It's not like these games are the same. Super Mario 3D World is completely different than Super Mario Galaxy which is completely different than New Super Mario

It's not like these games are the same. Super Mario 3D World is completely different than Super Mario Galaxy which is completely different than New Super Mario Bros, even though all of them are in the "Mario" franchise. Zelda is a bit more similar game-to-game, but even then there's massive changes, and Breath of the Wild is pretty unlike any other Zelda game before it. So if only the characters and some of the core mechanics (like hearts in Zelda) are the same, then is it really milking the franchise to release different games? As another commenter pointed out, it's not like FIFA/NBA/NHL or CoD where each release is a minor change over the previous.