2023-10-17 18:47:00
Plumber in a red cap against spider-man, Nintendo against Sony: Mario and Spider-Man, heroes of pop culture, return Friday in two video games released respectively on Switch and PlayStation 5, with marked styles aimed at different audiences.
Mario, a hyperactive mustache-wearing mascot created by Shigeru Miyamoto, revolutionized the industry in 1985 in the legendary “Super Mario Bros”, one of the first games to allow horizontal movement in an evolving landscape.
He has established himself as one of the best-known characters in the history of the sector, contributing to the global success of the Japanese group Nintendo, with more than 420 million units sold for the “Super Mario” series alone.
Spider-Man, who appeared in the early 1960s in the comics of the American publisher Marvel Comics, made his first forays onto consoles in the 1980s, without enjoying great popular success.
His comeback that began in the 2000s, in the wake of the box office successes of superhero films, propelled him to headlining the series of games developed from 2018 by Insomniac for Sony, who bought this studio the following year.
A successful bet with 33 million copies sold, according to the latest counters published in May 2022.
For their new opus, Nintendo and Sony have, as is often the case, chosen radically different approaches. As its Switch console approaches the seven-year mark, Nintendo has opted for a technological counterpoint with a return to Mario’s roots: a 2D platform game, its first since 2012.
Under the supervision of Takashi Tezuka, co-creator of the series, the development team has, however, redoubled its creativity by imagining various objects capable of transforming the levels.
Sony brought out the heavy artillery for “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2”, which was very expensive to develop: expected to be one of the biggest releases of the year on PS5, it must push the console to its final technological limits.
“’Spider-Man 1′ had boosted sales of the PS4 and Sony is counting heavily on this new episode” to support those of its Playstation 5, notes Hideki Yasuda of Toyo Securities, according to whom the game should easily smash its break-even point pupil.
The analyst underlines, conversely, the “fairly weak pre-orders” in Japan for “Mario Wonder”. Furthermore, players outside Japan “tend to prefer 3D Mario and it will clearly be difficult for Nintendo to appeal to them as much as with Zelda,” he told AFP.
What about the target audience? “Nintendo is clear on this point: it targets players aged 5 to 95 and, this time, its goal is no different,” says Mr. Yasuda, while Spider-Man is aimed more at gamers who are fans of action games.
Common point: the heroes of both universes are always well supported.
The Spider-Man is thus playable in the skin of the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker, as well as in the guise of the Hispanic-African-American teenager Miles Morales, who appeared in the comics in 2011, in the cinema seven years later and hero of the game “Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales” in 2020.
Mario is supported by a cast of 11 playable characters from the Mushroom Kingdom, such as his brother Luigi, princesses Peach and Daisy, and Yoshi, some of whom have special abilities.
Enough to allow the two publishers to exploit their characters beyond consoles, by offering the respective universes on all possible media, such as animated films.
After being the subject of a first film in Hollywood in 1993, with very limited success, Mario tried his luck again on the big screen in April, in co-production with Illumination, the studio that created “Minions”.
Paid strategy: “Super Mario Bros” ranks 2nd in the world ranking of films with the best theatrical receipts in 2023, just behind “Barbie”, according to the specialist site Box Office Mojo.
After winning an Oscar in its first part, the second animated film produced by Sony around its spider-man, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”, confirmed its success, rising to 6th place of the rank.
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