Mario + Rabbids Developers Still Want to Work With Nintendo on Another Game

The Mario + Rabbids series is pretty much dead and buried. A third game seemed unlikely following Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, but Davide Soliani’s departure from Ubisoft last summer looked like the final nail in the coffin. Soliani was with the company for 25 years, with 11 of them straight serving as the creative director on the Mario + Rabbids games and their DLC. Soliani then founded Day 4 Night, a new development team consisting of multiple veterans from the Mario + Rabbids series. In a new interview with Video Games Chronicle, Soliani revealed that while a new Mario + Rabbids game is unlikely, he and partner Christian Cantamessa are very much open to working with Nintendo again.

“Of course, I was an Ubisoft employee, but what I can say is that in 26 years of game development, the 11 years that I spent with Nintendo were the most important for me. The most important emotionally, but also in terms of learning experience and collaborating experience. It was absolutely fantastic,” Soliani told VGC. “My new company is an indie studio, so if one day Nintendo wants to knock on our door, I think that me and Christian are going to answer.”

At this time, it’s impossible to say whether we might see Soliani working on another Nintendo game. However, it’s worth noting that Nintendo has partnered with a lot of smaller studios in the Switch era. If an indie studio like Brace Yourself Games can be entrusted to develop a Zelda spin-off like Cadence of Hyrule, it’s not a stretch to imagine that a proven creative director like Davide Soliani might land back on Nintendo’s radar. For the time being though, Day 4 Night is working on their own game, which Soliani described to VGC as a “dream project.”

The Mario + Rabbids series was a staple of the Nintendo Switch era. While the concept of uniting the Mario family with Ubisoft’s ridiculous Rabbids seemed bizarre initially, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was both a critical and commercial success. Unsurprisingly, Ubisoft quickly announced a sequel, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope. In a 2022 interview with ComicBook, Soliani had expressed an interest in making a third Mario + Rabbids game, and shared a lot of enthusiasm about Mario in general. However, plans clearly fell through.

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Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope debuted to critical praise, but it underperformed Ubisoft’s expectations. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has attributed slower sales to the fact that the company did not wait until Switch 2 to release the game, as Nintendo had apparently recommended. It’s impossible to say if such a move would have helped to improve sales, but there have been signs that the game continues to find an audience. While a third Mario + Rabbids game doesn’t seem to be in the cards, hopefully Nintendo will consider reaching out to Soliani’s team to create something that maintains that same spirit.

Would you like to see Soliani and his team make another Mario game? Did you enjoy the Mario + Rabbids series? Share your thoughts with me directly on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!