All of this seems like market research... and that might be good for the franchise
Lately Ive seen how the interest around Star Fox has been revived after what seems like ages, more than a decade ago I was fascinated with this franchise after playing SF64 and how everything went downhill after Command lol. After seeing the intensity of how the franchise is being analyzed and where tons of discussions, fanart and even fan fiction have been created in a way I haven’t seen in any franchise that have been revived after years of being dormant makes me believe that we might be seeing a massive market research, of course I may be exaggerating or even pointing the obvious but something about it seems bigger than the usual and expected stuff.
Nintendo clearly wanted to revive the franchise with the SMG movie and the SF64 remake and even generate discussions about it with the new designs and content but probably didn’t think that they would create such heated discussions about every single part of the series especially around Post64-SF2 stuff (Should I call it Expanded Universe like in Star Wars?).
Everyone seems arguing about:
• What should this character be like, act, look, nowadays?
• Is the character worth bringing back?
• Can this character be translated into a new art style and modernized? How?
• Is this character popular enough to be brought back even with all their baggage?
• What should Nintendo bring back from the discarded continuities?
• How much redesigning of a character would be tolerated?
• Should they go for something more SF64-like or something like Assault and even Adventure for their next game?
• Etcetera.
Nintendo may have unintentionally created a “Forbidden Fruit” effect around the expanded universe stuff since it has mostly been gone for like two decades so newcomers might be getting into it since they could be seeing it as what the company isn’t giving us at the moment and hasn’t given us in a long LONG time and it shows what Star Fox could be beyond the repetition of the Lylat Wars, From the really good to the really bad. Also, I don’t think there’s anyone in Nintendo that really hates any of the non 64 cast, no even the higher ups, the most likely situation is that the franchise has been struggling to be revived after Command so there hasn’t been any time for these characters to be reintroduced.
I haven’t seen a community with these circumstances being revived with such force before, I haven’t seen people discussing a series with this intensity for a franchise that was considered kind of dead for years and out of the public eye. I think we are seeing people doing work for free for some agency that was going to be hired for this lol.
Nintendo is kind of known for mostly doing stuff without direct feedback from fans, especially for their biggest franchises but we are talking about Star Fox. A franchise that is a pillar of the company and at same time one that has being failing for a while, a franchise popular enough but almost obscure at the same time, a franchise that is in a situation where both choosing a conservative approach or an experimental one can be considered risky, so maybe, I repeat MAYBE this time they would listen more, maybe not directly but at least they might pay attention.
Thanks for reading my midnight ramblings! I might be completely wrong about all of this, but hey, it was fun thinking and writing about it lol.
BTW: if you are studying marketing this one might be a good event to analyze.