When you think about the relationship between Nintendo and Ubisoft during the Wii U era, you may not think they like each other that much. Ubisoft took away a big exclusive from them in the form of Rayman Legends, and though ports of their titles made it to the system, it just felt like their heart wasn’t into it. Yet, if you look at the Switch era…all 5 months of it…you see the two are working REALLY well together. In fact, one of the biggest surprises from E3 2017 was just how good Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle looks.
The game combines the two popular franchises in a way that no one expected. It’s not a platformer, or a party game, it’s a turn-based RPG that many are likening to XCOM. Didn’t expect to hear that huh? In an interview with IGN, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot talked about what it was like working with Nintendo on this title.
“For us, we like very much Nintendo’s philosophy of bringing enjoyment to all the people that play their games, and we like the way they bring it to the market, so it’s very close our philosophy. So we saw that in working on a game together, we could really create something that would really be new for the market because of the characters, but with the same goal, which is to bring something fun with humor and that will be a strategy and really interesting to play.”
Legendary Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto was also there in the interview, and he praised Ubisoft for what they did with Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, and even noted that future crossovers like this could happen…
“Ubisoft is a company that really understands the Nintendo hardware and also understands the Nintendo customer,” he pointed out. “And they’re a company that is able to produce products similar to what Nintendo would put out. So in that sense, I think it would be fun to be able to work on more projects like this.”
That’s an interesting proposition, what other collaborations could come from these two? We’ll have to wait and see!
