Ubisoft CEO suspects Wii U will be a success; Wii 45% of company's business
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot discusses Ubisoft's success with the Wii and says he expects Nintendo's Wii U will be a success when it arrives.
Though sales for Nintendo's Wii console are on the decline, publisher Ubisoft remains dedicated to the console. According to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, Nintendo's ability to reach mass market success with the original Wii has him sold on its successor, the Wii U.
"We are big believers in the Wii U, on two subjects," Guillemot said. "One is for high-end games, where we'll be able to do a game for the Wii U, but also for other [high-definition] machines, but also with specific use of [Wii U's] tablet. Two, is we like the Wii U for all the [potential of] casual games."
Ubisoft is known for jumping on board with new technology early. As quickly as it supported Nintendo's console at launch, the company did the same for Microsoft's Kinect peripheral. Ubisoft continues to support the Wii, and remains one of the few third-party companies to successfully crack the secrets to selling software on the platform.
"Today, the Wii still is 45 percent of our business," Guillemot told Gamasutra. "Just Dance, all those casual games, are selling extremely well. So we are supporting the machine because we believe Nintendo is going to push it to another level." Guillemot reiterated his point, saying he believes the Wii U will be a success.
Though the CEO is unclear what audience will be "addressed" when the Wii U is launched, it shows potential. But his comments seem specifically geared toward the mass market. "What we see is the ease of play is a part of the revolution we are seeing today. The fact that it's easier to access games is what can make more people play. Maybe they can do a good job there."
Only time will tell for the Wii U, but it's safe to say Ubisoft has a sure hit on its hands if Just Dance is a franchise that makes the next-gen jump.
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replyXav de Matos posted a new article, Ubisoft CEO suspects Wii U will be a success; Wii 45% of company's business.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot discusses Ubisoft's success with the Wii and says he expects Nintendo's Wii U will be a success when it arrives.-
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I love how they sold a shitload of Wii's to non gamers and for lack of a better word, fad following hipster types. Now those consoles sit idle under televisions.
Whereas the PS3 and 360, slower out the gate have a far more loyal, traditional fanbase of gamers - who were slower to adopt the console at 2x the price, have been slowly buying more and more games for them (I'm up to 30 or so for my PS3)
I believe the Wii caused huge damage to Nintendos original traditional fanbase and while they got the short money fast, I'm not convinced they will have so much luck with the Wii U -
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I suspect casual gamers treated the Wii as a fad. Ubisoft thrived on the mostly female/casual market and I don't think it'll be as lucrative as it once was.
I also don't think it's ignoring adult gamers that's the problem. While the other consoles have a ton of varied AAA games available to them, Nintendo relies mostly on it's first party titles and there just isn't enough of them to make the platform interesting. I'm also extremely pissed off at the amount of quality DS games that never even make it to the USA/Europe. Nintendo have come up with so many reasons for why the 3DS is struggling, while I've not seen one mention of the simple fact that there just enough games available there. -
Tey were far too quick to abandon the "core" market in response to the Wii's success with a wider demographic, but they're feeling the pain of losing that reliable revenue stream now.
Hopefully they've learned that lesson and work to strike a better balance this time around. The company certainly still has a huge amount to offer the enthusiast market. -
They can probably remain relevant on one more console cycle by hitting the same demographic they did with the Wii, but I won't be surprised if they see a 50% drop in hardware sales as most of the demographic will be fine with their Wii and Wii Sports.
After that, they will have to make some serious considerations to re-capture the core market or face too small of a userbase to be able to effectively make any money. -
They've lost a lot of potential customer's with their handling of the Wii. I picked one up because at the time it was innovative, but I stopped playing it and eventually sold my Wii because of the lack of quality first party games, and because the waggle gimmick wore off quickly.
So far I've seen nothing for the Wii-U that dispels my belief that they're going to maintain the status quo. You can only use one of their new controllers at a time, it doesn't look like it's going to be as comfortable or practical as a regular controller, and I doubt publishers are going to make an effort to utilize it for anything but a gimmick.
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Ubisoft also published the No More Heroes franchise, Red Steel 2 (the good one), the Rabbids series, and Just Dance. Just saying.
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http://www.ubi.com/US/Games/Search.aspx?plTag=wii
Seems like they take a concept and run it into the ground as their Wii strategy. I see nothing but licensed titles, Dance games, save a few original IPs that were actually worth a damn.
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Note this is also the same person who thought that laser tag game was going to be such a huge hit that they spent ~20 minutes of the ubisoft presentation last year on it.
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