The Switch era of Nintendo has seen the revival of a number of the company’s lesser known series, including major new releases for Metroid, Pikmin, and others. Many fans hope and speculate about what series might be next on the list.

Unfortunately, it seems that Punch Out appears to be knocked out of the running. According to industry insider Imran Khan, someone he spoke to at developer Next Level games hinted that Nintendo was “done” with the series for now, due to difficulty adapting it for a modern audience as well as having lower sales potential compared to other projects.

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.

The “other games” from the studio presumably refers to Luigi’s Mansion 3, which did indeed sell 14 million copies as of the last sales reports. In comparison, the most recent Punch Out game for the Wii only sold 1.27 million units. It’s not hard to understand where Nintendo’s priorities lie, even if it is disappointing for Punch Out fans.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.