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Sales Data VGC - A year after being branded a flop, Mario + Rabbids’ sequel is steadily selling, has racked up nearly three million sales

mazi

mazi

picross pundit
www.videogameschronicle.com

A year after being branded a flop, Mario + Rabbids’ sequel is steadily selling | VGC

Sparks of Hope has sold nearly three million units, sources say, in line with original…
www.videogameschronicle.com www.videogameschronicle.com
A year after being branded a flop, Ubisoft’s Mario + Rabbids sequel, Sparks of Hope, has racked up nearly three million sales, VGC understands.

The sales momentum, which sources said was partly helped by discounting on the Nintendo eShop, means Sparks of Hope is performing roughly in line with the historical performance of the first game, which went on to reach 10 million players.
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It’s worth noting that Ubisoft would likely have expected the sequel to have performed even better, given Switch’s significant growth since the original game was released in August 2017, and the significant install base of the original game.

Regardless, it changes the mood somewhat around a title that just a year ago was being branded a flop by the publisher.
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Eh, I don't think it's fair for VGC to say Ubisoft branded the game "a flop"; they said it had underperformed their expectations initially but that they expect it to sell well over time.
 
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I think the initial sales were harmed because, ironically, it's so late in the console's life. When very little in comparison was happening in 2017, the game was very exciting for being a strange idea for the new consoles, especially since it was Mario's first new title on the system. The sequel, when expectations were set and the idea not as interesting a second time and the device having so many Mario titles... yeah not a shock that it didn't sell as well.

Nice to see it sell well over time, because it does show that weird ideas for existing IPs have merit.
 
XVI is SHAKING in its boots!

this is a joke

In all seriousness, don't know how it's surprising that a game that regularly goes on sale for $30 would sell.
 
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Ubisoft did this to themselves; unlike every other Mario game on the system, everyone expected this one to plummet in price, which happened, and then sales picked up (at vastly reduced revenue)
 
SoldierDelta said:
I think the initial sales were harmed because, ironically, it's so late in the console's life. When very little in comparison was happening in 2017, the game was very exciting for being a strange idea for the new consoles, especially since it was Mario's first new title on the system. The sequel, when expectations were set and the idea not as interesting a second time and the device having so many Mario titles... yeah not a shock that it didn't sell as well.

Nice to see it sell well over time, because it does show that weird ideas for existing IPs have merit.
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We've seen plenty of games sell well on Switch the past couple of years. M+R2 just didn't have the same spark (pun somewhat intended) to get people on board like the original.
 
The first game may not have been to my taste, but Soliani and his team deserve all the recognition and respect for making this collaboration happen and their passion is obvious even from the outside looking in; I'm glad that it can still be regarded a success.
 
BassForever said:
We've seen plenty of games sell well on Switch the past couple of years. M+R2 just didn't have the same spark (pun somewhat intended) to get people on board like the original.
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I was mainly explaining the good sales in comparison to the lackluster ones for the sequel. A lot of late-life games have had a lot of success (that's very obvious) but M+R2 may have suffered a bit from the lack of real attachment rate compared to the first game in 2017.

First-year systems tend to have a very high attachment rate because they tend to pick up every major release that comes along. Sort of how a lot of games around the launch years of the Wii had high sales but dipped out later on due to decreasing interest. It's a testament to the Switch that games can still sell well a year after their initial launch, it successfully avoided the same issues that the Wii had and games are still selling well. That's how I'm interpreting the information at least, I'm willing to see other reasons for the lower-sales at launch for M+R2.
 
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Shit, you reminded me of something, I bought the game and never played, it has been on my backlog forever, I know what am I going to be doing during this artic winter climate. Thanks!
 
It sold poorly because of two reasons. One the first game released in a month with very few games for the Switch was releasing but they decided to release the game in a very busy gaming season. 2 you have trained your audience to wait for a deep sale. I waited until I could get it for $20. I'm also going to do the same for PoP as well. I might bite at $30 though.
 
