For F-Zero, Nintendo could take a look at recent racing games from Codemasters, Playground Games (Forza Horizon), and others to expand on the sci-fi racing of Mute City. F-Zero GX already has a lot of customization and paint options so a Wii U successor can take advantage of the GamePad's touch screen. Finally, it would be nice to play an F-Zero game online.

To me those statements on F-Zero sound like a reverse confirmation that they simply have not been willing to even try.

I remember after this year's E3 conference, major sites like IGN were asking, "Where's the new Zelda?" It enraged me so much, we just GOT a new Zelda! I wished someone had just asked, "Where's the new F-Zero?! The new Star Fox, Metroid, or Earthbound?!" I really blame interviewers like this who bring up the wrong questions. It's no wonder Miyamoto is surprised when people want new games other than Mario and Zelda.

Funny how that hasn't stopped them from releasing Mario Party game after Mario Party game or from releasing virtually the same Animal Crossing game multiple times.

If this is their logic, why do Mario Kart and the NSMB games continue to be released?  Not that I don't like them because I do enjoy both series, but neither have really added anything all that new in quite some time, no more evolution than would be possible with F-Zero.

I'm sure that this has more to do with sales of the series than anything else, which is fine, Nintendo is a company and their objective is to make money, but saying there's nothing new to do with it seems like a stretch to me.

Considering that both the last few F-Zero games, as well as the cartoon bombed in Japan (in fact, they only dubbed half of a season into English before giving up on that), it's no wonder Nintendo is wary of making another installment.

Plus, it seems to be more polite to say that rather than "Well, none of you idiots bought the damn games, so it's your fault".

I find it funny how Nintendo, back in the early 2000s, handed it's IPs to everyone (less Mario and Zelda). Metroid was lucky to have stuck with Retro, and Kirby was always mostly a HAL Labs project. But Starfox and F-Zero got the shitty end of the stick. Starfox core gameplay was altered, F-Zero handheld versions were godawful, and GX had only decent sales. Then they come at us saying "oh, no one liked them" when no duh! They sucked compared to the originals. So don't come saying we don't want them! Make a masterpiece with your own hands rather than throwing them at random developers. :|

This is beyond disappointing. You don't need to do anything new with F-Zero. F-Zero is already perfect, there is no need to screw around with it. At all.

It's bewilderingly simple. Copy/Paste GX's engine, add stuff like track editors, online play and share, and other polishers of the like.

The fact that they still have no idea how to make new F-Zero, even with a more traditonal controller in the WiiU, seriously makes me have my doubts on the WiiU's future.

Well Miyamoto's comments are correct.  GX was considered to be perfection of the F-Zero gameplay by many fans and critics and yet it only sold a few hundred thousand, which made it a failure because of the huge budget it had.  Unlike Star Fox were lower sales could be blamed on poor games, GX didn't have that excuse which points heavily to people not being interested in games like it anymore no matter how good they are.

This is why Nintendo is in a tricky situation with F-Zero since they know many of the remaining fans want a sequel to GX, but there just isn't an audience big enough to justify the budget a GX sequel would cost.  It also doesn't help the last two GBA F-Zero games sold beyond terrible, which shows making a low budget sequel isn't a sure thing either.

They could make an HD remake of GX for Wii U, upscaling the graphics, adding online play and maybe a track editor using the GamePad. This wouldn't require too much of a budget, would placate series fans, and could be sold for a budget price, likely increasing sales.

They should pair a few good designers with Shin'en.

As much as I want to see a new IP from Retro, I also really want to see a new HD Metroid Prime from them. That alone would sell me on a Wii U.

I'm kind of with TrueNerd. A HD Metroid Prime game would in all likelyhood force me to buy a Wii U. My bank account would be around £350 lighter and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.

I think the idea of there being no where else to go with a series is a valid reason to not continue it.  I would prefer if some series quit while they were ahead instead of trudging on for too long and damaging their legacy.  But if Nintendo is going to say this, then they have to follow it.  I could easily say the same thing about Mario Kart but they have no problem churning those out.  Ah, but that series is a big seller.  So really this "reason" is an outright lie.  Saying "what more can we do with it?" sounds better than "it doesn't sell enough for us to continue milking it."

