I think so yeah. Everyone always says they just want more of the same, but when you actually just make more of the same you run up against the issue with Assassin's Creed games literally just being the same game over and over and over again. There's obviously a bunch of people that are ok with that but artists that actually care about what they're making generally have a problem with just making the same thing over and over with no real creativity. Which is precisely why I see this as something driven by the fact Nintendo does still have executives who care about that, unlike western companies that have rotated their executives very quickly the Japanese work culture tends to result in very old executives. What this difference in culture has resulted in is that some of the people from very early on in the industry are still in executive positions and those early members of the industry are people who genuinely cared about making good games. In the west it's much more common to change companies so executive positions have rotated much more quickly and business ghouls effectively fill every single position.

This is a rare circumstance where differences in japanese workplace culture have resulted in something mildly positive compared to the west.

you could definitely take a page from spacesim lite games like No Man's Sky or Freelancer and do an open universe not-on-rails star fox game but it would be tough to pull off

They licensed the characters for that Starlink toys-to-life game, which is kinda in that genre

So like, totally veer off the established formula and into new territory then?

Basically the same thing they ended up doing with Zelda when they felt like they'd hit a wall with the formula no longer having tangible new things that you could add to it.

This still I think has the issue of leaving the original fanbase feeling like they haven't gotten a "new star fox" because what they want is a new on-rails shooter.

Don't get me wrong I obviously think that there's problems with capitalism in this whole industry but I can definitely see how these two franchises are incredibly difficult to do something new with.

The one franchise that they've genuinely got no excuse for is Metroid. Metroid is PERFECT for updating with modern open world stuff. I mean fuck, what is a metroid-vania game if not same concept as an open-world game but in 2d? The fact they've slept on Metroid for so long is genuinely baffling. The only reason I can come up with for sleeping on it is that they're worried that it would compete with Splatoon as a shooter on their system. But that still feels wrong because Metroid is not an action shooter it's about exploration more than shooting.

Fair, they do seem looser with mario. As if they MUST release new mario regardless of whether they're bringing something truly new or not. With that said you can still see some element of "make new stuff" with him through Galaxy's ball worlds or having a talking hat that gets thrown and so on.