 Today we get to talk about Ubisoft maybe killing off Mario plus Rabbids and the future of that game massively in doubt as well as the future of Rayman and many other possible IPs that Ubisoft controls. We also get to see the Famitsu sales force switch for all of 2022 and have a little bit of a conversation around that and update on Nintendo Switch online and news about Fire Emblem Engage. But before diving into that news I want to tell you about the sponsor of this video Ewin Racing. You guys know I use Ewin Racing Chairs all the time. The one I'm sitting in right now is an Ewin Racing Chair. The one Eric Sitzen is an identical one to this. I have a completely different style Ewin Racing Chair for when I'm sitting over there editing and I've been using their chairs for around two years. I've been super thrilled with their products. They have things all across the line for all shapes, sizes, weights, whether you're overweight, underweight, whether you're really short, really tall. They got chairs for everyone. They also have desks as well that are really nice looking and affordable. Look you, I think they got a 20% off sale going on right now but if not at checkout you can use code Nintendo Prime for 20% off. We do have a link down in the description. I would appreciate you guys to go click, go check them out, see if there's something that suits your needs in 2023. First off we need to talk about Sparks of Hope and Ubisoft because CEO Ysgimont, he had some very ominous words coming out of the recent financial briefing. We are clearly disappointed by our recent performance. We are facing contrasted market dynamics as the industry continues to shift towards mega brands and everlasting live games in the context of worsening economic conditions affecting consumer spending. Despite excellent ratings and players reception as well as an ambitious marketing plan, we were surprised by Mario Plus Rabbids Sparks of Hope underperformance in the final weeks of 2022 and early January. They also went on to cancel three other games making seven total cancellations in six months and they delayed the upcoming Skull and Bones that was supposed to release in March yet again to early 2023-2024. Makes no sense early 2024 if not this game could get cancelled. It is a new IP and they are clearly seeing a lack of success with such games. Now they are not saying that Sparks of Hope was a total failure and it was a launch failure. They were just talking about sales at the end of December and early January. Probably after that $40 price they put out there, they dropped it off 20 bucks on the price and they were expecting probably a bigger boost in sales during the holiday season than they actually saw. Look Sparks of Hope is an amazing game. It's one of my favorite games on Switch. Also they have Rayman DLC coming later this year and from the sounds of what we're hearing from Ubisoft, Rayman is an Omega IP. So this could be a swan song for Rayman. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with what I'm hearing from Ubisoft, but I also understand that their share prices have hit the lowest ever and they are not doing well. Of course, everything might bounce back once they release the next Assassin's Creed, the next Far Cry, the next Rainbow Six game. Those are some of the mega IPs they control now and they haven't had a new Assassin's Creed here in a couple years. So I can maybe see that when that franchise was a yearly franchise, they were probably doing much better, but we're just going to have to wait and see what Ubisoft does to turn things around. And I hope it ends up being a direction that I can agree with. I mean, after all, Capcom just focuses on their mega franchises and it seems to have worked out really well for them so far. Next up, we have news on Fire Emblem Engage and a huge shout out to fellow content creator Player Essence. He went really in depth on this stuff yesterday. In fact, he's been all on top of Fire Emblem Engage. I really encourage if you want to know every minute detail about this game heading in the launch to go check out his channel as he continues to cover even exclusive updates out of Japan, including the one we're going to talk about today. And the update we're talking about today is about sheltering animals and their importance in the game. So you can shelter animals in this game from all over the world and you could take them to an animal house or let them roam. You can interact with them while roaming and they might even drop food items. Notably, those food items can be used at a diner. And all of that improves your relationships with your teammates. So everything just kind of works together with multiple systems. We're not done, though. There's more systems to this because you can invest in countries through the notice board and then you'll learn new methods for raising your animals and also increasing how many and the types of animals that you can shelter. So this is a very complex system and for all the animal lovers out there, I think this is going to be a lot of fun and it adds a lot more depth because it also ends up impacting your capabilities on the battleground. So this is like this is going to be a really cool system. And I like that they're investing in this. And while there might not be white foods in Fire Emblem Engage, this sort of feels like a nice replacement for it in a different direction. Also, they added the dancer class to the game, which does look really exciting. But if you want more exact details on the dancer class, as well as its importance to the hardest difficulty in Fire Emblem, go ahead and check out Player Essence's video. We'll put a link down in the description directly to that. Next up, we got to talk about the Famitsu sales data for all of 2022. Well, technically, we can mention last week, it sold 250,000 units. OLED sold 150K. That's the sales for last week. Switch dominated the sale charts all the games. That's cool. But I want to talk about the data for all of 2022 they put out there because Famitsu released yearly totals and the Switch sold 4,805,000 units in 2022. This is down from the 5.579 million in 2021 and the 5.957 million in 2020. However, 4.8 million is ahead of what Nintendo did in 2019 at 4,494,000 units or pretty much 4.5 million. Obviously, this suggests that while the Switch is on the tail end of its peak years, it's still in peak years and also right at the end of 2022, it overtook PS5 in the UK to become the number