What is annoying is that I don't think F-Zero really is completely tapped out.  We don't even have an online F-Zero.  Plus the N64 game had a random track generator that GX did not have and the 64DD had a track editor that never made it out of Japan.  Realistically Nintendo could make a new F-Zero with online play and a track editor and it would have an artistic justification to exist.  Now after that, it would probably be done but I think the series has one more entry in it.

Regarding sales, GX is a Gamecube game.  Every Gamecube game sold like piss compared to the big Wii hits.  The whole system underachieved and that has a ripple effect on every game released on it.  And having THREE F-Zero games on the GBA was just a stupid instant-fail idea.  Why the fuck would we need a whole trilogy of racing games on one system?  I didn't buy GP Climax because the game itself was POINTLESS.  I already had a handheld F-Zero game for my GBA.  Am I seriously going to pay full price for a new set of tracks?  The series shouldn't be cancelled because of a boneheaded decision on Nintendo's part.  They released two games that were completely unnecessary.  But there is no Wii U F-Zero game and there wasn't a Wii one so such a game would not be unnecessary.

Being on GameCube doesn't have anything to do with it, Nintendo had 19 first-party GameCube games sell over 1 million copies. With GX's budget, and selling only a few hundred thousand copies, it can be hard to justify spending the money on a new one. Blame your fellow gamers for the lack of a new F-Zero, I was pissed when I paid $54 ($50 plus tax) for GX and then they dropped the price to $20 less than a week later. Nintendo spent a lot of money on GX and promoted the hell out of it, and it didn't sell as well as they hoped.

As for a trilogy of racing games on one system, Sony released 3 Wipeout games on the PlayStation. The PSP got a whopping 7 Need for Speed games in a 6 year period.

GX flopped here, mainly because they released it a week before Mario Kart Double Dash.

Well, 2 weeks. But even so, I question how much that impacted sales.

Nintendo can sell 10 million copies of a Mario Kart game without even trying; no matter how little there is left to do creatively they'd be stupid not to do that. Games can have a financial reason to exist or a creative reason to exist. Ideally, you want to have both, but one can be good enough under the right circumstances. Miyamoto seems to be saying that F-Zero has neither, which you may not agree with, and I don't, but comparing it to Mario Kart doesn't make sense.

Games always need to have a financial reason to exist, it's hard for any publisher to justify releasing a game that won't make back the money spent on it.

I'm calling baloney on the F-Zero comments.  If Nintendo cared about innovating their game series that much, then they wouldn't have had the last 3 iterations of MarioKart be so similar.  They could literally keep the gameplay mechanics exactly the same from GX, come up with some new tracks, and slap a new name on it and it would satisfy most fans of the series.

This is all about the $$ that Nintendo isn't making enough of from F-Zero.  Makes me sad, really, because it's a depressing indication of what I can expect on the Wii U for my favorite racing series.

If a company isn't making money on a game, there is little reason too make a sequel (especially since the goal of a company is to make profit). The Mario Kart games always sell millions, the last F-Zero game failed to even make a profit. If the last F-Zero game had done well, they would have kept making them.

....I understand this as someone with a business background, but when it comes to video games, I'm a consumer first, business analyst second. 

Consumer me isn't happy about the fact that the Nintendoland video game may be the only iteration of F-Zero we see on the system, because as much as I love GX, i'm ready for a new game, even if it is just a glorified level pack.

Serious Business me understands why they keep on milking their cash cows, but they're going to eventually water down the milk if they're not careful.

Of course it makes financial sense to make new Mario Kart games.  But that just doesn't let them pull the "we've done all we could with the concept" card.  Sorry, Nintendo, you clearly don't practice that so you can't use it as an excuse.  If you want to say "F-Zero doesn't sell enough" that at least will ring true, though it doesn't look good.