Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope released last October to great critical acclaim, including from our own Ricky Berg. However, that praise didn’t translate into the financial success that Ubisoft hoped – while the game sold reasonably well, it fell short of sales projections, which in a corporate setting can mean a “failure” to some. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot thinks he knows the issue: they released the game a generation too soon.
“…We had already released a Mario Rabbids game [on Switch], so by doing another we had two similar experiences on one machine,” said Guillemot. “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 also notes inflation and economic issues are driving families to make purchases for only the biggest brands. Nintendo advising that it’s best to do “one iteration” for each console generation is interesting, as most of its own properties have released at least two games on Switch to great success. Heck, just look at last month’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for a prime example. But there may be some truth to the claim for smaller titles. We’ll just have to see what Ubisoft has cooked up for Nintendo’s next console.
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Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
