14 DAY TRIAL // Super Mario Galaxy 2 is now out and busting the charts in Nintendo's home region of Japan, with launches for the United States and Europe coming soon. The new videogame powered by the well known character will certainly be a success but Nintendo might be wearing down the value of its most iconic creation, considering in how quick succession New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Wii and Super Mario Galaxy 2 arrived.
Shigeru Miyamoto, the main creative mind working on videogames at Nintendo, said, in a recent interview, “Mario is a very important character in the Nintendo world and so we want him to appear in our titles. Indeed there are a lot of games to which he is well-suited. However if he appears in too many games then they will lose their uniqueness, and so with that we are very strict when choosing which games to have Mario feature in.”
Nintendo has long relied on a set of characters, including Mario, Link and Samus Aran, to satisfy the needs of their most hardcore fans, while also drawing in a more casual audience to the Nintendo Wii with the Fit series and with the Play titles.
This year, the company has confirmed launch dates for new games in the Mario franchise and for a fresh Metroid adventure and gamers are eagerly awaiting an announcement, presumed to be coming at E3, about another Zelda title for the Nintendo home console, due to be released before the end of 2010.
It's not clear if Nintendo can continue to use the same well known group of icons in the long term, creating more experiences around them or whether it needs to focus on delivering new, well designed characters that will ensure fans stay loyal in the future.
Here's the full talk featuring Shigeru Miyamoto, where he addressed some other issues linked to Super Mario Galaxy 2: