There’s a lot of video game franchises that are annualised, these include FIFA, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, and numerous other titles. Some people wonder why Nintendo doesn’t take the same approach with their beloved franchises. However, Scott Moffitt, Executive VP of Sales at Nintendo of America, has told The Examiner that they prefer to keep their games fresh and that if necessary they can release additional downloadable content for titles like they have done with Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon.

“We tend not to annualize our franchises, there’s not a new Mario Kart every year. What we’ve tried to do with the Wii U is first, create a fully featured really enjoyable game that has something for everybody, has surprises that you’ll discover as you play through levels and it gives you a good amount of quality entertainment,” Scott Moffitt tells us.

“For fans who love [Mario Kart], we’ve released extra content over time so that it keeps the game fresh and allows them to experience more than they could when they originally bought the game. That’s the approach we take, rather than annualizing the franchise, we are periodically releasing new courses, levels and features that keep people playing. We see a huge surge in gameplay hours on Mario Kart when we [release new content],” said Moffitt.

“We take different approaches with different franchises. If you look at the Pokémon franchise, we have released multiple core games for 3DS.We like to give Pokémon fans something every year, but something like Mario Kart or Smash Bros. there may only be one version of that franchise in the whole console cycle,” Moffitt tells us.