Herb Alpert said:
The game floped at release because people were waiting for getting it on sale, ubisoft brought this on themselves
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Yup. People don't usually buy Ubisoft games full price, especially when a complete edition will be cheaper down the line. I'm still waiting for M+R 2 and the new Prince of Persia to be 15 bucks before getting them.
 
TheQuietone said:
It sold poorly because of two reasons. One the first game released in a month with very few games for the Switch was releasing but they decided to release the game in a very busy gaming season. 2 you have trained your audience to wait for a deep sale. I waited until I could get it for $20. I'm also going to do the same for PoP as well. I might bite at $30 though.
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Third reason: Genre fatigue. Turn based strategy is over-represented on Switch. There are just too many of them and more coming each month. Not only that, Nintendo has two series in the genre, joining in on the fun with bigger titles like FE Engage. Add to that the current Mario over representation, wouldn't be surprising if Rabbids got lost in all of this.

Still, selling 3m shows how Switch owners are hungry even for thriving genres.
 
I haven't played it yet, though I was really looking forward to it. Glad it's growing on people, Davide's team seems really passionate.
 
9-Volt said:
Third reason: Genre fatigue. Turn based strategy is over-represented on Switch. There are just too many of them and more coming each month. Not only that, Nintendo has two series in the genre, joining in on the fun with bigger titles like FE Engage. Add to that the current Mario over representation, wouldn't be surprising if Rabbids got lost in all of this.

Still, selling 3m shows how Switch owners are hungry even for thriving genres.
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I’d say Square even did it too in Autumn 2022 when they released a pile of new rpg IP like Diofield Chronicle and Harvestella on top of remakes like Front Mission and Tactics Ogre, all within a month or two of each other. Then Fire Emblem Engage came out in January. I don’t think it’s that turn-based rpgs/strategy are over represented on Switch, I think it’s just that Switch has a metric ton of rpg-adjacent software on it, and both Ubisoft and Square like to pack everything in just before Christmas as apparently that’s the only time people buy Switch software. Something obviously untrue, which is presumably why Prince of Persia is trying its luck this month by taking the ‘first big game of the year’ spot.
 
I'd have got it day one if not for Ubisoft's bullshit treatment of their employees. Loved the original, glad I didn't get FOMO for this one.
 
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9-Volt said:
Third reason: Genre fatigue. Turn based strategy is over-represented on Switch. There are just too many of them and more coming each month. Not only that, Nintendo has two series in the genre, joining in on the fun with bigger titles like FE Engage. Add to that the current Mario over representation, wouldn't be surprising if Rabbids got lost in all of this.

Still, selling 3m shows how Switch owners are hungry even for thriving genres.
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This argument is horribly flawed. If you extrude that thought to its logical conclusion, no game can ever sell well on any console because literally every genre gets over saturated. On an audience of over 130 million owners, no genre is ever reaching fatigue levels.
 
Is it selling well if the OG did 10m?

No chance this gets close to that unless a remaster does good numbers on Switch 2.

I think this was probably still below their projections.
 
PixelKnight said:
I don’t think it’s that turn-based rpgs/strategy are over represented on Switch, I think it’s just that Switch has a metric ton of rpg-adjacent software on it, and both Ubisoft and Square like to pack everything in just before Christmas as apparently that’s the only time people buy Switch software.
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Just not the christmas season, 2022 was just packed with turn based strategy games all year long:

Triangle Strategy (March)
Makai Kingdom from NIS Classics vol 2 (May)
Shadowrun Trilogy (june)
Digimon Survive (July)
La Pucelle from NIS Classics 3 (August)
Front Mission remake (october)
Mario Rabbids 2 (November)
Tactics Ogre (November)

Marvel Midnight Suns was also slated to release that fall but got delayed and eventually cancelled. And of course Engage followed in January.
BassForever said:
This argument is horribly flawed. If you extrude that thought to its logical conclusion, no game can ever sell well on any console because literally every genre gets over saturated. On an audience of over 130 million owners, no genre is ever reaching fatigue levels.
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Well, it's not far from the truth, there are some genres in the past got over saturated and some titles got ignored thanks to that. Like never ending supply of FPS games on PS3 and Xbox 360. Lots of gems got overlooked, stuff like Brink and Bulletstorm. Not a "no game can ever sell" situation here, just " the ones that can't stand out get lost" thing. The biggest disadvantage of Mario Rabbids Sparks of Hope was that it was too similar to the first game and it even got less characters from the Mario side. People didn't buy the first game for rabbids, they did for Mario.

