Topic: Disappointed by the lack of new exclusives

Maybe we need a knew IP, I mean has the switch actually got a new IP, that isn't arms?

I was looking for a new new super Mario bros. A new donkey Kong game. Maybe A old franchise like f zero, kid Icarus, punch out or star fox being revived.

The problem isn’t that the switch for Wii u ports it’s that it got them steadily throughout its life cycle versus the first year or so. Now it makes me think we will not see another 2d Mario or dk. What a shame. I also don’t agree with the ports pricing model but that’s another discussion

Also it’s been four years since odyssey and botw. I expected the sequels by now pandemic or not. Especially since they are using the original games assets. I almost wonder if they are just delayed to coincide with a more powerful switch.

And it was a real waste to drop games like Metroid Samus returns onto the dying 3ds. That could have been a great switch exclusive or at least port. Instead I’m sure there are plenty of people waiting for a port or simply will never play it.

@Snatcher I don’t understand the huge emphasis and obsession that people put on new ips when so many great franchises of Nintendo , (ice climber, kid Icarus, fzero, punch out, excite bike, wii sports, earthbound, warriors, rad racer, pilot wings, donkey Kong, Mario strikers,) sit collecting dust on the shelves.

@RandomNPC
If you refuse to pay full price for old games (which is ridiculous, in my opinion - the developers' work is suddenly worth less because a year has gone by?) but admit the Switch has a "robust" back catalog, you should be taking advantage of all the Black Friday/holiday deals going on as we waste time typing here.

I don't know why you would get a Switch if Mario Kart, Odyssey, Splatoon, Animal Crossing, Arms, Fire Emblem, Donkey Kong Country, etc. don't interest you.

@sixrings Wave Race as well. I don't agree with Nintendo's pricing of ports either, especially because they are ports of very recent games as Wii U and Switch belong to the same generation. They could have done a lot of things on Switch like rewarding Wii U owners or releasing ports for a cheaper price (Tropical Freeze was more expensive on Switch than on Wii U) or, even better, make bundles like Pikmin 1, 2 and 3. Pikmin 1 and 2 still look great, they need little work but Nintendo did as little as possible, chose the games that were already HD (Wii U games) like New Super Mario Bros. U and Pikmin 3 and released them again, full price. They only release the Wii U entries because they're already HD so no Pikmin 1 or 2 and no New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Among all those IPs plus Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda they only released the Wii U games again. They used Splatoon and Super Mario Maker to release expanded editions on Switch. They created Arms for the launch window and developed Super Mario Odyssey and called it a generation.

@Snatcher
I want to see ARMS 2 with more characters, new weapons, new places, better storyline, customization, normal boxing fight mode, cardio boxing workout mode.

@BlueOcean
When i pick Nintendo Switch games, i don't care if they are 1st / 3rd / ports / remaster / multiconsoles / whatever. As long they are playable.
I pick what is interesting for me regardless of their status.
I don't really worry with 1st party release as i only have interest with certain 1st party games. Games like Zelda, Metroid, Fire Emblem, Smash Bros, Pikmin, F-Zero, etc are completely out of my radar as i never have interest with them and never care their existence.
Looks like you have cherry picking attitude in getting the games. Try some never before played games to expand gaming experiences. Don't compare everything by your XBOX standard.

@rallydefault I got a switch because I saw Metroid Dread in the store and fancied playing it - pretty simple really.
Would you pay cinema prices to watch a 4 year old movie? It's the same principle as paying full price for a 4 year old game in my opinion.
What about games like Skyrim, Witcher, Doom etc that all seem to be much more expensive on the Switch after a few years of availability.

@faint @BlueOcean It hardly matters which one released first. They're both the same generation because they both play the same games.

@StuTwo Could you be more specific about what you want out of a new IP? Especially in terms of genres? Because we got two new IPs, ARMS and Ring Fit Adventure. True, they weren't as hardcore as Splatoon, and ARMS didn't sell as well, but they were new IPs.

Part of the reason that Nintendo has been relatively stingy on new IPs lately seems to be that when they want a new IP, they don't want it to overlap with an existing IP and cannibalize sales. If it's an idea they think can be done with an existing IP, they just use an existing IP for it. So usually a new IP would have to be for a genre that they either do not have or they could do more with. For instance part of the reason Splatoon was made a new IP was because Nintendo didn't have much in the way of shooters (they had Metroid, but it was on hiatus at the time and was more single player focused, so they had room for a new multiplayer focused shooter) and even then they considered just making it a Mario spinoff! So if you're thinking "I want to see something new" your next thought should be "what's missing that other IPs are not doing?". And the more and more IPs they come up with, the harder and harder this exercise becomes.

