Famous brothers

It's a fairly common perception that Nintendo is typically happy to reproduce its existing IPs rather than develop new characters or franchises. That theory was put to the test over at Gamespot, where the numbers of new franchises per year were calculated for Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3, restricted to each company's own developed or published games and excluding third-parties. As you can see in the image below, Nintendo has produced less new IPs for Wii, overall, than its home console rivals have for their systems. In fact, the article argues that Nintendo has only produced nine new IPs for Wii in its whole lifespan to date, which is reportedly generous as Mii-prominent titles such as Wii Play and Wii Party were treated as individual franchises.

Wii hasn't been big on new IPs

It's interesting to see the lack of new franchises from Nintendo laid out, but as suggested in the source article an important sense of context is needed. Nintendo has been one of the top three console manufacturers and game developers for over 25 years, so in that time it's developed brands and franchises that still resonate and attract gamers today. Sony and Microsoft have not been in the industry as long and have released less systems and less games, so it's only natural that these companies are still developing brands that they hope will have the same cultural impact as Mario, for instance. It's also worth noting that Pandora's Tower wasn't included in these figures, as the results only covered games that had been released, at the time of writing, in North America,

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Despite this, do you want to see Nintendo experiment with more new IPs on Wii U and 3DS, or are you happy to enjoy more of the well known franchises for another console generation?

[source uk.gamespot.com]