The game ended up selling great though. Ubi pushed the game very well.
 
Its label from Ubi was intentionally misleading
It is selling very well even if it's true is discounted
But this is both normal for Ubi games and the reason why many/all were simply waiting for it going on sale before buying it
 
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YolkFolk said:
Is it selling well if the OG did 10m?

No chance this gets close to that unless a remaster does good numbers on Switch 2.

I think this was probably still below their projections.
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it didn't sell 10 million, it had 10 million players
Sparks of Hope is performing roughly in line with the historical performance of the first game
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9-Volt said:
Just not the christmas season, 2022 was just packed with turn based strategy games all year long:

Triangle Strategy (March)
Makai Kingdom from NIS Classics vol 2 (May)
Shadowrun Trilogy (june)
Digimon Survive (July)
La Pucelle from NIS Classics 3 (August)
Front Mission remake (october)
Mario Rabbids 2 (November)
Tactics Ogre (November)

Marvel Midnight Suns was also slated to release that fall but got delayed and eventually cancelled. And of course Engage followed in January.

Well, it's not far from the truth, there are some genres in the past got over saturated and some titles got ignored thanks to that. Like never ending supply of FPS games on PS3 and Xbox 360. Lots of gems got overlooked, stuff like Brink and Bulletstorm. Not a "no game can ever sell" situation here, just " the ones that can't stand out get lost" thing. The biggest disadvantage of Mario Rabbids Sparks of Hope was that it was too similar to the first game and it even got less characters from the Mario side. People didn't buy the first game for rabbids, they did for Mario.

The game ended up selling great though. Ubi pushed the game very well.
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Great games in popular genres get overlooked all the time, Blink and Bulletstorm would have bombed even if FPS didn't get as many games. One of the best selling games every year is CoD, so if you want to argue there's another strategy game that sucked the wind out of the sales of Mario + Rabbids be my guess. When the best selling strategy games on the system is Fire Emblem 3 Houses at 4 million, M+R2 doing 3 million doesn't reflect any kind of reality about genre fatigue. Strategy is just a niche genre.
 
YolkFolk said:
Is it selling well if the OG did 10m?

No chance this gets close to that unless a remaster does good numbers on Switch 2.

I think this was probably still below their projections.
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Edit: sorry I had forgotten the 7.5M units sold being confirmed and thought the 10M players didn't mean sales. Ended up mixing information up.
 
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BassForever said:
so if you want to argue there's another strategy game that sucked the wind out of the sales of Mario + Rabbids be my guess, when the best selling strategy games on the system is Fire Emblem 3 Houses at 4 million, M+R2 doing 3 million doesn't reflect any kind of reality about genre fatigue. Strategy is just a niche genre.
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I wouldn't say the sales were "sucked", but rather it was shared. As you said it is a niche genre and 3 big titles came out in just three months: Mario + Rabbids, Tactics Ogre and Fire Emblem. Even the series biggest fans made some choices here. I know I did, since Nintendo and Square games weren't getting price cuts anytime soon, saving rabbids for later was a very easy choice.
 
Bought the first on sale but still haven’t gotten to it so won’t buy the second unless it goes super duper cheap.
 
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9-Volt said:
I wouldn't say the sales were "sucked", but rather it was shared. As you said it is a niche genre and 3 big titles came out in just three months: Mario + Rabbids, Tactics Ogre and Fire Emblem. Even the series biggest fans made some choices here. I know I did, since Nintendo and Square games weren't getting price cuts anytime soon, saving rabbids for later was a very easy choice.
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Compared to what though? We now know M+R sold 3 million, Engage last we know sold 1.6 million (down from 3H but still one of the best selling games in the franchise) and Tactics Ogre has never been a million seller nor has SE ever given us any indication of how it did. So outside of your anecdotal experience, where exactly are you concluding that any of them suffered from the existence of the others?
 
