UPDATE
Via the new Nintendo Direct, here’s a trailer for the newest DLC, which is out today!
ORIGINAL STORY
What does it mean to be successful? That is the question that many of us ask in our lives. In the gaming space, the success of a title can be easily determined by a few factors, the biggest of which are game sales. Just as important is that if you make a big hit, you want the follow-up or spinoff to do just as well, if not more. For Ubisoft, they hit on a surprisingly fun winner with their fusion of the Mario and Rabbids universes while having some tactical gameplay attached. The first title from 2017 was so good that Mario + Rabbids Sparks Of Hope was one of the most anticipated games in 2022.
As we’ve noted on the site before, the critics’ reviews of the game were incredibly positive, and those who played it enjoyed it. But Ubisoft made it known late last year that Mario + Rabbids Sparks Of Hope didn’t “perform to expectations” during the holiday season.
But now, according to GameIndustry.biz, the CEO of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, the game “underperformed” because it was a game released “too soon.”
“I think it was a different issue with Mario,” he said. “We had already released a Mario Rabbids game [on Switch], so by doing another we had two similar experiences on one machine. On Nintendo, games like this never die. There are 25 Mario games on Switch.
Nintendo [has advised] that it’s better to do one iteration on each machine. We were a bit too early, we should have waited for [the next console].
He added: “Because you could play a great game. And we think it will last for ten years, because we will update it for the new machine that will come in the future.”
That is certainly one way of looking at this, but it’s not the only way. Yes, Nintendo likes to “space out” the entries in their series, but there have been exceptions, with Mario being one of them via his various spinoffs. Fire Emblem is another example, as they had two entries on the Switch within a few years, and both sold well.
The irony is that Ubisoft is somewhat infamous for “flooding the markets” with their titles in a franchise so that they can maximize their profits, and it has backfired on them in the past but also worked in their favor.
Another irony is that we still don’t know the latest Nintendo/Ubisoft collaboration’s sales numbers, which speaks volumes.
