Generally speaking, Nintendo is known for how it iterates on its long-established franchises, and only rarely does the company create brand new IPs. In an interview with Bloomberg, programmer Ken Watanabe spoke about how he doesn’t believe Nintendo doesn’t really need to make brand new IPs. Rather, the company has a wealth of franchises it already owns that can then be developed according to what the company wants.
Speaking about Nintendo’s approach to making new games, Watanabe noted that the company tends to first focus on gameplay mechanics, and then picks the appropriate franchise where the title can then belong. “New franchises haven’t come out simply because there’s no real need to make them,” he said. “When Nintendo wants to do something new, it’s basically about the gameplay mechanics first — about creating a new way to play.”
“As for the skin or the wrapper, they don’t really fuss over it,” Watanabe continued. “They just pick whatever fits that new gameplay best.”
It is worth noting that Nintendo has a vast array of different franchises, most of which have been represented in some way or another throughout its various console generations. The most recent big new franchise introduced by the company that it has continued to iterate on was 2015’s Splatoon, which was originally released on the Wii U. The title then got two sequels on the Nintendo Switch. The Splatoon series is also getting its first major spin-off – Splatoon Raiders.
Watanabe himself has also worked on a variety of Nintendo’s franchises, including Splatoon, along with other titles like Super Mario Bros. Wii and Pikmin 3.
As for Nintendo’s usual practices when it comes to new games, the company tends to also experiment every now and then, especially early on in the life of a brand new console. The Nintendo Switch, for instance, saw ARMS as one of the big new IPs for the company. The Switch 2 has similarly seen another experimental title that focuses on unusual control schemes with Drag X Drive.
The major new first-party releases for the Switch 2, however, have been new titles in long-existing franchises: Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza. Along with these two big titles, the company has also released Switch 2 Edition upgrade packs for some of its older Switch games, including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, as well as Super Mario Party Jamboree, among others.
The Nintendo Switch 2 was officially launched back in July, and the console has since proven itself to be quite popular. Hardware sales charts from back in August have indicated that more than 2 million units of the Switch 2 have been sold in the US alone, leading to the console topping the charts for the preceding month. When it comes to worldwide sales figures, Nintendo revealed in its financial reports in August that it had sold 5.82 million units of the Switch 2, along with 153.10 million units of the original Switch. On the software side of things, the Switch 2 has sold 8.67 million units, compared to the 1.4 billion units of software for the original Switch.
