Son of a Mitch said:
All of the above. They have multiple personalities, but right now they're stuck between 'moron' and 'asshole.' If they just sit down, take a couple months to come up with an original game idea, take the money they would have spent on the next 3 crappy remakes of Mario games and put it toward that idea, then there you go. But no, it's back to crap like Legend of Zelda: The Return of Ganon's Mother and Super Mario Bros. Sewer Adventures 5.
This is the mentality that bothers me about gamers today.
SO, it's perfectly fine that Assassin's Creed has changed very little, not only from start to finish in each individual game, but also through each sequel, barely changing much at all and just advancing the plotline. It's no problem at all that many, many, MANY games with sequels numbering 3 or more now that started THIS GENERATION have changed barely, if at all. Have added little to the mechanics and simply dropped new weapons, enemies, and situations on the players along with new and interesting stories with good graphics.
YET AT THE SAME TIME, Nintendo has yet to release the same Mario game under a new name twice. There is no Mario Bros 3 2. There is no Mario 64 2. No Sunshine 2. Galaxy 2 is technically a sequel, but that game changed up mechanics, challenges and scenarios vastly more in the space of ten levels than, for instance, Uncharted did between 3 games. It was a creative masterpiece, and a culmination of the newness of Galaxy 1 with a lot of time spent coming up with brilliant gameplay ideas and making them work very well. The gameplay is what I care about and Nintendo has almost ALWAYS delivered every time. Even NSMB Wii threw a ton of truly NEW things at us. Despite claims they were just rehashing old 2D Mario levels, I beg to differ. Almost every level used mechanics and devices not even possible back on the NES/SNES, and stuff not even seen in Galaxy.
I don't give a flying **** about the story and I don't know why anyone does. That's something relegated to a certain kind of game and Mario is NOT that kind of game. If gameplay alone won't appease you, I have to wonder why you're playing games, but I respect that people have differing tastes. Zelda as well isn't something whose stories are supposed to be amazing. They've kind of evolved into something with more plot depth, but the gameplay is again the focus. It's not as crazy and out-there as Mario is but it's satisfying, and I personally think it works in both ways. Gameplay is new enough, the story and world is interesting enough (flooded Hyrule with pirates, crazy Twilight realm making the world a living dream/nightmare, floating land in the sky not knowing of the mainland below) to make each game worth playing, at least in my opinion. Judging by sales I'm not alone in that thinking.
However, on the topic at hand here, I must say Nintendo has been making some bad decisions. Wii U can be chalked up to early reveal: Nintendo has even gone out to say they didn't intend to reveal the system so early but the word was getting out and they had to show something or risk a lot of bad speculation. 3DS just plain released early, and too expensive. I see no problem now, though, as the games are coming by year's end and the price is far better than I would have expected.
Nintendo of AMERICA, though, has my disdain. No plans to release the big 3 in America? Well, America currently has no plans to give you any money until that happens, so you guys go ahead and wait on that.
Though I'm fairly sure we're getting those games (at least 2 of them) at some point anyway. Nintendo's being Nintendo and not saying anything too early/waiting to see how sales go in Europe.
Overall... good, but in a bad string of decisions. There's a lot going against them but they're putting out products that interest me more than most companies do, so the magic isn't gone. It's just... tainted with the evils of really dumb decisions.
