Nintendo, while aggressively litigious, do so to maintain the value and exclusivity of their IP.
Their games also never go on sale, and all sell really well over time, unlike many releases from other publishers.
The result is that Nintendo are able to release a solid cadence of high quality, first party games free of other forms of aggressive monetisation, maintaining the value of the games as art.
Tears was mid and not only did it ignore series lore, it ignored lore in a game it’s a direct sequel to, that and both games feel like “design by intern” when it comes to puzzles and direction.
Odyssey was… O.K. Not as tight as a Galaxy, but also not as enjoyable as the usual Mario linearity for every objective as Nintendo has more control over every experience the player has.
Samus Returns was good fun. Dread… Wasn’t a Metroid game.
Splattoon and Pokemon both fall into the categories of games they could tweak slightly and rerelease for $70 under a new title, as they do.
Other than that, what do we have to talk about, Animal Crossing? The 3DS version was better and had more to do.
…and… Then there’s Kirby. What do we even do with him!?
A+ work. They’ve never made a bad Kirby game. Bad and Kirby doesn’t exist. It’s like they could try and it would still be fun.
They did, it was canvas curse, and somehow it was still fun.
No one has any idea why.