Mario + Rabbids could be this Christmas' Luigi's Mansion | Opinion
Christopher Dring
Head of Games B2B
Thursday 30th June 2022
E3 1999 was a bit of an awkward one for Nintendo.
As the media obsessed over the new Sega Dreamcast (which was playable) and got excited about the upcoming PlayStation 2 (which wasn't), Nintendo had to try and compete with just a selection of games for the ageing N64 (the company did announce the existence of 'Project Dolphin' -- the codename for GameCube -- but revealed nothing about it except that it would use discs).
There were two big games that dominated Nintendo's booth. The first was Donkey Kong 64, and the other Star Wars Episode 1: Pod Racer.
Nintendo was big on Star Wars back in the late 1990s (there was even a Storm Trooper on the N64 box), but still, from the perspective of today, it's hard to envision an E3 where a non-Nintendo game received such attention.
But here we are in 2022, and it's happened again (sort-of). During this 'not- E3' month, Nintendo has given its fans very little in terms of first-party games. There was an extended look at Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (which launches next month), and Pokémon Violet and Scarlett (which isn't technically a Nintendo game, but sort-of is) received a fresh trailer at the start of the month. But the big Nintendo presentation, which aired earlier this week, was exclusively about games from third-party companies.
"Mario + Rabbids has brought in well over 7.5 million players"
This doesn't necessarily mark a change in direction for Nintendo. The company tends to focus its June showcases on games that players will be getting during the same year, and with Zelda pushed into 2023, there wasn't a great deal for Nintendo to show outside of more footage from Splatoon 3 (plus some of its more niche titles).
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