[bane]

I think it's important to also understand that, despite broad name recognition, Nintendo isn't a huge company in the way that Sony or Microsoft is. Their entire corporate revenue for 2019 was about $11b USD with about $2.3b USD in operating income. We regularly talk about startups here that are technically larger.

What Nintendo's philosophy boils down to in terms of business strategy is using the fact that they are smaller and more nimble to allow creative solutions to make it to market. We see the exact opposite from Microsoft/Sony where their strategy is pushing the highest possible technology they can get to consumers at a reasonable price, and their solutions are virtually interchangeable with fairly minor differences in overall tech.

While Microsoft and Sony's revenues per platform are around the same, their console businesses are small pieces of very large organizations -- with all the ossification that comes from being huge companies.

It's also helpful that culturally Nintendo is a toy company, and thinks about the platforms and games (and toys) they create in terms of principles of play vs. electronic experiences. You can really tell this in their games, where each game feels like an integrated toy system with figures, playsets, very light stories, and a fair amount of open ended play (within the rules of the "toy"). Nintendo's focus is on how to create this play experience, and what's the right amount of technology needed for it instead of launching a rocket into orbit so that I can mow my lawn in the dark.

[danudey]

There have also been interviews where they've talked about how they won't do something unless they can add something new to it. For example, they haven't created a new F-Zero game because no one has really come up with anything to add to F-Zero to make a compelling game, rather than just "It's another F-Zero game".

In I think the same interview, it was discussed that they won't make a game unless it's fun if it's just geometric shapes or basic sprites. The idea there being that a Mario game isn't fun just because it has Mario in it, but if the gameplay is solid then it will be fun despite not having Mario in it. Presumably this also lets them crank out prototypes without having to worry about spinning up art assets to give testers context.

[odessacubbage]

tbh that's probably just a polite way of saying they wont do a new one because ax was a highly expensive commercial failure. there have been 6 mario kart sequels since gx that all broadly fall into the category of 'just another mario kart'

[hitekker]

I'd disagree on the Mario Kart example. The core mechanics of that series have stayed roughly the same, but the little additions have created a different, deeper experience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3oz5uth_90

It feels beautiful.