New IP =/= innovation. Conversely, old IP =/= not innovative. I'm kind of tired of people saying that game series aren't innovative because they're based on an old IP. Just because they are taking characters and settings that have been around for a long time doesn't mean they're not innovative in mechanics. It's not just Nintendo, it applies to other old series too. The reverse is true as well. There's plenty of new IPs popping up that don't innovate. They may invent new characters and a new world, but they're often just trying to imitate the formula of so many other games before it.
But despite that I do think Nintendo is recycling their ideas too much, with some of their franchises at least. There hasn't really been a new idea in the Mario series since Mario Galaxy. Since then it's just been trying to recapture the feeling of the pre-3D era with shinier graphics and much more forgiving gameplay.
Skyward Sword did shake things up a bit in the Zelda series, but it didn't shake things up enough. It's seeing competition in a genre it's pretty much had to itself for ages, but it's not acting like it. A lot of the changes they made in that game weren't necessarily for the better, either.
I'm not really that familiar with the Pikmin franchise but from what I can tell Pikmin 3 isn't Earth-shatteringly different from the previous games at all.
Metroid and Starfox are kind of dormant right now so they can't really be discussed. I don't really know much about the Kirby franchise, but Epic Yarn was supposed to bring some cool new innovations to the genre, I've heard.
Pokemon has definitely gotten very tired with lack of innovation. People say that gen. 4 and 5 did add in some big changes, but I don't think so. As someone who used to be a big Pokemon fan I never noticed anything significant in gen. 4, and although I didn't play gen. 5 there doesn't seem to be much change their either. Changing minor things in how battles work doesn't count. The experience of the games is pretty much the same in every game. Turn based battles with type match-ups; travelling across the land through towns and routes encountering wild Pokemon to capture and raise; beat the 8 gyms and the Elite 4; take down the criminal organisation and uncover the sub-plot about the legendary Pokemon. It's the same every time, just with a different coat of paint and very slight tweaks that you wouldn't even notice if they weren't explicitly pointed out to you.
I think the worst offenders are Mario and Pokemon. They actually are recycling ideas far too much. Zelda has a problem with it too, but not quite so much as Mario and Pokemon. Each game still usually has some kind of unique hook to it.
But I want to stress just one last time, an old IP does not mean there's no innovation and it's just the same thing over and over. An IP is just a collection of names and aesthetic styles. You can do whatever you want with an IP in terms of gameplay. Just look at the many different genres Mario has dabbled in. The main platforming series (and arguably some of the other spin-off series) may have gotten stale, but that's not because Mario is an old IP. It's because Nintendo aren't trying hard enough to do something new in that area.
Nintendoland isn't lacking innovation because it's got Mario, Zelda and Metoid in it. In fact, It think some of the ideas they are trying in that are pretty innovative. Take the game that used to be called "Chase Mii" when it was just a tech demo. That looks like a cool little way to have what they called "asymmetric multiplayer". Just because the characters now wear Toad costumes doesn't mean the game has suddenly lost all innovation that it had. I'd also argue that Wii Sports wasn't particularly innovative at all. They were just tech demos. Nintendoland could probably be dealt the same criticism, but at least they're actually trying to create completely new games with it. With Wii Sports they just took games that everybody knew already and had you control them with the Wiimote. It can't have taken more than 10 minutes for someone to come up with the idea that you can swing a Wiimote to simulate a tennis racket, a bowling ball or a golf club. That took no original effort. But Nintendo had to think about how they could make a unique game for the WiiU to show off how they could utilise having one player seeing the game differently to everyone else. What characters you play as makes no difference.
Nintendo is recycling ideas a bit too much, but it doesn't matter whether the games are called Mario or Zelda or whatever. They could have every single game they've ever made have a different name and setting, but if the gameplay remains the same then there wouldn't be any more innovation than we're seeing now.
due to the oxymoron.
