Nintendo advised Ubisoft not to make Sparks of Hope for the Switch

One of the earliest surprise successes to come from the Nintendo Switch was Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, with the Mario/Rabbids crossover strategy game going on to sell over 7 and a half million copies. Unfortunately, it seems as though the game’s sequel is not performing nearly as well. Ubisoft has now shared their beliefs for why Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope fell below expectations.

In an interview conducted by Gamesindustry.biz, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot spoke on why Sparks of Hope did not manage to spark a great deal of interest from fans, saying:

“The market is suffering a little bit with the inflation situation” though added that “I think it was a different issue with Mario. 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.”

Interestingly, according to Guillemot, “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].”

One of the likely reasons for Kingdom Battle’s success was the timing that it released, coming out a little bit after the Switch but not too late to the point that the market was flooded. Sparks of Hope didn’t have any such advantage.

Either that or perhaps fans have had their fill of Rabbids for the time being. We will have to wait and see how it performs in the long run.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of Guillemot’s reasoning? Did you buy Sparks of Hope? If not, why not? Let us know down below.

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