No friends, you say? Well, now you can talk to your Gamecube!!

[A Black Falcon]

It only works well if it's a yearly product, I think. Mario Party would be much better off as a game which shows up a couple of times per generation, definitely, but as long as it IS a yearly thing, it starts getting stupid when they're at Mario Party 6 or 7 in 6 or 7 years, I think. As I said, using years disguises a little bit the fact that they are horribly over-using the franchise.