Nintendo: New Gameplay Experiences is Like Having a New IP, Why Mario is Still Fresh

REDMOND, Wa. June 27 - Activision gets shit for milking the Call of Duty franchise, Ghosts would mark the series' 10th installment. Truth is, Nintendo puts Activision to shame in terms of exhausting IPs, but that's not the way the company who helped bring video games to the forefront of mainstream culture. Nintendo plans on pushing three Mario games in the next two years, a perfectly appropriate number,  Nintendo of America senior director of corporate communications Charlie Scibetta told ShackNews in an interview published on Thursday.

"We think we're putting out the right number of Mario games based on what fans are asking for, based on what our own developers' creative visions are," Scibetta said. "The key to that is as long as there's innovation is occurring within the gameplay, as long as there's new features, then marrying the characters and the IPs that people love is the right call from our standpoint."

"If you look at something like Super Mario 3D World, the gameplay on that one that I find really cool is those transparent warp points. Usually you used to go into one and pop out the other, and that was the end of the gameplay experience. Now, there's a whole dynamic there where you can navigate in there, try to avoid enemies, try to get a better advantage. You could theoretically make a whole new game with those kind of gameplay dynamics," Scibetta argued.

Disney's equivalent to Mario is Mickey Mouse, but the antisemitic mouse hasn't really appeared in any of the company's animated films in the past 50 years. Perhaps Nintendo can take a similar approach, make Mario a figure that represents Nintendo in the same way Tinkerbell appears during Walt Disney's introductory title screen. Nintendo however remains static in their choice of making the more than 30 year old character appear in the majority of the company's first-party titles.

"If we didn't put Mario on it, then it would just seem like a new IP," Scibetta said. "Because there's those new gameplay dynamics like that, we think there's the innovation there that will keep people interested and keep the Mario brand fresh."

"You could call all the games that we're making here new IP in the sense that they're new gameplay experiences. They just happen to also have the IP that people associate with."

SOURCE: ShackNews