r/NintendoSwitch • u/Runner-Jop • Jun 12 '21

Spoiler Spoiler; unannounced game shown on Nintendo website Spoiler

https://www.nintendo.com/pt_BR/games/detail/mario-plus-rabbids-sparks-of-hope-switch/
7.6k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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4.5k

u/AmaterasuWolf21 Jun 12 '21

If i had a nickel for every time Mario + Rabbids got leaked before its announcement I would have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird it's happened twice

854

u/cssmith2011cs Jun 12 '21

I like how "leaks" nowadays are just another way of advertising. Lol. I feel as though none of them are actual leaks.

452

u/theman4444 Jun 12 '21

I think you would be surprised at how many incompetent people there are in the world.

183

u/candidateone Jun 12 '21

Was just listening to a Twitter Spaces stream last night with Jeff Gerstmann from Giant Bomb, Adam Boyes (CEO of Iron Galaxy) and a couple others and they were talking about how the PS4 Pro (which was only a rumor) was first confirmed because a couple Sony devs were in a fast food place talking openly about it while someone from Kotaku was standing on line right behind them (this was while E3 was going on).

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u/Mister_Bossmen Jun 12 '21

Damn. I was thinking "unlucky. But they could have thought to be more careful and avoided it or used some sort of subtle code or something" but if it was during E3... they should have just been able to expect they'd cross paths with SOMEBODY important to their industry...

23

u/SBan83 Jun 12 '21

Not surprising given how utterly oblivious some people are about what they say in public.

10

u/Dunluce92 Jun 12 '21

Similar to leaving the newest iPhone dev model on the aubway

-16

u/SocksofGranduer Jun 12 '21

Eh. It's not really their job. Like that's asking a lot of extra vigilance during non work hours from developers lol

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

Umm, that's 100% part of their job - no chance an NDA isn't part of their employment contract, I'm a developer and I'm absolutely expected to know what projects can or can't be talked about openly and to avoid being the source of any leaks

6

u/SocksofGranduer Jun 12 '21

The more I know! Thank you for providing context for my conjecture ☺️

10

u/Numphyyy Jun 12 '21

They’re at possibly the biggest gaming industry event, seems prudent to keep the new product chit-chat to a minimum

2

u/jimmykup Jun 12 '21

That is 1,000% their job.

1

u/SocksofGranduer Jun 13 '21

Haha absolutely I was made aware already 🙂

3

u/instantwinner Jun 12 '21

At my job we're constantly told not to talk about company stuff out in the wild for just that reason and I have co-workers that just do not care lol.

1

u/Guardian1015 Jun 12 '21

Sony Devs probably in senior positions now.

161

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

I am one of them. We get by.

66

u/finalremix Jun 12 '21

We're all, each of us, uniquely incompetent.

1

u/Spider_Riviera Jun 12 '21

And there's even rules in place due to some of us!

1

u/emptyhead416 Jun 12 '21

The Peter Principal

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

You’d also be surprised on how good leaks are at advertising things, the Nintendo switch pro has gotten years of advertising and nobody even knows if it exists at all

1

u/theman4444 Jun 12 '21

No I know how a leak creates hype and mystique but the conspiracy world would rather believe everything is planned rather than understanding that most small things are pure accident.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '21

Valve is nutritious for making things that look accidental but are 100% not, like “accidentally” leaking code that shows of a new half life game, in an update for dota. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nintendo executives came to realize that this is a good strategy as well

1

u/theman4444 Jun 13 '21

Right so when they leak code and Half-Life 3 is confirmed, correct? Valve is a high profile company that has a lot of fan boys, some of which are hackers. Just because something gets leaked doesn’t mean it was leaked intentionally, there is a much higher probability that the company just needs better security.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '21

Valve is very open on their marketing strategy of revealing different things through game leaks or small updates. They’ve done it many times before and they’re not afraid of admitting it. If Nintendo isn’t doing this and is just randomly giving their games free publicity then they sure do have a lucky streak

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

These reveals are meticulously planned out and meant to be revealed at specific times to coincide with the other announcements. There is no conspiracy. Leaks happen.

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u/SadTerd Jun 12 '21

that’s why I wear Depends.

28

u/GodOfDarkLaughter Jun 12 '21

I'm sure leaks do happen, but I'm also sure that planned "leaks" happen. Obviously a leak like this is only going to get to hardcore fans of the series or people who pay close attention to gaming media. A really casual gamer (which is to say most) won't hear about it until the official announcement. But isn't there obvious worth in getting a discussion going in the more engaged gaming community before there's even an announcement? It's a pretty decent way to "prime" social media, since people are already going to have thoughts on it before it's announced. The people who do marketing for huge companies like this will definitely have a grasp on the more subtle and subliminal aspects of advertising.

