I'm feeling a change in the tides of fate in the video game world. On an overall scale, it's not that significant, but for the Mario and Sonic fanboy camps, it's huge.
Consider this: Sonic fans can look forward to two new titles in the coming year: Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Chronicles: the Dark Brotherhood. Now, you might ask yourself how that threatens Mario's current position as pretty much the mascot for video games in general. Sonic Unleashed has that crappy Wolf Sonic mode and Sonic Chronicles is just an RPG for the DS. Well, the fact of the matter is that they're freaking GAMES. And Sonic fans are GETTING them in a time shorter than 3 years. As a matter of fact, they don't seem half bad. SC is being developed by BioWare, and Sonic Unleashed looks fun as hell. They seem like pretty solid quality games. Meanwhile, Mario fans are forced to wait another 3 or so years before the next Mario title and put up with crap like Mario Super Sluggers. I'm still waiting for Super Mario Awww, Who Gives a Crap, Here's Some Idiotic Game With More Crappy Characters That You Don't Care About. Through Nintendo's bumbling, Mario has become what Mario fans have always feared...a whore.
Now I know Mario's been whored out for a while now, but at least those games were good. I love Mario Tennis and Golf, and the Mario RPGs are always an entertaining distraction. But recently, we've been subjected to stuff like Sluggers and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, which just seem to lack the finesse and effort put into earlier Mario spinoff titles. You know who else had their games decline in popularity as his rival garnered momentum? Sonic. That's right. It may not happen, but it's a possibility that Sonic may overtake Mario in popularity by the end of the decade and become the new face of the gaming industry. Um...again.
But Nintendo can blame no one but itself for Mario's faltering. They've spent all this time pandering to the "casual gamer" and cheapening the overall experience of video games that Mario, not to mention all of their other core franchises, has been in serious danger of falling out of the public eye, and Nintendo out of their audience's favor. I honestly don't know what they can do to revive their old franchises, but they'd better think of something before some of their fans (yours truly included) jump off their rapidly sinking ship.

I want Madden. Need a PS3 or a 360 for that. So...there you go, Nintendo. That's one reason for me to jump off. Now give me a damn reason to stay on.