Nintendo tried to warn Ubisoft, but the company didn’t listen. That’s the message that Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot relayed in a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
Specifically, Ubisoft didn’t listen when Nintendo told them it would be best to hold off on releasing Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. Guillemot said that Nintendo advised the company to delay the release of the game until Nintendo’s next console was available.
“We had already released a Mario Rabbids game [on Switch], so by doing another we had two similar experiences on one machine,” Guillemot said in the interview. “On Nintendo, games like this never die. There are 25 Mario games on Switch.”
He continued: “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].”
Launched back in October 2022, Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope was critically acclaimed by the media, and players seemed to enjoy it. However, compared to the first game which sold over 7.5 million copies per Ubisoft, the sequel didn’t do as well commercially.
“Despite excellent ratings and players’ reception as well as an ambitious marketing plan, we were surprised by Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope underperformance in the final weeks of 2022 and early January,” the company said in a financial update back in January.
What do you think about Guillemot admitting that Ubisoft was told by Nintendo that it shouldn’t have released a second Mario + Rabbids game on the Switch? For more Insider Gaming, check out what games are coming to Xbox Game Pass.
