The Myth of Nintendo and New IP
We occasionally see people repeat the cliché that Nintendo doesn’t do new IP very often. The basic narrative goes that Nintendo did no new IP between Pikmin and Splatoon. That’s an alleged fourteen years of no new ideas. Because the DS and Wii were certainly not based on new ideas, right? (A good example of how nonchalant people throw this around and accept it uncritically is in this Honest Trailers video. Comedy or not that line seems to be taken at face value.)
2001 saw the release of Animal Crossing (in Japan), Golden Sun and Pikmin. Here’s a probably-almost-complete list of franchises from Nintendo that debuted after that, were not a spin-off and are IP owned by Nintendo:
Eternal Darkness
Cubivore
The Legendary Stafy
Giftpia
Daigasso
Chibi-Robo!
Geist
Odama
Nintendogs
Wii Sports
Electroplankton
Brain Age
Endless Ocean
Disaster: Day of Crisis
Wii Fit
MaBoShi
Art Style/Academy
Bonsai Barber
Eco Shooter
FlingSmash
Fossil Fighters
Rhythm Heaven
Tomodachi
Xenoblade Chronicles
Line Attack Heroes
Snowpack Park
Glory of Heracles
Captain Rainbow
Style Savvy
Pandora’s Tower
Steel Diver
Pushmo
Sing Party
Nintendo Land
Dillon’s Rolling Western
The Wonderful 101
Pocket Card Jockey
Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball
Splatoon
Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.
Boxboy
Nintendo Badge Arcade
Miitopia
Miitomo
1-2 Switch
ARMS
Snipperclips
Tank Troopers
Ever Oasis
Sushi Striker
This list is as accurate as we could hope for given the limited information regarding certain titles, but it may not even be complete(!). For example, we couldn’t find who owns the trademark to one-off games like The Last Story or Pandora’s Tower, so we had to go by quotes from the creators that led us to believe the latter IP is likely owned by Nintendo but the former is not. Not every game gets a US trademark registration which causes fuzziness as to who owns what. In any case it’s obvious that Nintendo regularly produces fresh content.
So why do gamers online think they don’t? Part of it is a misuse of the phrase IP, which a lot of people use because they’ve seen others use it but don’t even know what the abbreviation stands for. In this context, it means Intellectual Property.
Intellectual property is a very broad legal term. For a gaming company it generally means original creations like characters, settings and even gameplay itself that is owned by the company and protected from being too closely copied by the competition. Even Miis count. In this respect, virtually every new release other than straight ports or remakes contains new IP of one kind or another.
Obviously nobody’s claiming that Nintendo hasn’t made a new game since 2001. What they mean to say is new franchises, and for some reason on the Internet it became popular to shorten that to IP. Some will refer to spin-offs as new IP if they’re different enough from the main series (like Luigi’s Mansion) but most don’t.
But even by this narrower definition, Nintendo has pumped out a bunch of new ideas in the past fifteen years.
Yet even when confronted with this information you will see that “hardcore” gamers will find excuses to reject it. Brain Age and Wii Fit don’t count because they’re “casual.” Dillon and Boxboy don’t count because they’re digital exclusives. Wonderful 101 doesn’t count because Platinum Games developed it, even though Nintendo unequivocally owns it outright. Captain Rainbow doesn’t count because it didn’t leave Japan. Electroplankton doesn’t count because most people haven’t heard of it. Xenoblade is erroneously believed to be a part of Xenosaga and Xenogears, but they’re actually three separate entities owned by three separate companies. Codename S.T.E.A.M. doesn’t count because it was a sales flop. And Stafy and Endless Ocean don’t count because...um...reasons?
The point of this post is to simply lay out that people are perpetuating a myth. There’s a difference between “Nintendo has no new ideas!” and “I don’t like Nintendo’s new ideas!” Even Nintendo fans have to start acknowledging that there’s a huge difference, and gently remind others that the Big N produces new IP at a faster clip than anybody else in gaming.
Or just laugh at the ignorance of others, if you don’t want to waste energy.
