By Sickr on January 2, 2025

Kinda Funny Games presenter Imran Khan has said on gaming forum Reset Era that the Punch-Out series is effectively a dead franchise at Nintendo. Khan said that he spoke to someone a while back who was involved in the last Punch-Out game from Next Level Games and asked them about a new game. The person he spoke to said that the character backlash which ensued after the Wii version was released combined with the overall sales of the series have simply buried the games. However, he does say that another studio could always work on the Punch-Out franchise in the future.

"I got someone from, let's say a studio close to Punch-Out, drunk at a bar once and asked about a new one.
The story I was told, and bear in mind this could just be the perspective of one person and no one else, was that there was significantly more backlash against the characters of the Wii game than they expected. And this team spent a lot of time assuring Nintendo that they weren't leaning into bad stereotypes that would get called out this time, so everyone just kind of furrowed their brow and called it done. Especially since other games from that team had much, much higher sales potential."

"I guess it's less "We can't do it without stereotypes so let's not bother!" and more a World Warriors problem where they can't fully cut from the past without people rioting. That and other games from the studio sell like 14 million copies more, so why bother."

Via