Nintendo has been doing VERY well in the last few years ever since the launch of the Nintendo Switch. A console that is on pace to be its best-selling console ever and has already gotten over 80 million in sales before reaching its “Halfway Point” in its lifecycle. And yet, despite that, there are some who question certain decisions about Nintendo in regards the use of their characters. Mainly in how some are focused upon more than others, and despite fan outcry, how some characters aren’t used at all.
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa spoke about this in an interview with Nikkei. He noted that for him, he was advising “caution” in certain character portrayals and uses for certain reasons:
We must keep in mind that the origins of the characters are in the games. These are characters that fans have grown attached to through countless hours of playtime. We must develop those characters in a way that won’t destroy fans’ memories of the characters in their worlds. We always proceed with caution as to not damage the value of the brand.
If we want to increase sales in the short term, there are other ways to do so. It’s more a question of what we can do to keep Nintendo a beloved brand in the long run. That’s the debate we often have internally, and something I think carefully about as I make decisions. There’s always a risk of destroying the Nintendo brand, which we spent over 30 years building.
While comforting on some level, it’s also confusing in another. Especially in regards to franchises like F-Zero where fans WANT the game franchise back but Nintendo doesn’t do anything with it. Or, there’s the Paper Mario franchise which has undergone DRASTIC changes over the last several games despite gamers loving how the game was in its first two titles, including the beloved Thousand-Year Door.
So you might have to make of this what you will.
