Yesterday, Nintendo released its financial report for the first six months of the current fiscal year 2026, and in addition to updating our console (both Switch and Switch 2) and game (such as Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza) counts, the company also gave a straight answer to some of its shareholders' questions and concerns.
Board member and development legend at the company, Shigeru Miyamoto, also naturally took part in this Q&A, and when asked about whether any Nintendo Switch 2 game would ever surpass the sales of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Miyamoto replied that it would be really hard, but also shared his wisdom from the past.
Specifically, a conversation that must have happened more than 30 years ago between Miyamoto-san and Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of the Pokémon franchise. It happened even before Tajiri and Game Freak created the first Pokémon Red and Green games (in the West it was Pokémon Red and Blue), and Miyamoto-san recounted it like this, according to the translation of the official document shared by user Genki on X/Twitter:
"A long time ago, Tajiri-san, the director of Pokémon, before creating the first Pokémon game, jokingly told me: 'If you want to beat Nintendo's Mario, you can't do it unless you sell two copies of the game to every customer'."
So for Satoshi Tajiri, the maths was clear: If you have a maximum player ceiling, what you have to do is sell the same game multiple times to that player. Now times have changed, although the main Pokémon series still relies on dual generations, so.... Old salesman's trick, or genius that lives on? It's up to you to decide.