After the latest Nintendo Direct brought forth sequels to many classic franchises, GameSpot spoke Nintendo director of product marketing Bill Trinen as to why the company keeps bringing back the same franchises time and time again.
“There’s a couple of driving reasons why you keep seeing a lot of the same franchises come back. One is just the way that we develop games. What we don’t do is start off and say we’re going to develop a new game in X series or what are we going to do with it?
“It’s really more about what is a fun and interesting new gameplay element or gameplay mechanic? How do we develop that? And then what kind of a character or what series is that really best suited to?
“And so, in a lot of the cases, if you’ve got an idea that’s really fun and really interesting, pairing that with, for example, Mario, then that takes a fun and interesting gameplay mechanic and puts it with a character that makes it instantly appealing to a very wide range of people.”