Aielyn said:
Want me to count the ways that it's a bad decision? Let's do it.
1. Ubisoft Montpellier just had a massive crunch time, getting the game ready for release on the Wii U by the February release date. It was an extremely stressful time for the developers, and they even had to bring in extra staff from recently-finished titles to get it done. They had it ready some time in January. The dev team were looking forward to a well-earned rest. And then Ubisoft's management decided to change their minds after the game was ready to press to disc, and said "nope, you're going to work on porting it to 360 and PS3 right now... oh, and we're not going to release the game you just worked so hard on until you're finished with the other ones, so no game-finishing bonus for you now, either". In short, Ubisoft management screwed over the dev team.
The decision to go multiplatform isn't bad. It was the original decision to be Wii U exclusive that was bad. It should never have been a Wii U exclusive in the first place. The Wii U has the smallest userbase and it had no need for touch screen gameplay. It should have been planned as a multiplatform game from the begining. This was a correction of a bad decision.
2. Ubisoft had spent the last... year, basically... talking up how the game was being developed specifically with the Upad in mind, it was being designed around the Wii U and wasn't going to work on another platform as a result. With this announcement, either they've confirmed their stupidity or their dishonesty. Either way, it's bad for Ubisoft.
Who cares? The Upad features may appeal to some, but they aren't needed. Platform fans like to hit buttons. The first game didn't need a touch screen and everyone on PS3 and Xbox 360 won't miss the touch gimicks. I doubt even the most hardore Wii U fans are dieing to play a platformer that asks you to pull your hand away from buttons to do non-platforming stuff.
3. Ubisoft had a strong relationship with Nintendo. Nintendo had been pushing Rayman Legends. HARD. They had Rayman Legends running on half of the Wii U demo stations at Nintendo World Store and on a large number of in-store demo units around the world. Nintendo were basically marketing the game for Ubisoft. Ubisoft have basically now screwed Nintendo over with this announcement, and likely harmed their relationship with Nintendo.
Ubisoft has a strong relationship with all the console makers. Yes Nintendo was pushing it, but only because Nintendo had little else to push. It's not Ubisofts fault that it has taken Nintendo so long to anounce anything more exciting than a 2D platformer.
4. A lot of people bought a Wii U specifically because of Rayman Legends. Many more were planning to do so very soon. There are a lot of messages on Ubisoft's facebook page about people cancelling their Rayman Legends preorders as a result of the decision. If Ubisoft had announced it as a multiplatform title six months ago, and delayed it by three months, it would have been fine. It was less than a month from the release date when they changed their minds - consumers don't generally like that sort of thing.
Who? Rayman Legends is a niche title in a niche series. It's not a system seller no matter how much critics talk it up. I love platformers, but even I have to admit that unless it has Mario in the title it's not going to sell big. Even Sonic can't catch a break and Generations was fantastic. I'm sure there are some Nintendo diehards that are pissed, but they are minority. The majority will be buying the game on other platforms simply because far more people own PS360s than Wii Us.
5. The Wii U lineup at the moment is very sparse. There also aren't that many notable titles releasing on other platforms. February was the perfect time for Rayman Legends to release on the Wii U - leveraging all those platformer-lovers who bought NSMB U, who currently don't have much more to play on the system, Rayman Legends would likely have done exceptionally well, selling half a million comfortably within the first month or so, and probably managing more than 1.5 million lifetime, with the added benefit of being "one of the first great games for the Wii U". That benefit is really only good until about April, at which point the flow of games starts to increase significantly. Furthermore, it would have established a strong Ubisoft fanbase on the Wii U that would be able to be leveraged by Ubisoft with future titles.
It's not Ubisoft's job to bulster Nintendo's lineup. That's Nintendo's job. If Nintendo wanted it exclusive they could have paid Ubisoft to make it so. But they didn't and Ubisoft decided that they needed to port it. Maybe Ubisoft thought the Wii U was going to do Wii numbers and thought a Wii U only game would sell like hotcakes. It turned out that the Wii U isn't the next Wii and they know they can't do without other platforms.
