Ageing Mario blamed for Nintendo's woes
Busted flush?
Mario has been blamed for Nintendo's less-than satisfactory turnaround in 2011, after a Japanese newspaper claimed the mascot hampers the company's ability to evolve into the digital age.
The "curse of Mario" has hindered Nintendo's progress into a new market of DLC and smaller indie games, Sankei News reports.
"As the game market evolves, Nintendo seems unable to move beyond creating games that rely on the image of Mario," it reads.
Nintendo is expected to post mammoth losses for the fiscal year passed, with shares dropping below the ¥10,000 (£80) mark for the first time in 7 years.
Most reports point the finger at slow 3DS sales and the handheld's subsequent price cut, but this is the first time we've seen anyone blame Nintendo's crowd-pleasing mascot.
Off the wall claims?
After Super Mario Bros. hit the scene in 1985, the loveable plumber drove Ninty to great heights and, arguably, became the most recognisable videogame character of all time. But great things inevitably come to an end and evidently there are already calls for Mario's head.
Perhaps it's about time the Japanese follow Italian suit and do a Berlusconi on the situation, relieving Mario of his duties and focusing on new franchises, a move the mascot's creator Shigeru Miyamoto has already pledged to do.
Then again, a break from the comfort zone that is the Super Mario franchise, would surely be too big a risk for Ninty to take in the current climate, and no doubt Mario's army of fans would take a spanner to Nintendo HQ if it did. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Analogue Mario?
Super Mario Bros first came out on the Slide Rule in the 1600's. It was easily the best version IMO.
Re: Mario & Sonic at the olympics?
If you had told me twenty years ago that there would one day be a game staring both Sonic and Mario and it would be set in East London of all places, I would have literally spat on your back! What is this world coming too!
Analogue Mario?
So Mario "hampers the company's ability to evolve into the digital age"?
I hadn't even realised that there was an analogue Mario. I thought that he'd always been digital even if he was 8-bit to start with.
@Greg J Preece
Well there are 2 other issues I can say from what I seen
1) Forcing people to use the motion controls. I didn't buy the newest zelda game(along with A LOT of other games) even though I really wanted it strictly due to the motion controls. Nintendo has to learn hard core gamers don't like moving especially when the games going to take well over 5-8 hours to beat. I've talked to other people about this, and they are in the same boat. Now motion control for the party games, and multiplayer stuff like wii bowling fine, if they want to include motion controls in hardcore games at least give the option to disable it.
2) Lack of good games outside japan. There were literally at least 10-15 games I would have bought in a heartbeat that never left japan(I know this isn't nintendos fault but their 3rd party programmers)on the Wii(there have also been so far 6 3ds games that will NEVER come over here that I want). One that really irks me was Tales of Graces which came out on the Wii in japan, but only on the PS3 over here...
IMO Mario, and their other franchise characters are the least of the issues, and generally the games featuring them I find to be the best generally on the systems.
eeexcept
that they were 'rehashing the same Mario and Zelda games every few years', just as they are now, back about three years ago when they couldn't make Wiis fast enough to satisfy demand, and their profits and share price were going through the roof.
this theory is a nice one but it fails a basic test: the behaviour that's argued to be 'damaging' has not changed at all between the time when Nintendo was coining money hand over fist (three years ago) and the time when it isn't (now). It seems rather more likely that a factor which actually _did_ change during that time is to blame - viz. the Wii not getting replaced fast enough, and the 3DS not being terribly good.
(It's also worth noting that there is more or less universal agreement that the mainline Mario games are some of the best games ever made, and they sell by the bucketload. It's *also* worth noting that there's really no shortage of small downloadable games for either the Wii or the (3)DS).
