I personally bought it because it looked like some innovation on the 2D Mario formula, which -to me- had become stale with New Super Mario Bros. The little I played multiplayer, I didn’t find it particularly great, mostly when players have very different level of skill. I think this might be a case of “correlation does not imply causation.” But what do I know 🤷
What’s a safe bet is -as the article says- the movie definitely helped boost sales, as it did with older titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Personally, I always loved the classic, side-on Mario games and thought the new features of this looked fun, but the best feature was the fact Nabbit and Yoshi don’t take damage. My 4 year old is autistic and wants to play video games with me but struggles. This allowed us to get through the levels together and he was so happy _ btw, they still die from falling, it still took a LOT of lives, haha.
I don’t know how many others bought it to play with their younger kids but it worked for me!
This is why companies like Nintendo need to exist. Fun for the family is really awesome and I’m glad your son was able to share such a “wonder” of a game with you!