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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - ZombiU Was "Not Even Close" to Profitable, No Plans for a Sequel

Barozi on 08 July 2013
milkyjoe said:
"It was, in fact, because of that game’s performance that Ubisoft decided to make Rayman Legends a multiplatform game."

That has to be a joke. The potential of a 2D platformer being judged on the performance of a survival horror? That just makes so much sense.

Probably because they knew that ZombiU was the best selling third party game on the system regardless of the genre and therefore knew that Rayman Legends (Origins didn't do that well either) probably won't beat ZombiU in sales.



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sethnintendo on 08 July 2013

They should have made the game where 600-700k would turn a profit. This might eventually reach 1m but they should have known it wouldn't see more than 500-700k in the first year or so.



Barozi on 08 July 2013
osed125 said:
BloodyRain said:
BasilZero said:

Of course it wasnt....the Wii-U sales were enough reason to doom this game lol.

Only saving grace I can see happening is now making the game multiplat but I dont even think they'll do that due to a partnership or deal with Nintendo (plus with the name lol - unless they call it Zombi like their other game).

I don't think there expectations with zombie U was all that high especially on a new console. It must have truly been a massive fail in terms of sales then lol.

You are giving to much faith in 3rd party publishers to actually think they didn't had high expectations.

OT: This is a problem with both Ubisoft and the Wii U sales. Giving that this is a new IP for a new console there was no way they thought this would have sold that well (especially giving the reviews). Heck even with the massive launch the Wii had, Red Steel has only managed to sold 650k units (according to VGC), so it's was huge mistake from Ubisoft to actually have faith in this game.

And the Wii U sales obviously didn't helped, although the launch of the system was good, and I think ZombiU was one of the highest selling games (just behind NSMBU and NintendoLand), in fact, iirc Ubisoft said they were happy with the sales, but I'm not sure. 

Edit: if this game seriously had big development cost (let's say $20 million), then there's something very very wrong with Ubisoft (and the video game industry for that matter).

VGC has still missing European sales for early 7th gen consoles.
Red Steel was over 1m (I think 1.1m or 1.2m) before ioi accidentally removed the European sales.



Slimebeast on 08 July 2013

It's easy to say in hindsight that the game wouldn't become a success.

But at the time everybody thought it would sell fairly well. 1-1.5 million was probably a reasonable target lifetime (some copies at discount) and upside was +2 million.

Probably it cost $20 million. All AAA games cost at least $20 million. That requires 1 million copies at full price to break even.



Gamerace on 08 July 2013

I think with both this and Red Steel Ubisoft was doing counter programming to Nintendo offerings but in both cases with some mixed reviews to stifle sales. WiiU was marketed more towards an audience that would favour ZombiiU than Wii was for Red Steel and Red Steel had more competition (CoD, MoH, etc). But obviously WiiU's lack of sales is the primary problem here.
Even with no direct competition on the system for months it couldn't get sales over 500k which no doubt for even a AA games like this would mean no profit. I can't fault Ubisoft. They have been more than generous to WiiU thus far and I'm sure haven't made a penny for their efforts.



 

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osed125 on 08 July 2013
Barozi said:
osed125 said:

You are giving to much faith in 3rd party publishers to actually think they didn't had high expectations.

OT: This is a problem with both Ubisoft and the Wii U sales. Giving that this is a new IP for a new console there was no way they thought this would have sold that well (especially giving the reviews). Heck even with the massive launch the Wii had, Red Steel has only managed to sold 650k units (according to VGC), so it's was huge mistake from Ubisoft to actually have faith in this game.

And the Wii U sales obviously didn't helped, although the launch of the system was good, and I think ZombiU was one of the highest selling games (just behind NSMBU and NintendoLand), in fact, iirc Ubisoft said they were happy with the sales, but I'm not sure. 

Edit: if this game seriously had big development cost (let's say $20 million), then there's something very very wrong with Ubisoft (and the video game industry for that matter).

VGC has still missing European sales for early 7th gen consoles.
Red Steel was over 1m (I think 1.1m or 1.2m) before ioi accidentally removed the European sales.

I guess that makes sense. Although those are lifetime sales, wonder how Red Steel sold during the first 6 months of the Wii just to compare. Either way I still think Ubisoft had waaay too high expectations for this game, at most they should have expected 700k sales to break even, but from the sounds of this quote it looks like they were expecting maybe more than 1 million. 



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KHlover on 08 July 2013
Slimebeast said:
It's easy to say in hindsight that the game wouldn't become a success.

But at the time everybody thought it would sell airly well. 1-1.5 million was probably a reasonable target lifetime (some copies at discount) and upside was +2 million.

Probably it cost $20 million. All AAA games cost at least $20 million. That requires 1 million copies at full price to break even.

The problem is - in term of production value this game isn't worth anywhere near $20 million. Mediocre graphics, very restricted multiplayer, no (rendered) cutscenes, nothing. I suspect this game turned out so expensive because development was a MESS.



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attaboy on 08 July 2013

The demo was too hard and scary for me. Experimental type of game with no identifiable protagonist or story, from what I played. Production values were decent, though. What did they expect from a launch title? Halo 1 numbers?



nnodley on 08 July 2013

Shame because I really liked this game. Still have to finish it though since I got an overwhelming backlog on PS3. But I will finish it by end of summer hopefully.



snowdog on 08 July 2013

Well that's really surprising, it's done well over 500K by now including digital sales. I wonder what sort of budget they threw at it..?

And I thought they were working on a sequel..? Pretty sure I remember reading something about it a while ago..?