Davide Soliani has left Ubisoft after 25 years with the company.
Davide Soliani has left Ubisoft after 25 years with the company.
The developer had served as creative director on both ‘Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle’ and the most recent ‘Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope’, though has announced he will be parting ways with the studio to “embark on a new adventure”.
Taking to X, he posted a photo of himself at the E3 2017 presentation - where he became known as the ‘Ubisoft Crying Man’ after his emotional reaction to Nintendo boss Shigeru Miyamoto’s kind words to him - and wrote: “Hi all folks. After 25 years, 11 of which beautifully spent working with Nintendo on 'Mario+Rabbids' along the company of our incredible community of players, I have decided to leave Ubisoft to embark on a new adventure. I can't say more now. Thanks a lot for everything, truly (sic).”
The official Ubisoft account quickly responded to the news and wished the industry veteran good luck for his upcoming “journey”.
The company tweeted: “Thank you so much for all your incredible work Davide! It's our turn to cry
this time (sic). Best wishes for the worlds you'll journey through next!”
Both of Soliani’s titles were received well by players and critics alike upon their releases, though Ubisoft later conceded the second game had not met their expectations, with CEO Yves Guillemot admitting the business “should have waited” for the next Nintendo Switch console.
In a statement, he said: “We had already released a ‘Mario Rabbids’ game [on Switch], so by doing another we had two similar experiences on one machine. On Nintendo, games like this never die. There are 25 Mario games on Switch.
“Nintendo [has advised] that it's better to do one iteration on each machine. We were a bit too early, we should have waited.”