The same could be said for some of the other niche IPs that have fallen off that you might want back F-Zero, Golden Sun, Kid Icarus, etc., @sixrings. Are they really worth bringing back? Do they offer something that one of the more popular IPs doesn't?

Now one other thing I think they could do is have new spinoff/side series of existing IPs to cover more ground that Nintendo currently isn't. I do have a couple of ideas for that as well, but again, I want to see what you guys come up with first before I start naming ideas.

@sixrings DK is rumored to be on the way. Come back in about a year and then see if that's still true. As for NSMB, the question there is what can they really do to build on it? The NSMB games have all been fairly samey and have garnered a lot of complaints because of that, so the reason for the long drought is probably because they want to think through what's next for 2D Mario. We do have NSMBUDX and Mario Maker 2 to tide us over in the meantime, but at this point I'm not sure we're going to get an original NSMB game. That might be something they save to be a launch title for the Switch 2. It's not an IP that's desperately lacking on the Switch right now (2D Mario has more of a presence on Switch than Mario Kart) and a big original new 2D Mario game would be a nice, high selling title that could showcase something new and exciting to help sell the console.

That's where I am at but as you notice people just love to Troll/Cherry pick because they stand a Switch is successful for being a underpowered Console.

@Bolt_Strike well Microsoft managed to make a really good flight simulator. I don’t know why Nintendo couldn’t bring back a pilot wings type game. Punch out on wii was good. I don’t see the reason why they decided to shelve that for arms other than trying to force motion controls again. Wii sports is great and I don’t see a alternative. I can see people questioning ice climbers but Celeste showed small games in ice work. Why couldn’t Nintendo do something similar. Why is fast rmx successful and possible but not f zero. Why is there a new version (I’ve never played it) of bubble bobble but we can’t do something similar with old 8 bit games. People swear that kid Icarus on 3ds was one of its best games. And yes wave race is a classic. And I wouldn’t mind a 1080. If Nintendo doesn’t have enough resources to make all these games then they should find competent studios and outsource them. Either way it’s really annoying that a good portion of the switch first person library is wii u ports and another good portion wii ports. Extra annoying for wii u supporters.

@BlueOcean Last part of my post got cut off for some reason. Anyway, I think part of the problem with them not implementing Gamepad functionality is because the Switch is really limited in how much it can replicate the Gamepad. Because the Switch is only one screen and that one screen is docked when you're playing on the TV, you really can't use the Gamepad the way you would've used it on the Wii U version. For as much as Nintendo touts how the Switch contains the DNA of all past Nintendo consoles, it really can't entirely replicate DS/3DS/Wii U gameplay because it's only one screen, and we need dual screens back to be able to fix that.

That is exactly what I would like to see them do for next gen, but I'm not sure it's really feasible. The best form factor to solve the problem would be one where there are two screens that could detach, you would need that to be able to use a second screen in docked mode, but I'm not sure if the technology is quite there yet for them to do that for their next gen Switch. It'd need to have a high amount of processing power so that the two screens would communicate with each other with little to no lag and they'd want to do that at a reasonable cost and I don't think that's really possible at this point. If they can pull it off, I'd love to see them do it for the Switch 2, that would be a very Nintendo thing for them to do.

@faint They never gave any indication of them abandoning Console generations, so people are just using baseless speculation, and "Insider info" to claim something that's untrue. People said the same exact stuff back when the Wii U happened, and if you look at that, Nintendo had another console gen.

In a sense I agree - it is more about what is being done with the games but I think that (especially post Federation Force) that Nintendo has become very conservative about what can be done with their established IP. For instance I could easily see an innovative Star Fox RTS or MOBA but they'll never allow it in 2021 because of the possible fan backlash and risk.

I think Nintendo needs to be seen to stake out new ground. Splatoon was a thoughtful answer to some of the problems of competitive team shooters. It's a game where your kill count barely matters and every player is always contributing regardless of how accurate they are. It's a super clever idea and it was completely contrary to what was happening in that genre at the time. It would have still been a super clever idea with a Mario graphical coat of paint instead but the new IP surrounding it allowed it to breathe and develop iteratively on its own schedule.

So that's one thing (but I have many more thoughts on the matter).

@sixrings You need to look at the sales too. Part of the reason an IP ends up on the backburner is because it didn't sell enough and they'd rather work on an IP that sold better. And a lot of these IPs are fairly niche concepts that I don't think have a lot of broad appeal, so that's probably why they're getting ignored. I do think they could sell fairly well, just about everything does on the Switch, but I don't think they could outsell some of the games they've actually chosen for Switch entries (like, I see few if any of these games cracking 5 million in sales).

