Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime recently did an interview with Cnet where he spoke about the Wii U and the company’s games portfolio. And he had something very interesting to say regarding games, especially about the trend of annualized game series, where a new game is released every year in the same franchise (e.g. Call of Duty).
Fils-Aime said that they plan on releasing certain games only once per the lifespan of the platform, games like Mario Kart. He said:
“Nintendo won’t follow in the same steps of games like Call of Duty, releasing a new iteration every year. We put out one Mario Kart per platform per generation.”
Fils-Aime added that this strategy means that more gamers hold on to their consoles and that games are longer lasting in the eye of the consumer. He said, “Nintendo has always put out content that is lasting and is content that the consumer plays for extended periods of time”.
The annualized franchises have been heavily criticized in the industry — the games released each year often have little difference from the previous version, and it’s also hard to deliver quality games when developers have such a strict deadline.
Do you think Nintendo should increase the rate of games? Do you think Mario Kart should be released twice per platform instead of just once, and would that help the console? Let us know what you think in the comments section!
Via Cnet
