The Mother series (EarthBound in the West) has always had a phenomenally supportive and vocal fan base, despite the fact that all three games in the series were poor sellers, and only the second game in the series ever saw release outside of Japan. Things have been looking up for Western Mother fans though, as Nintendo first re-released EarthBound on Wii U Virtual Console, and then finally released the original Mother under the title of EarthBound Beginnings.

Could

Mother 3 be on the way as well? Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime tackled that topic in a recent interview. Although there are a lot of things Nintendo has to consider, they’ll “never say never.”

“Look, again, I think this is an example that demonstrates we’re constantly listening. We’re hearing what the fans say. And we thought it was great to bring back the very first Mother, Earthbound Beginnings here in the market. It’s been out for sale and doing quite well in the eShop. Again, we’ll never say never, but there’s nothing to announce right now.”

— Reggie Fils-Aime

The good news for

Mother fans is that Nintendo is paying attention to the strong support that EarthBound has received on eShop. Nintendo has to weigh the costs of localizing and releasing the games against the amount of money they think they’ll get back in sales, and EarthBound exceeded expectations, motivating Nintendo to release EarthBound Beginnings.

Totilo: But Earthbound, when that came out about a year ago [Note from Stephen Totilo: whoops, make that two years ago!] on Virtual Console, did you guys have an expectation about how that would do? Did that exceed expectations and perhaps influence the decision to release this one? Fils-Aime: The Mother/Earthbound series is quite niche. And so for us it’s constantly thinking about the investment and then return for a game like that. There is quite a bit of localization to be done and we just need to make sure that volumetrically there’s enough volume to offset that investment. Totilo: Is it safe to assume that you guys are pretty happy with how Earthbound was received last year and that helped motivate and get Mother 1 out? Fils-Aime: That’s exactly right.

There you have it, Mother fans! The best chance you have of an official release of Mother 3 is to support the series by purchasing EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings on Wii U eShop.

Source: Kotaku

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