Also. Speculating sales numbers between Wii U and multiplatform seems pointless to me. Only the most hardcore of Nintendo fans care if the game is exclusive. Everyone else interested in the game will walk into Gamestop and buy it for what ever system they own. That's what Ubisoft wants. The Wii U can not support the game by itself.
6. In contrast to 5, releasing in September is perhaps the least sensible option. This puts the game up against a lot - the new consoles from Sony and MS will have been announced, GTA V will be set for release, along with quite a few other major titles. On the Wii U, it is likely that it will face competition from Yarn Yoshi (another platformer), Wind Waker U, The Wonderful 101, and Pikmin 3, all of which will be exclusives that draw a lot more interest. This means that a September release will be problematic for the game on all three platforms.
Rayman Legends does not compete with GTA. As for the others, they don't have fixed release dates. I'm sure Ubisoft ran the numbers and found that the Wii U just isn't big enought to justify an exclusive. Maybe they didn't like the Zombi U numbers and decided not to do that again.
7. And finally, there's the hypocrisy issue. Apparently, a "lot" of PS3 and 360 owners were sad that the game wasn't releasing on their platform, and so Ubisoft delayed the Wii U version so that they could port it to the other platforms. Funny how they couldn't even delay the PS3/360 releases of Assassin's Creed 3 by a few weeks to align with the Wii U launch. Funny how they still haven't announced Watch Dogs for the Wii U, even though a lot of Wii U owners are clamouring for the game. Funny how releasing other games on the Wii U doesn't seem to be important to Ubisoft, who claim to be "strongly" supporting the Wii U. And in the meantime, they announce that that "exclusive" title is going multiplatform, but don't worry, you'll get an "exclusive demo" (as though anybody would now believe that the demo will be exclusive, when the game itself was supposed to be, but they changed their minds at the last minute).
Nobody but the most hardcore fanboys keep track of that kind of stuff. People always want games on their system of choice. Publishers release games for money, not so system fanboys can carve a notch in their console ware belt. Ubisoft would love to strongly support the Wii U, but they probably found that the Wii U can't support them alone.
Note that nobody is actually complaining about it no longer being an exclusive... at least, not really. If Ubisoft had gone "Given the strong feedback from Wii U owners about the quality of the demo, and the calls from so many PS3 and 360 owners for the game to be released on their systems, we at Ubisoft have decided to begin work on porting the game to the PS3 and 360. There will be some content cut due to the different control schemes, but we will replace it with alternate content suited to those platforms. Expect the PS3 and 360 versions early in 2014", nobody, and I mean nobody, would have had a problem with it. The extra time to work on porting the PS3 and 360 versions would have ensured better quality, and most PS3/360 owners aren't going to upgrade in the first few months, so this would appeal to those gamers greatly, while serving them a game at a time when there's little competition. Meanwhile, the Wii U would have its early release, garnering strong Wii U support and establishing the word of mouth that would result in strong sales on PS3 and 360. And the fact that the PS3 and 360 would have content exclusive to those versions would ensure that neither Sony nor MS would have a problem with it.
Instead, they've delayed the game to a time that will basically kill any chance of the game doing well, screwing both the consumer and the dev team, lost all of the goodwill that the game had amongst Wii U owners, significantly negatively impacted Ubisoft's image, screwed over Nintendo with regards to marketing, and all for what? Maybe the same total sales across three platforms that they would have had on the Wii U alone?
The only decision that would have screwed anyone would have been to NOT port it to all platforms. When it was a Wii U exclusive, Ubisoft was screwing those without Wii Us. They fixed it and now more people get to play it. The tiny amount of people who care about exclusives may be pissed, but that negative is completely offset by the goodwill of releasing it to the majority.
It is, quite simply, a bad decision. A stupid decision.
Nope, it's smart an better for everyone.
|
