jamesinclair said:
Nintendo did a good amount of milking but stopped it before it was too late. In 8 years we had:
SMB
SMB2
SMB2.5 (lost levels/kori panic depending on market)
SMB3
SMW
SMW2:Yoshi
SMLand
And stuff like Super Mario RPG, Mario Paint, Mario is Lost, etc etc.
And Mario Party was a eyarly release for 8 years as well!
The term 'milking' is thrown around a lot when discussing sales but it is never really quantified or discussed any further.
As far as im concerned a company 'milking' a franchise is one just trying to maximise the amount of money they can make from a franchise. This is not a bad thing and it does not have to lead to a decline in popularity.
I think there is good and bad milking of franchises. Tony Hawk is an example of the bad type of milking. The focus on quality completely went out the window and there was little innovation with the series. So basically you end up with lots of poor quality games that barely improve on each other.
This leads to consumers tiring of the franchise for a number of reasons.
-The franchise becomes stale and offers no new reasons for consumers to jump in.
-The games are consistently of low quality which turns people off future installments
-There are more games being produced then what the consumers want.
Making the games cost a whole lot extra probably didn't help either.
The above example of mario is not bad milking IMO. Firstly the quality of games you listed is absolutely incredible. If anything the quality of games was going up not down.
This flow of quality games is what has given mario its reputation and is the reason why it continues to sell so well today.
The games also showed some innovation. SMB, SMB3, SMW, yoshis island etc these are all very different games and are good for different reasons.
The other games like mario paint, mario RPG, mario party etc are in completely different genres.
There is nothing wrong with making quite a few games like that so long as there is something to differntiate them and as long as they are good.
Also you have to be careful to ensure your games are actually still in demand and not to oversaturate the market. Mario games continue to sell quite well and i see no signs of the franchise becoming stale.
jamesinclair said:
But once SM64 hit, they figured out it was best to hold on before the next one.
IMO this was a poor decision. I think nintendo would have been much better off had they continued to make 2D mario games alongside the 3D ones.
It's impossible to say now especially since NSMBWii/DS were so popular but thats what i think.
Also it's not as if they stopped using the mario name. They still made a lot of games with mario in the title (mario golf/tennis/party) they just made fewer mainline games.
I much prefer the approach they are taking now. They have released two 3D and one 2D mario this gen and all have sold quite well because they are quality games. Also the 2 games tend to have a different appeal which means they aren't burning out consumers.