Late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata never wanted tons of Mario and Zelda sequels because that's "not the kind of company I want Nintendo to be"

When a game like Super Mario Odyssey or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild arrives, it feels monumental, and Nintendo has made a point of not oversaturating us with sequels in its biggest series. That's been the company's approach for decades, and late president Satoru Iwata described it succinctly back in 2006. "If all we were to ever do is just continue to make sequels and not do anything new or different," Iwata told Stephen Totilo at MTV News, "people would view us as a very conservative company and a company that is unwilling to really take new initiatives and embark on new adventures. Despite the acclaim that games like Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Super Mario Sunshine, and Wind Waker enjoyed, the N64 and GameCube were both being left in the dust by the competition.