Yeah Zelda has been getting some solid spin off content recently, and the Retro Zelda being bad was the reason it didn’t get made. But Zelda isn’t getting spin offs anywhere near the level of how many spin off games Mario gets. My viewpoint was more like comparing how both series handle/get spin offs and less just purely why Zelda is or isn’t getting spin offs. Like I’m sure we’ll continue to see Zelda spin-offs like cadence and the warriors but idk if we’ll ever see like a stealth based Sheikah series or like a dedicated spin off series where Zelda is the main character (in the same way Paper Mario became its own series) because of the state of the industry right now.
Like games take longer to make and more people to make than ever before, so like is it worth it for Nintendo to invest Zelda spin-offs right now when those resources could be dedicated to the main game. Idk if this is making sense right now haha, but like a lot of Mario spin-offs where first created when games took less work (in terms of raw numbers/hours/cost) to make and persist because they became their own strong selling series or because they help to build the whole mascot-ness of Mario and his friends.
Then I guess continuing off that like looking at the spaces each series occupies, Mario is Nintendo’s mascot so it makes sense that he’s constantly appearing across many different games during a console’s life cycle and building his brand and Nintendo’s brand through the lens of a mascot. Whereas Legend of Zelda is more like Nintendo’s prestige series, like they’re always some of the most acclaimed games of their generation/console, does something like that really need a ton of extra investment in spin-offs to continue to build that brand? Like obviously there will always be some that happen for whatever reason and accounting for some classic Nintendo quirkiness, but like never in the same way as Mario does.
Idk if that’s what was originally be asked, but I was using it as a sort of jumping off point to talk about something I’d been thinking of in my head and wanted to type out. Hopefully that made sense/answered what you were asking instead of me just rambling through text/not really making my point of view any clearer. why did I write so much ;p