There was never a chance of Super Mario Odyssey on Wii U, producer says

Could we see Odyssey 2 in a few years?

With Nintendo’s lengthy “it’s done when it’s done” development cycles, it’s easy to think that some games started life on older platforms before they migrated over into the modern era. But that’s not the case for Mario Odyssey, according to its producer Yoshiaki Koizumi. Speaking to Game Informer, he explains plainly, “It was always planned for Nintendo Switch. We really were considering a lot of the hardware capabilities specifically for this game, and wanted to make the most use of them.”

Just in case it wasn’t clear, he goes on to note, “I think the idea of what the Nintendo Switch is became very important around here, because it can both function as a console or portable device. We really thought about what sort of software features would make the best use of those capabilities. Super Mario Odyssey really answers to a lot of that capability in the way we had hoped. We wanted to time it for year-end release to make the most of that as well.”

While the “it’s a portable and a console” line is a marketing term pretty much every studio arm uses, and you can see the tap-dancing routine around the failure of the Wii U from here, it does make sense. By the time Odyssey started development the writing was on the wall for the Wii U and it wouldn’t make sense to waste it on a bust as the damage had already been done.

Mario Odyssey [Game Informer via Nintendo Life]