Last year, Ubisoft releases Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope a sequel to their surprise hit crossover between Super Mario and the Rabbids.

Unfortunately, despite being well received by critics and fans, it seems the game did not sell as well as Ubisoft had hoped, describing its underperformance as “surprising” in a report from earlier this year.

“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,”

In a more recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot discussed his thoughts on the game’s underperformance, where he reveals that Nintendo advised them to avoid releasing two similar games on the same console, and that they should have waited to release Sparks Of Hope on Nintendo’s “next console”.

“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].”

Amidst rumors circulating about an imminent Switch successor, its possible that Nintendo’s “next console” was releasing close enough for Sparks Of Hope to be comfortably pushed back to launch on the new hardware instead of the original Switch. On the other hand, it could also be that Nintendo’s statement was just general advice rather than choosing between the Switch and its successor specifically.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.