According to industry reporter Imran Khan, Nintendo is not interested in continuing the Punch-Out franchise. Specifically, he states that according to someone from a studio “close to Punch-Out.”
Khan continued, “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.”
While fans of the series will likely be disappointed by the news, it is an unsurprising sentiment. The report should be taken with a grain of salt, but Punch-Out‘s protagonist, Little Mac, has mostly been relegated to appearances in the Smash Bros. franchise. Further, compared to Nintendo’s other franchises that originated on the NES, such as The Legend of Zelda, Mario, Metroid, and others, Punch-Out is more obscure in the modern era of gaming.
Nintendo has not released a new Punch-Out game since 2009. The aforementioned Wii game could end up being the last new entry in the franchise. Only time will tell if Nintendo will resurrect the franchise to the same extent as Metroid and others stored within their vault.
In 2025, the next major Nintendo games will be Xenoblade Chronicles X and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. Nintendo initially announced the latter in the Switch’s first year, all the way back in 2017, but the game restarted development in 2019. Lastly, Nintendo will likely reveal more details about both it and the successor to the Nintendo Switch in the coming weeks and months.