F-Zero would probably cannibalize Mario Kart, and Mario Kart's adapted most of its mechanics so I don't see much point in bringing it back. Pilotwings is too close to Star Fox and its gameplay could just be integrated as a mini game into a bigger IP. Kid Icarus is also something that a lot of people have said "this just feels like Star Fox". Wii Sports kind of cannibalizes the Mario Sports titles and I'd rather see Mario Sports branch out into/bring back other sports than Golf and Tennis. I will agree that Strikers should be brought back, and I think now that Next Level is owned by Nintendo and is sure to receive a budget increase to hire more people, we may see them trade off between Luigi's Mansion and Strikers on a consistent basis now. Ice Climbers having "ice mechanics" doesn't really make sense because they can put ice mechanics into whatever game they want (I really wish they would've done that to Tropical Freeze to actually make it feel like a unique game instead of a glorified DKCR level pack), and Celeste is beloved for more than just its ice mechanics, it's beloved because of its platforming mechanics. Ice Climbers either needs a new hook or it should be an eShop title. I would like to see Excitebike, Wave Race, and/or 1080 Snowboarding back because the racing genre is in desperate need of more gameplay variety (not just on Nintendo but in the industry as a whole, the racing genre right now is mainly just car sims and mascot kart racers and those two styles don't feel that different from each other either). I'm a little less certain on Wave Race because that seems a bit more on the niche side, but there's nothing stopping an Excitebike or 1080 Snowboarding revival.

They could probably expand Nintendo's staff to have more development teams working on games like this and that would solve the problem. However they could also decide that it's more profitable to just make something new. Again, you kind of have to be careful and think through if we really need it or if something else would be better.

@StuTwo The main reason behind the backlash is the timing and lack of support for the main series of that IP, not because they don't like the gameplay itself. Federation Force is the perfect example here, it had been 5 years since the last Metroid game, as well as 9 years since the last Metroid game that was universally liked and the Metroid fanbase was expecting a main series game at that point, not a spinoff. Star Fox is kind of in a similar boat where its output is so sporadic and it goes through several lengthy droughts that its fanbase wants consistent success from the main games before it wants a spinoff. I do think those ideas are doable (although in Federation Force's case I think it'd be better to roll that gameplay into a Prime Hunters 2 sort of game), but I don't think now's the time for those.

@Bolt_Strike Xbox doesn’t seem to have a problem with horizon cannibalizing sales of each other. They may both be racing games but they serve totally different markets. When I think of fzero I think of a hard and super fast racer. Sorry putting 200cc doesn’t make Mario kart f zero. Snes had three racers Mario kart , stunt race fx, and fzero while n64 had 1080, wave race, f zero x, and Mario kart. Game cube had wave race, mario kart, and f zero. Now we’re down to one racer?

Pilotwings is not at all like star fox which is a shooter at heart. I’m not going to go throw this extensive list of excuses to why games aren’t made.

There’s a variety of reasons games didn’t sell as well. Were they released like Metroid returns at the end of the consoles life and people had moved on. Perhaps people heard about kid Icarus control scheme and said that isn’t for me. Surely that’s what happened to star fox zero. Ultimately there’s no reason if Nintendo didn’t have the resources why such a big company couldn’t get a smaller studio to round out their Library.

I love Mario. But part of the reason I love Mario is because every console without fail there’s a number of Mario titles. All somewhat different but he never goes away so long that I miss him. These Nintendo ips go away for so long they don’t get a chance for a fan following to be made. I mean a whole group of people grew up without a fzero. And another group of people saw one punch out game made. How does Nintendo expect these ips to become popular if they rarely put out games of them.

@sixrings You mean between the regular Forza games and the Forza Horizon games? Well yeah, that's because the main series is focused on precision racing through set tracks and Horizon is more open world. This was actually something I was going to mention in my list, a Mario Kart equivalent of Forza Horizon would be a very nice addition to the lineup and a great way to build on Mario Kart and justify having two per console (also has the added benefit of partially satisfying the demand for another Diddy Kong Racing game as a Forza Horizon type of game would be an evolution of what DKR racing fans are looking for). Again, I'm with you that Nintendo desperately needs more racing games than Mario Kart but I don't think F-Zero is particularly needed, any benefit F-Zero could give the genre could just be done with something else that's more mechanically unique than a Hovercar sim. Excitebike, 1080 Snowboarding, Wave Race, or something new (perhaps a Sonic R-esque footracer with more platforming elements?) would be a much better complement to Mario Kart.