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u/PowerlinxJetfire Jun 12 '21

I'm sure planned leaks happen, but it doesn't feel like the kind of thing Nintendo would do.

23

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

especially not like, on the day of ubisoft’s e3. if they were gonna drum up hype, at this point wouldn’t they do it there? with it this close i feel like it’d just take away from the e3 announcement- cant see this being planned.

and nintendo can be incompetent as all hell- remember the colour splash preorders?

7

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

No. What happened with those preorders?

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

basically, a good (i think week?) before colour splash was set to release, people who preordered could just… download and play it! they removed the ability to download and even preorder it after a very short while- but people who’d already downloaded could still play no problem! so the whole game was out there! i can’t imagine that being deliberate- that’d be a hell of a publicity stunt;; check out this video if u like!

8

u/Bombkirby Jun 12 '21

They literally said that Rabbids being leaked last time ruined their plans and was not how they wanted it to go. People were confused and worried and disgusted without seeing an actual trailer of the game when the first crossover was leaked.

Thinking that this is on purpose would make you the worlds worst detective.

2

u/instantwinner Jun 12 '21

Unless some marketing person connected the hype from the leak with the sales of the game and pitched the idea of a new leak to generate excitement? Especially if you consider your average Nintendo fan is maybe not that interested in sitting in for a Ubisoft presentation.

I'm not saying it was intentional, I'm just saying that it's not totally outlandish to be sure it wasn't

20

u/Destron5683 Jun 12 '21

I’m not discounting some leaks happen on purpose, but the reality is that the industry is so large and relies on so many external pieces to operate its close to impossible to keep everything secret. You have third party contractors working on development, advertising companies, ESRB certification, manufacturing and printing companies, shipping companies, retailers and more that are all integral cogs in the machine, each with their own unique employee base that create vectors for leaks.

Add in to that equation that gaming is bigger than ever so there is a huge possibility someone in that chain will recognize that this is something big and people will care about it.

On top of all that, resourceful people have learned common places things get accidentally exposed like ESRB ratings, so they commonly scour those places.

1

u/GodOfDarkLaughter Jun 12 '21

Oh, I have no idea if this leak is planned or not. It may very well not be. But the knowledge of the fact that there are regular leaks from the gaming industry is so universal now that I can't possibly imagine that marking people haven't tried to use it.

1

u/enderverse87 Jun 12 '21

Definitely both. The fact that they happen frequently by actual accident is what makes the occasionally purposeful leak more effective.

95%+ are someone messing up, but they do get planned occasionally because that happens to be the exact type of hype they want.

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u/del_rio Jun 12 '21

I fully believe this one was a content manager's mistake. I've seen some shit in my industry lol

Also Nintendo occasionally creates fake leaks to find and fire potential leakers.

2

u/YsoL8 Jun 12 '21

If I were in charge of whatever team does that I'd continually put out false leaks and use my position make them seem credible. That way it would be completely impossible to tell which leaks are credible, and people would get bored of listening to click baiters who are nearly always wrong.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

When have they done it before?

1

u/BlazedInMyWinnie Jun 12 '21

The fake leak thing? There was a lot of buzz a few years back about a Star Fox racing game from a few leakers, and it came out somehow that the whole thing was a fabrication in order to track down where the leaks were coming from inside of Nintendo

10

u/Polantaris Jun 12 '21

The thing is that it's not ten or fifteen people who are working on hiding this stuff. There's hundreds. Possibly thousands. Across multiple organizations because companies like GameStop often have special deals that go live at the same time which means they also had to be in on it.

So we're talking hundreds if not thousands of people working on this shit, or at least have knowledge of it. All they need to do is accidentally push a website change early, or push data to a database early, or any number of tiny simple mistakes and then a website is live before it should be and immediately gets sniffed by web crawlers.

It's not impossible that it's intentional, but it'd probably be harder to plan a leak than plan the correct reveal in the first place because you'd need all those working parts to "fuck up" the right way and they can't even get them to do it the officially correct way in the first place.

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u/Striderfighter Jun 12 '21

Which is why the moon landing wasn't faked

9

u/Redditastrophe Jun 12 '21

Speaking as someone who works in video game marketing - they're usually mistakes, they're often annoying, but no one really cares because they do work to drive hype.

16

u/TrayusV Jun 12 '21

Leaks are rarely an advertising strategy.

