Jesus Christ, really? Yes, I literally meant no one in the entire universe knew what a side-scroller was before Super Mario Bros. Nintendo revolutionized entire genres by focusing on why people even play games: because people want to have fun. There were no Mario fans before Mario existed. There were no Zelda fans before Zelda existed. Nintendo didn't have fans to listen to because they weren't there.
I don't think Nintendo should listen to fans because they'll hear millions of different voices and they simply can't please everyone. Some things in previous games work, some do not. You and Ian don't like stealth in Zelda games while I and others do. Who should Nintendo listen to? I don't think there's a way to make that call. Nintendo shouldn't make games based on a million different standards. Someone is bound to feel disappointed. If Nintendo adhered to fans, we wouldn't have some of the best games they've made. For example, Metroid Prime. Most people hated the move to 1st person when it was announced yet it worked beautifully. I can't imagine the game any other way.
I interpreted your example of SMB to mean that "Nintendo shouldn't listen to fans because fans don't know how they can have fun, while Nintendo does. Look at SMB: they made the side-scroller fun because they didn't listen to people!"
My response was simply pointing out a historical reality: the side-scroller genre created SMB, not the other way around like you are asserting. Side scrollers were already popular in gaming circles, and their predecessor, the flash scroller, was immensely popular before that. It is no accident that Nintendo chose to take what had become their most popular character (Mario, from the smash-hit Donkey Kong arcade game, which was itself leveraged on previous titles and IPs...) and stick him in what was already a popular genre.
In other words, they listened to the fans.
The mistake here is in believing that "listening to the fans" only means "listening to what fans tell the company orally/ in writing." I believe your examples of how there were "no Mario fans before Mario existed" etc. support this idea. Instead, "listening to the fans" can and has also meant observing how fans react to things: is X idea popular? Do people generally seem to hate Y? Are people spending time and money on Z?
Few, if any, people directly asked Nintendo to create Nintendogs. Tens of millions of people told Nintendo that Nintendo should make Nintendogs when they rushed out and spent hordes of cash on Tomagatchis (sic) and other virtual pets. The same is true for Brain Age. And Wii Sports. And the original Zelda. And Mario. And Donkey Kong. I can't think of any big IP Nintendo has created that wasn't leveraged on something that was already popular elsewhere. They may refine it better, but they first have to listen and learn what is worth refining. That is what I meant to express.
As for how that relates to Zelda (i.e. the topic at hand, which I admit I somewhat strayed from!). You are correct in that Nintendo asking fans directly is not a wise idea, and for the very reason you mentioned. That's exactly what I meant when I said " that (Nintendo) should ignore
what's said by some of the more vocal-and-consistently-wrong segments of the market." And yes, I admit that would include my internet posts.
What I am instead proposing is that Nintendo should stop and examine what it is that people play Zelda games for in the first place. I have a hard time believing that "stealth" has ever been one of them. At best, that segment seems to be superfluous filler: do you or anyone you know play Zelda for the stealth segments? Can you argue truthfully that those segments "fit" in with the rest of the game? Or do they represent a temporary and unnecessary sea change in the mechanics?
I argue that the stealth elements can be removed without decreasing most people's enjoyment of the game, while simultaneously increasing the enjoyment of others. In other words, few people will think it's a worse game without the stealth (and in fact they wouldn't even have noticed its absence), but many people will think it's a better game without it.
Let me head off the next post by admitting that I do not have any hard data to support this, and that I could be wrong. But I ask that you admit the same, or at least submit hard evidence that shows that I'm wrong (in which case I am willing to re-examine, and possibly concede, my position).