Pilotwings and Star Fox both have flight/piloting as a core part of their gameplay, so that's close enough that they could end up cannibalizing each other. Pick one and work the other into its gameplay.

I would also disagree that the Mario titles are all somewhat different. The entire era of Mario games from 2011-2017 just feels like it blends together into a samey blob of generic feeling Mario games with little to no distinctive gameplay, settings, or characters (and the first two NSMB feel like they belong in that same era despite being released earlier, so you could really extend it to 2009-2017 and just exclude the two Galaxy games). More Mario is good, but not when every game just feels like DLC of the last game, so this is where they really need to be careful having multiple games on one console. It seems like they might be re-evaluating how to approach 2D Mario and what to do next and taking their time on making it so they don't keep getting complaints of "ReHaSh!".

@sixrings Because at this point people have done nothing but ask for those series to return, They haven't, They want something new, and all those other game collecting dust? is what people want nintendo to go back to.

All right, since no one else seems to want to discuss this I'll just list what I want to see for various IPs:

2D Mario- I gotta be honest here, I'm drawing a blank for the most part. I can't think of what 2D Mario could do to evolve the formula (and really, I'm having this same problem with 2D platformers as a whole, I can't think of what else the genre as a whole could do). I do think they could fold in the Mario Maker level designer into the 2D gameplay (although probably limited just to the new game's assets), but aside from that, can't think of anything.

3D Mario- Continue transitioning to open world. Bowser's Fury is a nice little proof of concept for how an open world Mario game could work and boy does it work well. Go ahead and make a full game of this (although personally I'd like for them to just release Odyssey 2 first, but after that). Beyond that though, I think if they can spare the developers, they should do more with the Galaxy series. Galaxy's gravity mechanics are just too unique to let it fall to the wayside, so I would like to see it become a running series. But it'd be a bit too limiting if 3D Mario was stuck with the Galaxy series from now until the end of time, so instead they should turn the Galaxy series into a Rosalina spinoff.

2D Zelda- Can we just get a new game already? It's been 10 years since the last one!

3D Zelda- BotW is a great direction for the 3D Zeldas but it needs a bit more content. Especially dungeons.

Pokemon- Dexit aside, SwSh seems like a good start to the console era of Pokemon, but it could use a bit more extra content that some of the older games had. Having legitimate sidequests, more side features (Contests, Battle Frontier, etc.), and social interaction features (Secret Bases) would help a lot with most of the complaints.

Pokemon Legends- Too early to say for sure, but Legends Arceus feels like it might be worth continuing with an entire subseries in other regions. Looks good as far as I can tell, the only things I think they could do better is make the game full open world instead of just opening up different chunks of the world as you go through and perhaps dabbling in a more real time battling style (although the battle style they have for this game does still look good).

Mario Kart- There is soooooo much that can be done with Mario Kart which is part of the reason it's so irritating that they're just sitting on 8D and not releasing an original, built for the ground up on the Switch, Mario Kart experience. First, there's some of the things that Tour is doing, which are great but deserve better than to be locked behind a gacha mobile game. Having a shop for karts and characters is so much more intuitive than the recent games' system of "LOL, here's a random kart part after collecting X amount of total coins". R and T variants are a great way to get more mileage (no pun intended) out of the same tracks. Mission Mode should return as well and they should bring back Double Dash Mode. I also had an idea for how to expand on Double Dash with karts that could potentially split in two, although I'm not sure if that would be a very practical gimmick. A track editor would be nice at some point (although I don't think the next game will have one). Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, making an open world Mario Kart game similar to Forza Horizons or Diddy Kong Racing would be a nice way to branch out into something new and could perhaps work well as a subseries. That would be a great way to justify having two Mario Karts per console, have one be a traditional entry and one be an open world title.

Animal Crossing- Not a big fan of this IP, I want to be but just decorating mundane spaces and performing mundane tasks doesn't appeal to me (I play video games to get away from those sorts of tasks). But it does appeal to Animal Crossing's fanbase for some reason, so how about a spinoff? I'd like to see more of a tycoon sort of experience where you can do things more like designing entire cities, amusement parks, etc., something bigger and more exciting. Tom Nook would be a natural fit for this, maybe make him the star of the show here.

Splatoon- Splatoon needs to open up. Frankly it needed to in Splatoon 3, but it doesn't look like it's going to. Add a Battle Royale mode and make the story levels more open ended.

Mario Sports- Not really sure what else they can do here besides make more sports. Strikers desperately needs to come back, it's way too fun. I'd also be interested in a few other sports like (American) football and hockey, but I'm less sure we'll see those.

