Nintendo has broken its silence on the next Super Mario game. It has been nine years since the last proper Super Mario game was released, Super Mario Odyssey, in the launch year of the Nintendo Switch. Many assumed that its follow-up would arrive alongside the Nintendo Switch, but Nintendo surprised everyone when it revealed and then released Donkey Kong Bonanza, which took place and priority over a new 3D Mario game. This means not only did Nintendo fans not get their Nintendo Switch 2 launch Mario game, but a new Super Mario game isn’t even close.
That said, Nintendo recently acknowledged the MIA series through Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator and lead on Mario. Not only did Miyamoto acknowledge the series, but confirmed we will be getting a Super Mario Odyssey follow-up this console generation. Unfortunately, Miyamoto did not say when.
Miyamoto Teases New Super Mario Game
“With the achievement of Super Mario Odyssey, I think we’ve gotten everything we wanted out of the Switch system,” said Miyamoto in a special Mario 40th Anniversary issue of Casa Brutus. “Up to now, we’ve released new [Mario] titles with the advent of each console; I’m excited to see how the current team will handle that.”
Six years separated Super Mario Odyssey and Donkey Kong Bonanza. So if this repeats, the next Super Mario game won’t be out until 2031; however, there’s been reporting that there was a team working on a Super Mario Odyssey follow-up while Donkey Kong Bonanza was in development. If this is the case, we could see it sooner, but it’s not coming this year, and there’s little reason to expect it to come next year either. Typically, if such a huge game is on the horizon, it would start leaking, but marquee Nintendo games don’t leak often, so this is thankfully not a bad sign, but 2027 seems a bit too early.
The Nintendo Switch generation was eight years long. The Nintendo Switch 2 generation is unlikely to be longer; if anything, history suggests it will be shorter. So the Nintendo Switch 2 generation may end in the early 2030s. And Nintendo is not going to want to wait until the end of the generation to get one of its main system sellers out, so the late 2020s seems certainly plausible. Whatever the case, Nintendo fans will wait and buy it whenever it comes out.
All of that said, and as always, feel free to leave a comment or two letting us know what you think, or join the video game conversations happening over on the ComicBook Forum.
H/T, Nintendeal.