close to each other).

@FishyS DK has always been relatively niche compared to Mario, doubtful it'll ever be comparable to a game like Odyssey. I'd say a realistic sales target for Bananza would be around the 10 million mark, I don't see it selling much more than that. Mario is THE mascot of Nintendo, it naturally draws in a lot more sales because everyone knows who he is and immediately associated him with Nintendo.

@Bolt_Strike The spin-offs sell bucket-loads too. To the casuals, Mario is Mario. Regardless if it's a big 3D platformer or if it's an RPG spin-off.

I feel like DK is going to fill that niche that 3D Mario is leaving anyways. I don't doubt they're going to make a new 3D Mario, but it'll probably be a couple of years until we see it.

@Bolt_Strike Like Voidoflight mentioned, Donkey Kong seems to be taking 3D Mario's place (for the moment at least). Bananza was made by the same team as Odyssey, and it seems that it's being marketed as the next big thing.
Regarding audiences, I disagree. Mario Kart is generally marketed toward a younger demographic, yes, but I know plenty of adults who play MK and have bought the Switch 2 just for World. The audiences for both styles of games are pretty much the same. If you own Mario Odyssey, you own Mario Kart 8.

Yeah, saying Mario Kart is mostly for kids is disingenuous. I know tons of adults that are around me who want to play Mario Kart World. A lot of people my age, and most of them aren't heavy gamers. Heck, even one of my teachers for my college classes wanted to play Mario Kart World.

I mean the platformers and Kart are really the only ones that sell bucketloads. Party and Sports sell well, but not quite bucketloads, they're a tier below the former two.

As I said in the previous post, Mario sells far more than DK. No DK game has cracked 10 million. Odyssey nearly tripled that mark. Bananza almost certainly will not come anywhere close to Odyssey or the Switch 2's 3D Mario. Financially speaking, using DK as a substitute for a 3D Mario is one of the most foolish decisions they could make, and I have a hard time believing Nintendo is this stupid. Most likely, the actual explanation aligns with the rumors we heard about DK a few years ago (what we've learned about Bananza does align with what we heard about DK back in 2021, even seemingly contradictory rumors such as whether or not it was 2D or 3D can be explained because the game has some 2D bonus rooms), that the Odyssey team has expanded and can work on two games now instead of having to choose one or the other.

I never said anything about age. By "audience" I'm talking about genre. Mario Kart is a multiplayer racing game. The 3D Mario games are platformers that are primarily single player. Those styles have entirely different appeal to different gaming preferences. It is not pretty much the same audience. Someone that doesn't like multiplayer, competitive, or racing wouldn't be interested in Mario Kart, and someone that doesn't like platforming or single player wouldn't like 3D Mario. And sales wise they have different sales totals. MK8D sold 66 million and Odyssey sold 29 million. That means that there's 37 million people that bought MK8D that didn't buy Odyssey, and there's most likely millions (I'd estimate 5-10 million) that bought Odyssey and not MK8D. The idea that they're substitutes for one another is ridiculous.

And yet here they are, doing exactly that.
By your logic, a 3D Mario game would completely overshadow a DK game, so announcing a new mainline Mario game would harm Bananza's sales unnecessarily. With the price-rise of games, people are buying less games, so if they had to choose between a 3D Mario game or a DK game, they would choose the latter. By leaving a 3D Mario game until at least next year, they allow Donkey Kong to prove itself as a series. With the new design and gameplay style being introduced to a new generation, it's almost like Nintendo is releasing a completely new IP, which might reintroduce the DK series as a Nintendo staple once again. I'm willing to bet we'll see DK games being released far more often from this point on.

Besides, your outlook of the DK series is a bit flawed. Donkey Kong hasn't had a new game since Tropical Freeze... which was released 11 years ago... on the Wii U. Everything since has either been a remake or a spinoff, so it makes sense how little the series has made so far.

@Bolt_Strike Legends Z-A will sell massively this holiday (3D Mario scale sales) so giving DK the opportunity to return to being a big franchise while 3D Mario is saved for a year whose mainline Pokemon presence is DLC at most feels like the ideal strategy.

The top selling Zelda release pre-Switch sold around 9 million and then BotW sold 32 million.