Donkey Kong- Like with 2D Mario, I'm really drawing a blank on what to do with DK. Although really, DK just feels like he could be an alternate character in Mario instead of being a distinct character with a distinct playstyle. However, I do think that there is an opportunity for DK to branch off into something new and develop his own unique gameplay identity in 3D. I don't think he really needs to go back to a sandbox collectathon like 64 as many other fans keep suggesting, that would keep him too similar to Mario and I don't think that playstyle really fits his identity much. Instead, I'd like to see him go in more of a beat-em-up direction, DK is a bruiser so it would make sense to play on that and develop his playstyle to be a bit more about bashing up the baddies, and Nintendo really doesn't have much of anything in that genre (Platinum has given them a few exclusives that do that and Nintendo does technically own some of them, but beyond that there really isn't much). Make it sort of a hybrid 3D platformer/beat em up where you go through levels climbing and swinging like normal, but also punch, kick, and throw hordes of enemies.

2D Kirby- I think Kirby will probably continue in 2D alongside of now having 3D games. For 2D Kirby, I'd really like to see them bring some Squeak Squad mechanics back and expand on them. The belly mechanic was great for storing abilities and inventory management, and Ability Scrolls are a nice way to build on your copy abilities and give you new reason to use them later in the game. They shouldn't have dropped those mechanics TBF. Beyond just bringing them back though, Ability Scrolls could be expanded on. Perhaps they could have tons of them (even multiple per copy ability) and you could buy them with a currency you collect in game?

3D Kirby- From what little we know about The Forgotten Land, it seems to be a 3D World type of experience. That's a good start, but I do think they need to open it up more, especially to help make the game feel more distinct from its 2D counterparts. Making it more open world, or at least making it more Metroidvania-esque like The Great Cave Offensive or Amazing Mirror would make it much more impressive and distinct from the 2D games.

Paper Mario- Just make it an RPG again. No idea why they're being so obstinate about this one.

Yoshi- Yoshi is showing early signs that it's following the same trajectory as Kirby, Crafted World seems to hint that they want to dabble with more 2.5D and maybe eventually 3D gameplay. A 3D Yoshi game is probably a ways off, but in the meantime, they could build on Crafted World by making the levels more 2.5D and finding more ways to make use of flip side levels.

2D Metroid- Dread is a good revival of 2D Metroid, but they could still stand to do more with it. First of all, they should make the game even more sequence break friendly so you could get just about any ability in any order you want without needing a PhD in physics and lightning fast, precision movements to pull off. Second, they could also experiment in 2.5D mechanics similar to what Yoshi did in Crafted World, and especially with interacting with background elements. We see a bit of this in Burenia on your way to get the Gravity Suit (you have to shoot away a platform holding up this tank-looking thing and cause it to fall and blow open the path for you to go get the Gravity Suit). And of course if Samus is really still a Metroid, we need to experiment more with her Metroid powers in the next game. New abilities based around her Metroid powers like energy absorption and levitation. And I want to use that Metroid Suit again, but in normal gameplay this time.

Metroid Prime- The biggest thing Metroid Prime can do is actually return, it's been gone almost as long as 2D Metroid was before Dread. Beyond that, Metroid Prime could really use sidequests. Maybe have Samus actually complete additional bounties (and yes I know she's not really a bounty hunter, but she could still do smaller missions that still fit within her job) for currency that you could exchange for powerups and customization options.

Captain Toad- If they thought this game made enough money to continue, I'd love a sequel. They should really make the levels bigger though.

Star Fox- Never really been a Star Fox fan, but Starlink is exactly the kind of gameplay that I wanted to see to get me into the series. Adapting Starlink's gameplay to a main series Star Fox gameplay would really help make Star Fox more mainstream.

Duck Hunt- Everyone keeps wanting this to go Banjo-Kazooie because of Smash. I do think it'd be nice to have one, but I think they should at least retain the shooter gameplay. Maybe they could do a hybrid? You shoot down the ducks and go platforming to collect them. Sort of like a hybrid between Banjo-Kazooie and Metroid II/Samus Returns.

Racing Games?- As I said, we definitely need more racing games. I'd be fine with any combination of Wave Race, 1080 Snowboarding, and Excitebike returning. They could also create a new IP to serve as an additional racing game. I'd love to see a foot racing game like Sonic R, they could even build on it by working in more platforming elements.

I do think it'll probably take a while (maybe 5-10 years at least) to build up their development studios to be capable of that kind of output, but combine that with their usuals and that should be enough to fill out a 5+ year lineup.