You know, while this article is interesting, I'd really like to argue that there was never a day this was not true, for almost any successful game developer. Taking shortcuts and making cuts is what all developers have to do in order to meet deadlines and make a proper game.
Would I prefer NSMBWii have epic, gorgeous graphics that push video gaming to their limits and still have the gameplay that they have? Of course.
Will that ever happen? Not a chance. I at least appreciate that they're spending their focus on the things I do care about, such as good gameplay, than worrying about the graphics. If they can reuse things to let them spend time on other things, why not do that? Majora's Mask uses Ocarina of Time's engine almost entirely, as well as a large amount of OoT's art aspects, yet I don't think anyone here is going to say they're "lazy" and they should have recoded the game from scratch. Reusing old material where it makes sense is just a good idea from pretty much every standpoint. Because they already had a lot of the art aspects they needed, NSMBWii was probably finished astronomically faster than it would have been otherwise. Otherwise we'd all be sitting here complaining that Nintendo didn't provide anything good at all this holiday season instead of whining about reused art aspects.