The top selling Donkey Kong release sold around 9 million. Could Nintendo strike gold again? Seems unlikely it will be anywhere that popular but I would be extremely curious to know Nintendo's internal forecasts.

Similar question with Prime really. Will any more Nintendo franchises be rocketed to the top this gen as happened with Zelda and Animal Crossing (and sort of Splatoon) last gen.

@FishyS I expect DK to be a top 10 best selling Switch 2 game:

• It’s the 2nd major Switch 2 game
• Bananza Direct surpassed Mario Kart World’s Direct in views
• In the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe slot (comparing to Switch 1’s lineup)
• 3D platformers are popular and this is the only new one in the lineup so far
• DK franchise is pretty popular, DKC was 3rd best selling SNES game
• Price is $70 instead of MK’s $80

@Grumblevolcano Gen 10 is coming next year, so the next dlc would be 2027.

@VoidofLight I mean we don't know that for sure yet, but it's almost a foregone conclusion, so Pokemon wise saving 3D Mario until 2026 will probably put it in a worse position Pokemon-wise, not a better one.

Really, they shouldn't worry about competing with Pokemon. Pokemon has something almost every year and it doesn't seem to affect holiday sales that much. And again, different genre since Pokemon is an RPG and Mario is a platformer. I'd be more worried if I put something like Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi up against Pokemon, not a main series platformer.

@Bolt_Strike I mean, we basically know that whatever comes next after Z-A is 100% Gen 10. They're running out of things that they can do with the TCG.

@DaGoldenBoo Technically July since there's a Pokemon presents.

@Bolt_Strike It's less about competing, more about spreading the gigantic IP over the generation. If you know there's only going to be 1 Mario Kart, 1 3D Mario, 1 3D Zelda, 1 2D Mario, 1 Animal Crossing, 1 Smash, etc. for the entire Switch 2 generation then the timing matters a lot. Meanwhile Pokemon is less under Nintendo's control so you plan the stuff you can control around the Pokemon lineup. If Gen 10 is 2026 like @VoidofLight is saying, it would make sense to save 3D Mario until like 2027/2028.

@Grumblevolcano 2027 is the closest I see a new 3D Mario. DK Banaza will sell decently, and comparing it to the other DK games is kinda weird imo- given that Banaza is moreso in-line with what you'd expect from a 3D Mario than something like Donkey Kong Country. If it sells well, and if we factor in the big holiday games for this year and next being Pokemon releases, the only "small" pokemon release would be Gen 10 DLC in 2027. A perfect year to release a new Mario.

@Grumblevolcano We don't know that and in fact Nintendo's MO has largely been the opposite, they just release the games when they're ready- no later, no sooner. You mention all of those IPs but we had 1 of each on the Switch after the first 4 years (and hell if ACNH hadn't been delayed we'd have had them all in 3) and that is likely a key factor in why the Switch was so insane. Hell even in the first year alone they had entries in 4 of their Top 10 IPs, if their goal had been to spread out the megatons like you say, we would not have gotten BotW, MK8D, Splatoon 2, and Mario Odyssey all in the same year. Most of the megaton games that released later in the generation were games that already had a Switch entry and they had time to squeeze in another, think games like TotK when we already had BotW, Splatoon 3 when we already had Splatoon 2, Pokemon Scarlet/Violet when we already had Sword/Shield, etc. They didn't strategically save these IPs for later in the generation. They just released whatever they had time to squeeze in. Similarly, 3D Mario won't be saved for a later year (in fact, it's the LAST IP they'd shelve for later for strategic reasons). If it's ready next year, that's when it'll land and they'll find a way to make the schedule worse. Honestly, if there was a conflict, DK Bananza would be the game that they'd move around and it being the only one of the two releasing implies that Bananza was ready and 3D Mario needs more time in the oven. There's no other reason for 3D Mario's conspicuous absence right now. It feels like you're talking about a completely different company here TBH because Nintendo doesn't operate the way you're saying.

@Bolt_Strike "They release their games when they're ready."

Tell that to the games that they've finished that they're sitting on just to help fill out their release calendars. Games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3- which was most likely finished before it even released given how they bumped the release date up about a month or two.

@VoidofLight One month or two is a drop in the bucket for game development. They may add in a few months' buffer for those kinds of situations, but delaying a game for 2 or 3 years is another matter entirely. They don't do that unless they run into development issues.