Thoughts from the man who made Mario.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/32370
Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto recently discussed his thoughts on the F-Zero franchise, saying "I thought people had grown weary of it." The statement came in an interview with French wesbite gamekult.com. He added, to fans of the series "Thank you very much and try to wait by playing Nintendo Land's F-Zero mini-game."
Miyamoto said he felt there was not much room left for evolution of F-Zero, asking the series fans "What do you want that we haven't done before"?
When asked later about the Metroid series on Wii U, he was quiet on the subject, but stated "Since Wii U is a HD console with more hardware power, what we can naturally think about is a beautiful HD action game." This is certainly not a confirmation that a Metroid game is in the works, but one can assume the series will likely make an appearance on the Wii U platform at some point.
"I thought people had grown weary of it."
Miyamoto said he felt there was not much room left for evolution of F-Zero, asking the series fans "What do you want that we haven't done before"?If this is their logic, why do Mario Kart and the NSMB games continue to be released? Not that I don't like them because I do enjoy both series, but neither have really added anything all that new in quite some time, no more evolution than would be possible with F-Zero.
I'm sure that this has more to do with sales of the series than anything else, which is fine, Nintendo is a company and their objective is to make money, but saying there's nothing new to do with it seems like a stretch to me.
Well Miyamoto's comments are correct. GX was considered to be perfection of the F-Zero gameplay by many fans and critics and yet it only sold a few hundred thousand, which made it a failure because of the huge budget it had.
I think the idea of there being no where else to go with a series is a valid reason to not continue it. I would prefer if some series quit while they were ahead instead of trudging on for too long and damaging their legacy. But if Nintendo is going to say this, then they have to follow it. I could easily say the same thing about Mario Kart but they have no problem churning those out. Ah, but that series is a big seller. So really this "reason" is an outright lie. Saying "what more can we do with it?" sounds better than "it doesn't sell enough for us to continue milking it."
What is annoying is that I don't think F-Zero really is completely tapped out. We don't even have an online F-Zero. Plus the N64 game had a random track generator that GX did not have and the 64DD had a track editor that never made it out of Japan. Realistically Nintendo could make a new F-Zero with online play and a track editor and it would have an artistic justification to exist. Now after that, it would probably be done but I think the series has one more entry in it.
Regarding sales, GX is a Gamecube game. Every Gamecube game sold like piss compared to the big Wii hits. The whole system underachieved and that has a ripple effect on every game released on it. And having THREE F-Zero games on the GBA was just a stupid instant-fail idea. Why the **** would we need a whole trilogy of racing games on one system? I didn't buy GP Climax because the game itself was POINTLESS. I already had a handheld F-Zero game for my GBA. Am I seriously going to pay full price for a new set of tracks? The series shouldn't be cancelled because of a boneheaded decision on Nintendo's part. They released two games that were completely unnecessary. But there is no Wii U F-Zero game and there wasn't a Wii one so such a game would not be unnecessary.
If a company isn't making money on a game, there is little reason too make a sequel (especially since the goal of a company is to make profit). The Mario Kart games always sell millions, the last F-Zero game failed to even make a profit. If the last F-Zero game had done well, they would have kept making them.
