Nintendo's Bland New HUDs and UIs

[Koopaul]

I'm starting to notice a trend with Nintendo that I'm not fond of. It started when I saw the menus and icons on the Nintendo Switch itself. Very flat, no colors, no music... Barebones and basic. I figured "Oh well, they'll probably have themes you can download later."

Then I played Breath of the Wild and saw how flat, basic, and minimal the menus were. The title sceen has no music. The file select is flat black boxes. Okay look at this:

This is the Wind Waker's file select. Very stylistic.

Here's Twilight Princess... very elegant.

I was used to seeing stuff like this from Nintendo. Why did Breath of the Wild get rid of that? So I thought maybe it was just Breath of the Wild. After all it's just one game. But then I saw footage of Super Mario Odyssey and saw something shocking!

This is the HUD in Galaxy 2...

This is the HUD in Odyssey...

This is what a speech bubble looks like in Galaxy 2...

This is what a speech bubble looks like in Odyssey...

And finally this is what it looks like when you get a Star...

And this is what it looks like when you get a Moon...

Yeesh! What happened? Why did Nintendo decide to go bland, flat, and minimalistic with UI and HUD?

Is this a new thing with them? Will the next Donkey Kong game have menus and icons as basic as these? What do you think?

 

[CM30]

They wanted to cash in on trends. This flat UI style is all the rage online and with phone apps, in part due to stuff like Windows 8.

 

[Koopaul]

As a graphic designer I hate it. But yeah it makes you think. Did you see Ubisoft's new logo?

 

[The 3rd Wario Brother]

Probably because it isn't done i think. It may look like this at release but it still got some time, they may make last second changes......... Hopefully.

 

[Koopaul]

No, it's coming out in October. And even the earliest of Mario Galaxy's builds still had the Mario-esque fonts and icons.

This is what we are getting.

 

[607]

Yeah... I'm not a fan of it either. Some things like the 'moon get' I can kind of appreciate, but I really don't like what the health looks like...
But yeah, it's the trend. Apple and Microsoft are doing it, and Nintendo designers feel like they need to join in or else they will seem outdated.

 

[Magma]

I'm kind of split on this. While the style is bland, uninspired and will no doubt look dated down the line, I do like that they're trying something different with the Mario aesthetic rather than keep same the same stagnant style we've been seeing for the better part of the past decade.