Video game studios are in a no-win situation when it comes to sequels. There was a good article/thread about it a while ago - it's either "Not enough innovation!" or "How could you change the formula I love so much!"
Heck, I was about to post a different criticism of Nintendo, but realized it's much the same. I was going to say, Nintendo just fails to iterate on sequels quickly enough. My point was that Pikmin originally came out in 2001, the sequel in 2004, and the third now sometime in 2013. Failure to strike while the iron's hot, I'd say, and compare it say, something like Prince of Persia. That was a new (rebooted, anyway) franchise that got its first release in 2003, had a sequel in 2004, another sequel in 2005, a reboot in 2008, and a sequel to the first series in 2010. So comparing the two franchises, Nintendo gets out 3 games in 12 years, and Ubisoft gets out 5 games in 7 years (not counting the DS spin-off, or double-counting different console versions of the same title, as you easily could).
So, the criticism would be, the problem with Nintendo is they just don't know how to capitalize and quickly turn around on their franchises. But when they DO that, they also get criticized - see the NSMB series. So, I don't know. Does anyone want Nintendo to handle their big franchises the way, say, Activision does? Imagine Nintendo dedicated two studios to solely doing 3D Marios - a new 3D Mario every single year. How quickly would the magic die? Or would they just get bigger and better and more popular every year? Who knows?
