We Need More Gaming Partnerships Like Mario + Rabbids

thegamer.com:

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope's release date was revealed at yesterday's Nintendo Direct, having previously leaked ahead of the stream. That's in-keeping with the game's initial reveal last year, which also leaked a few hours ahead of time. The game arrives in October, and I'm sure it will be fine, if the last game is anything to go by. It has always struck me as a strange idea. It's a team up between Nintendo and Ubisoft, using Nintendo's best loved mascot and some fluff Ubisoft found down the sofa, in a completely new genre for both series, with gameplay that doesn't really suit Mario or Rabbids. And yet it all works. Sparks of Hope will also work, probably. Or maybe it won't. That's not really important here. What's important is that we need more games like it.

Mario is one of the most eclectic characters across gaming. While he's known primarily as a platform hero, he's also the star of the biggest selling kart racer of all time, the most popular party variety game in the world, and several of the best loved arcade sports titles. That's before you even get into the likes of Dr. Mario, Picross, and Smash, or the Mario-adjacent spin-offs like Luigi's Mansion, Yoshi's Island, and Captain Toad Treasure Tracker. Nintendo is far less protective of Mario than you might expect, handing over development of a lot of these to third-party studios. That's one ingredient in how Mario + Rabbids came together.

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Rabbids themselves are much stranger than Mario. They began life out of necessity - when Rayman had a party game built around him, the developers realised Rayman needed some friends to party with. The Rabbids were invented to fill