If cricket is played in more countries than baseball, why did they make Mario Baseball and not Mario Cricket?

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Cricket is listed as #2 (only association football surpasses it) and Baseball #8
 
Baseball is very popular in Japan and Nintendo used to own a Baseball team
 
^what klinsy said and also cricket is only really popular in the commonwealth (of which the extremely populous india is a part; i can only assume that accounts for a ton of fans of this sport). i doubt nintendo has any desire to chase that market in particular considering their strongest sales potential lies in the US, japan, and europe as a whole (commonwealth countries being a fraction of the last one). 2 of these regions are big on baseball to say the least.
 
Literally nobody cares about cricket outside of the specific regions it's played, it's only the number 2 most popular sport because those regions include South Asia, which has literally 1.94 billion people living there as of 2022.

In 2016, it was estimated that there were a grand total of 3000 players of cricket in Japan (Source) and, until the 1980s, the sport was pretty much exclusively played by foreigners in the country. (Source)

Contrast that with baseball which is literally the most popular sport in Japan. Nippon Professional Baseball is Japan's largest professional sports league in terms of both TV ratings and spectators.

So it's pretty easy to see why Nintendo would make Mario baseball rather than Mario cricket.
 
To be frank, Nintendo and the games industry as a whole has a huge America and Japan bias. Even though cricket is hugely popular, it's not played in those regions and will probably remain a blind spot for a good while.

I have a few weird insights about this because my old employer used to make cricket games. If Nintendo were to develop one, these are some challenges they'd face:
- It is a very popular sport, but a lot of places where it is popular have low incomes. Many fans can't afford to buy a console and a game
- There are a lot of different leagues and different cultures gravitate towards different ones. Eg: Australia and England like The Ashes but India does not. So they can either choose to cater to some or spend a lot of time trying to cater to all
- Cricket is by far the most annoying sport to simulate. It has so many random rules and physics that baseball, soccer, literally any other sport doesn't have to deal with. And that's not getting into rule variations for different leagues

But at least there's Big Bash Boom for PS4, XB1, PC and Switch if you want to scratch your Mario-sports itch in cricket form 🙃
 
Soccer has a pretty sizeable scene in both United States and Japan, but like Mario got a soccer game a decade or so after tennis and golf.

Hell it might be worth asking why Mario Baseball has only two installments (and maybe this one side sport in Mario Sports Superstars) and came way after tennis and golf, and even after mahjong somehow.
 
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