@unrandomsam If I were "quite young" wouldn't I have thought the opposite having only seen the more recent releases? My comment is one of an long-time fan, and also of someone who likes fresh ideas as much as the next person.

My point is simple. Over the past, oh lets say 12 years to make it easy, Nintendo has made both new characters and gameplay styles as well as embellished upon old ones. While there have been new ideas, some successful, like Pikmin or Animal Crossing, and some unsuccessful (marginally) like Battalion Wars or Chibi Robo, they have always had fall-back games, if you will, such as Zelda, Mario (and his plethora of activities) and Metroid, to name a few, that stood on their own little pedestals.

What appears to be happening these days, at least in my eyes, is Nintendo has merged a lot of their new ideas with old faces. They may be doing this intentionally, or they may not even realize it.They could have made "Mario Vs DK" with brand new characters, but they didn't, and the result is, over several years, the watered-down feeling we get with all the new Mario releases. It removes the special feeling of a "new" Mario game coming out, because it's most likely the 4th similar release that quarter.

The best example I can think of is what Aonuma said here:

"...every time I come up with some good new ideas, they end up being used in a Zelda game!"

Another potential problem is the innovative direction they have been taking their hardware. All of these new ideas, like the Wii and Wii U have caused Nintendo to make games that either totally surround the new hardware or are the same with a couple of differences (read: NSMB). This could have been partially to blame for the surplus of stale-feeling IPs over the past 7 years. This isn't to say that Nintendo's hardware design is bad (I've been enjoying my Wii U), but it is potentially the reason many fans are getting this infamous feeling of stagnicity (made-up word).

A solution to all of this would be have Nintendo isolate their ideas more, which would probably make them work harder on the main-series games to make them better while having fun with "new IPs" and fresh ideas in other areas. Or they could just keep doing what they're doing and tone down on the Mario Bros releases a bit.