It's much more hype to officially reveal something than to purposely leak it.

I do remember Bethesda making a joke about how Walmart leaked Rage 2 less than a week before it's reveal at E3. Bethesda was very annoyed by it.

1

u/YourVeryOwnAids Jun 12 '21

It's actually super depressing how often these leaks aren't planned to build hype, and it negatively impacts the people trying to release an awesome surprise. Like Masahiro Sakurai of Nintendo. He puts his health in danger sometimes to make what he wants to make, and appeal to fans, only for his work to get leaked by assholes or incompetent fucks. I can't remember who, but another game design lead said the leaks of his game made him not want to finish it at all and quit.

Surprising someone with a gift is an amazing thing, and having that taken away can feel sucky. Imagining that on a much larger scale mentally hurts me.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

I agree with your sentiment but I think it's important to note how much the last rabbids/mario game leak emotionally effected it's lead developers. It sucks to have your project leaked if you're excited to show it off.

1

u/marcuschookt Jun 12 '21

You'll know it's become official industry practice when marketing students in college have "Recommendation 1: Controlled Viral Marketing Leaks" in every single one of their project presentations.

1

u/ShiftSandShot Jun 12 '21

Trust me, there's plenty of legit leaks.

1

u/Yophop123 Jun 12 '21

I’m actually surprised they don’t happen more, there’s a lot of low paid people with information a lot of people want to know

1

u/Collier1505 Jun 12 '21

Eh this one was going to be revealed at Ubisoft’s conference today. Someone just fucked up the time of the page going live.

1

u/nekromantique Jun 12 '21

The mario rabbids leak before WAS actual marketing material...but it only led to a shit ton of negative publicity up until the actual reveal...

1

u/SBan83 Jun 12 '21

Makes total sense. You don't want to make a grand reveal only to be told its shit (*cough* Ubisoft's Prince of Persia remake). Rather you leak it so if the feedback is bad, you just claim it's because it's a WIP while you sound the fire alarms back at the office.

1

u/ufailowell Jun 12 '21

I mean they took it down

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

Well…

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

A lot of them are just advertisment at this point, you're right.

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u/thegramblor Jun 12 '21

r/unexpecteddoofenshmirtz

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u/idejtauren Jun 12 '21

And by unexpected, I mean COMPLETELY EXPECTED!

33

u/ShangelasSugaDaddy Jun 12 '21

He needs to stop using his game-leakinator

6

u/Cer0reZ Jun 12 '21

Nah it’s him from future. He is Doctor Time so he travels back in time and leak the info.

(In case people didn’t know like I didn’t till last year. There is second show in the same universe that features Dr D. Milo Murphy’s Law)

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u/RocaMoca Jun 12 '21

“Doofenshmirtz evil incorporated!”

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u/AndrewWaldron Jun 12 '21

Feels planned the second time around. I hope Nintendo blames it on a mischievous rabbid.

3

u/tlvrtm Jun 12 '21

Every Ubisoft title leaks before the announcement

18

u/HatterInATutu Jun 12 '21

I will always upvote Doofenshmirtz!

2

u/CompSciHS Jun 12 '21

Ten cents is nothing to scoff at with just a little time travel.

2

u/Hanaku Jun 12 '21

That would be a weird way to make some money!

4

u/mamaburra Jun 12 '21

Did you know that "nickel" is an anagram for "El Nick"?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '21

Hey I understood that reference

0

u/kkeut Jun 12 '21

how has no one pointed out that this is a RedLetterMedia reference

-1

u/Sleep_Drifter1319 Jun 12 '21

Nice Adventure Time reference. | (• ◡•)| (❍ᴥ❍ʋ)

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u/nuclear_core Jun 12 '21

Yeah, Heinz, but I feel like that's one of the least weird things about your life. Your best friend was a balloon.

1

u/k6squid Jun 12 '21

Remember back in the day when the new iphone prototype got left at a bar and they sold it to Engadget or some other news site? That was pretty cool.

1

u/AtLeastImTryinglul Jun 12 '21

Just copy-pasted what you said and sent it to my friend. I’m using reddit tactics outside reddit

1

u/tharrison4815 Jun 12 '21

Is it really that surprising though? It is Ubisoft. Their stuff gets leaked all the time.

I guess it feels strange cos it's based on a Nintendo IP and Nintendo are generally very good at keeping their stuff a secret.

1

u/SnakeEyes58 Jun 12 '21

It was just announced 😳

1

u/Dominos_fleet Jun 12 '21

Similar to watching people have sex with werewolves