one selling system in the UK in 2022. And yes, it should remain the number one selling system overall for 2022 in the United States after we get the next MPD report as well. So still peaking. It's still in its peak years, but sort of on the backside of those peak years. And Nintendo is the one that's going to care mostly about that because being on the backside of the peak years means now that we're in 2023, this probably will no longer be considered a peak year for Switch, but rather the first, you know, post peak year year for Switch, which means probably sub four million in sales in Japan and sub 20 million sales overall. So Nintendo might care more about that and want to get new hardware out to help reinvigorate the market and keep those sales numbers looking really, really healthy for hardware overall. Of course, Nintendo is the one that cares about that. For those of us that want new hardware, we're mostly talking about frame rates, performance, new possibilities for video games, VR, AR, a whole bunch of stuff like that. Who knows, maybe double screens again. Maybe we get glasses free 3D for some reason, because I don't know. It's a neat tech, but also never one doesn't really like it. I'm just saying there's a lot of different directions. Nintendo could go with future hardware that people would like to see them do. And I do think it's likely in the next 12 months, we probably see something hardware wise from Nintendo. That being said, Nintendo only is going to care about the sales data. And we'll just have to see what their new and current president, Shintaro Furukawa wants to do. But for now, 2022 was definitely a peak year for Switch. And that's really awesome, considering that that was basically year six. That's insane. Heaking in year six still. It's pretty cool. And lastly, we have an update for Nintendo Switch Online. This update's only for Europe at the moment, but highly likely going to be announced soon for the United States because they're adding a new game to the game trial that Switch NSO service offers. Nintendo Switch Online offers game trials regularly, usually to some bigger games to let you try them for free for a weekend or for a week. And then, you know, decide if you want to keep and buy the game at the end of that period. Sometimes you can even beat some of these games in that period, which I think is really cool. But this one's a little bit of a letdown. They're adding Uno on January 19th through the 26th. And you can actually download it right now. You just won't be able to play it until the 19th in Europe or if you have a European account, Switch is region free. What's interesting, though, is that Uno is a really small game. Well, it's fun to play. And I do own that and Monopoly on my Switch. It's still one of those experiences that's been regularly discounted to super cheap prices and is really easy to get. Also, if you just want to play the in real life version of Uno, it's a couple of bucks at your local Walmart or dollar store. If this is one of those games that it feels like should just be added to the service as free to play all the time. They used to do that with things like Tetris 99 and Mario 35 and a couple of other examples out there. And for some reason, they sort of went away from that win more towards the game trials, which I always thought were meant for bigger games. This is such a tiny game to add to the game trial service that it almost feels like they're doing a disservice, almost insulting us for the money we spend on NSO. Now, look, the money you spend on your $20 per year, maybe your $70 per year with the family plan or the expansion pass is well worth it to you. But a lot of us would like to see them do a bit more with stuff like this, a bit more important game trials. You know, why can't we get a game trial for Splatoon 3? Heck, they could have did a Splatoon 3 game trial during a Splatfest. That would have been a really interesting concept. Let people play Splatoon 3 for free for a weekend. Heck, you already did that already before the game came out. So why not do it again with your game trial pass? Why not do it for games that came out last year like Kirby and the Forgotten Land? Give us a game trial for that for a week. I'm just throwing out there that I think there's a better way to handle the game trials. And I also think that UNO is a bit weak. Now, I'm not expecting them to ever become like Xbox games of gold or the PlayStation Plus service, or they're adding multiple free full games every single month. But it would be nice to see Nintendo maybe start to dabble a bit more into that. And I felt like UNO would have been a great way to start. It's with a partner company and Ubisoft get UNO out there and then move on to, you know, another smaller game, maybe bring out snipper clips and hand that one out for free. Maybe golf story in celebration of sports story coming out. Hand that one out for free on the service. I just feel like there's many ways they could go with this that they're currently not doing. And UNO is just a weak addition. But I don't know, you guys, let me know what you think down in the comments below. It's just one person's opinion on the Internet. Now, that's going to wrap things up for our video today on the 12th of January. I do want to thank everyone from being here. If you really enjoy this stuff, I hope you like and decide to subscribe to the channel. We bring you lots of discussion and rumors and actual news. And hey, a really lively podcast now every single Wednesday. We just did an episode yesterday. If you haven't checked it out, we have player essence on, we have HMK. We have Kat Bergeson, Andres Restart, Mike Odyssey and my best friend, Eric Moore. Next week, we got some bro nation coming on. Oh, yes, really happy to have him come on. Oh, and in two weeks, we have an extra special episode. It's never been better, in my opinion. I think the podcast is really something special, as is everything we do here. We also have some amazing shorts we're dropping now with like cool facts. Like, hey, I kind of knew this one, but everyone doesn't. Did you know Korok seeds in Breath of the Wild are actually just poop? Like, seriously, that's that's exactly what they are. It's not just a joke at the end of the game to get your golden poo. The seeds themselves are poop, so maybe we should have expected that ending. Anyways, guys, lots of cool little facts like that in our shorts. I'll catch you guys in our next video.