Video gaming veteran Nintendo (NTDOY -1.16%) just announced the first Mario game of 2020. Paper Mario: The Origami King will be launched for the Nintendo Switch console on July 17, in keeping with the roughly four-year cadence of new titles in the Paper Mario series.
Image source: Nintendo.
New dimensions in the Paper Mario world
The game will see Mario chase new super-villain King Olly, whose evil ambition is to fold the entire world. As usual, Princess Peach has been kidnapped and absconded to a faraway mountain, and our hero will have to navigate a mixture of two- and three-dimensional spaces to save her. Origami King uses a new battle system that turns fights into puzzle-solving minigames.
The game will be available for $60 in the Nintendo eShop and other retail outlets. You can already pre-order the game.
The series unfolds
Paper Mario titles have been reliable success stories for Nintendo since the Nintendo 64 version launched in 2000. That title shifted 1.4 million units, followed by 1.2 million discs of the GameCube installment and 2.3 million units of the Wii game, Super Paper Mario. Paper Mario: Sticker Star shipped 2.2 million cartridges for the mobile 3DS system. The series missed a beat in the Wii U generation, selling just 186,000 units of the last Mario game ever produced for that unpopular gaming system.
Origami King has the benefit of running on a far more popular console, boding well for the series' return to high sales. Nintendo has sold 56 million Switch consoles to date while the Wii U stopped at 13.6 million, and the console's sale growth is still accelerating.
