On Friday, Nintendo and Sony simultaneously launched two new video games from their series, “Mario” (on Switch) and “Spider-Man” (on PlayStation 5), and the plumber in the red hat and Spider-Man compete to attract different categories. From the audience through distinctive patterns.
-One of the most prominent video game characters-
Mario, a hyperactive, mustachioed plumber created by Shigeru Miyamoto, revolutionized video games in 1985 with Super Mario Brothers, one of the first games to allow the user to move Mario horizontally in scenes that changed according to the stages of the game.
Mario became one of the most famous characters in the history of the video game sector, and contributed to the global success of the Japanese Nintendo Group, which sold more than 420 million games from the “Super Mario” series.
As for Spider-Man, who appeared in the early 1960s in Marvel Comics comic strips, the first video game available on a console was created during the 1980s, but it did not achieve great success.
However, “Spider-Man” regained popularity in the first decade of the twenty-first century following the successes of superhero films at the box office, which made him the leader in the series of games created by “Insomniac” in 2018 for “Sony”, which bought this studio in The following year.
Nintendo’s bet was successful, as 33 million copies of the game were sold, according to the latest figures published in May 2022.
-Different approaches-
As they often do, Nintendo and Sony have chosen different approaches in their new games. With the Switch console approaching its seventh year on the market, Nintendo chose to bet on old technology by returning to the beginnings of Mario, and issuing a 2D game, its first since 2012.
Under the supervision of Takashi Tezuka, co-creator of the game series, the development team expanded its creative ideas by imagining different objects capable of transforming the levels.
Sony focused its weight on the game “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2”, which cost huge sums of money to create. This game, which is expected to be one of the most important games released this year on PlayStation 5, is supposed to push the console to its latest technological limits.
Since the “Spider-Man 1” game boosted PlayStation 4 sales, Sony is relying heavily on its new game to support PlayStation 5 sales, according to Hideki Yasuda of Toyo Securities.
However, the analyst pointed out in an interview with Agence France-Presse that pre-orders in Japan for “Mario Wonder” are “relatively weak.” On the other hand, gamers outside Japan tend to “prefer the Mario game in 3D format, and it will subsequently be difficult for Nintendo to attract users as happened with the Zelda game,” according to Yasuda.
-Movie houses-
Regarding the target audience for the new game, Yasuda says, “Nintendo has shown clarity in this regard, as it is targeting those between the ages of 5 and 95, and its goal this time is no different than before,” while the “Spider-Man” game is aimed at fans of action games.
The common point in the two games is that the two heroes receive good support and accompaniment.
Users can play “Spider-Man” as the original character Peter Parker, or as the African-Hispanic American teenager Miles Morales, who appeared in comic strips in 2011, and in a movie seven years later.
In addition to Mario, the game features 11 playable characters in the Mushroom Kingdom, such as his brother Luigi and Princesses Peach, Daisy, and Yoshi, while some of them have special abilities.
The two companies will be able to exploit their personalities in works away from consoles, by providing the relevant universes on various possible media, such as animated films.
After the first Mario movie was released in Hollywood in 1993 with very limited success, a movie about Mario was remade, which began showing in April, and Illumination Studios, which created the “Minions” movie series, participated in its production.
The movie “Super Mario Brothers” ranked second in the global rankings of the most revenue-generating films in 2023, with the movie “Barbie” topping the list, according to the “Box Office Mojo” website.
After the first part of the movie “Spider-Man” won an Oscar, the second part produced by “Sony,” titled “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” strengthened the success of this series, with it ranking sixth in the classification.