BassForever said:
Compared to what though? We now know M+R sold 3 million, Engage last we know sold 1.6 million (down from 3H but still one of the best selling games in the franchise) and Tactics Ogre has never been a million seller nor has SE ever given us any indication of how it did. So outside of your anecdotal experience, where exactly are you concluding that any of them suffered from the existence of the others?
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Hey it's just a theory, don't get mad. Rabbids wasn't exactly suffered from any of this. Game had long legs thanks to frequent discounts and a massive DLC schedule (one even involving a big return for Rayman). Ubi actually saved it, though i don't know how sales numbers from discounts translate into revenue.
 
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Marce-chan said:
OG didn't sell 10m.
At the very least, the occasions when it was free trial for NSO counted. Idk if different accounts playing or physical being played on different consoles counted or something.
Last updated we had on its actual sales were 2.5M when Solianni I believe posted an art on the achievement. Or something like that. And I'm pretty sure it took longer than SoH to manage that.
Just happened that it did 1M really really fast, I believe 2M was fast enough, and they were expecting the sequel to sell like 2M the first quarter or something considering it's super ambitious in comparison to the first game.
If it managed to ship 3m in one year and 2 months I think 4 million will come soon enough with it always being discounted, so it'll probably sell more than the original if it hasn't already, and achieve its LTD expectations or even crush them.
Another factor in this tho is that SoH was probably way more expensive to make than Kingdom Battle so the initial sales at full price being disappointing was no small thing for Ubi.
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The first game was publicly announced as 7.5m long before any of the NSO trials.

I don't know why you're doubting that the only mario game that routinely got heavy (80%+) discounts got to 10m. Mario + Rabbids 1 has basically constantly been in the eshop top seller charts whenever a sales happens too, which is all the time.

They expected the second one to open stronger than the first one, not because of higher production values, they did so because there were half a decade+ more consoles sold in the interim; anything launching now naturally has less legs than launch year games because the actual audience physically cannot expand in the same way first year titles did.

9-Volt said:
I wouldn't say the sales were "sucked", but rather it was shared. As you said it is a niche genre and 3 big titles came out in just three months: Mario + Rabbids, Tactics Ogre and Fire Emblem. Even the series biggest fans made some choices here. I know I did, since Nintendo and Square games weren't getting price cuts anytime soon, saving rabbids for later was a very easy choice.
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Tactic ogre and Fire emblem aren't even close to the same sales class as Mario + rabbids. If anything happened, those other two are the ones who got steamrolled because at the end of the day, the best selling strategy titles on Switch in terms of units are going to be Mario + Rabbids 1 and 2 by a long distance.
 
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Discokuningas said:
How good is this game compared to the first one?
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In my opinion it's nowhere near as good.

The game focuses a lot more on the Rabbid OCs than "Mario Universe" content. It ends up feeling less like a fun crossover between the two series, and more of a "Space Rabbids" RPG that happens to feature Mario characters. In doing this, it loses the charm from the first game and just becomes weird, at least in my eyes.

The battle system was also changed to allow for more "free movement" of the characters, but it loses some of the strategic fun of the first game. It's a case where I think they tried too hard to fix something that wasn't broken and ended up overcomplicating something simple.
 
They should have waited fo switch 2 or changed crossover (Toon Link + Rabbids!)

Hope Ubisoft Milan will be good, that team deserve the better.
 
The Mario + Rabbids games are surprisingly great, so glad the sequel's fortunes turned around in the end. Rayman DLC really puts me in the mood for a proper 3D Rayman though, and the Prince of Persia platformer suggests Ubisoft still has the talent for that genre at least.
 
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I have been/am interested in it but to be honest I still haven't gotten around to playing the original yet even though I bought it years ago

that's just a me thing though a lot of times I just....don't get around to playing games even if i'm interested in them and even bought them, I still haven't gotten around to playing Bayonetta 3 yet either even though I bought that when it released for example
 
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The game was great (bought it at launch). I think the team should give the series a rest and move on to a new Nintendo IP and genre. They are a talented studio.
 
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