UbiSoft has been siding with Nintendo alot lately, claiming that casual is the future and that the industry revolution is occuring as we speak. However is this only a move taken to sell more copies of games in North America to strengthen their user base and to help build a loyal user base on Nintendo's platforms or is their an alterior motive.I think that UbiSoft is doing alot of this to do something no other western games publisher has been able to do, break into Japan. Since the early days of gaming many publishers have tried and failed.
At the beggining of this generation Microsoft thought that for sure their X-Box could break into the Asian market and with their 360 they thought it was a sure deal. However Microsoft quickly realized that games that appeal to North American's don't appeal to japanese gamers. After that Microsoft began aggressively reqruiting Japanese game studios and began releasing RPG's and trying to appeal to the Japanese user base they have now aknowledged that their advertisement campaigns aren't working in Japan.
EA tried to expand into Japan as well, EA even built an EAJapan game studio. However much like Microsoft EA realized that this was pretty difficult. EA has been unable to truely get a foothold on the Japanese user base this lack has lead to EA laying off tons of employees and closing parts of EAJapan. EA is now trying their approach through the new MySims game which many say is built from the ground up to specifically target the Japanese user base.
Well much like its rival competitor UbiSoft is setting out to do what no western publisher has managed to do, its set out to break into the Japanese market. Seeing the success of Nintendo's casual games in the Japanese market place and the success of Nintendo's products in Japan UbiSoft was the first major publisher to jump onboard for the Wii. Its no doubt that RedSteel wasn't a coincidance taking place in Japan and featuring none other then the Japanese Yakuza the game clearly targets the Japanese user base that bought into Sega's Yakuza game last year. UbiSoft is now targetting the same casual base Nintendo had so much success with on DS. UbiSoft's first year line-up for Wii includes the ever popular Petz games and they will likely make a huge splash in Japan where Nintendogs dominated charts. Dogz, Catz and Horsez are likely all to have a huge impact on the Japanese market without Nintendogs to compete with. Then the Coach series such as Word Coach could easily be brought to Japan as English trainer Wii, the English trainer games on DS were a huge hit and I have no doubt that a Wii one would be another major hit.
So am I wrong in my assumptions , I mean UbiSoft recently poored a huge investment into UbiSoft Asia's Korean and other Asian offices. Infact UbiSoft built a new studio devoted wholly to the developement of Casual games. It would seem that UbiSoft is using the Wii to really make an impact in Japan, what's your take on UbiSoft's new direction?
