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hinch on 19 August 2014
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padib said:
DerNebel said:

How is Shovel Knight a good example against the point the CEO is making? The game is basically one big love letter to the great games of the NES era, especially Megaman, if there was any group of people this game just had to appeal to then it was the oldschool Nintendo fans, do you expect every third party developer to tailor their games specifically to Nintendo fans tastes?

What he says is right, Nintendo customers haven't bought the last AC games. Nintendo customers haven't bought many M rated games overall, especially third party multiplats. Nintendo customers have on the other hand bought a lot of Just Dance, though I see that declining sharply over the next years. So what of what he said is bothering you here?

Everything about it bothers me, it makes no business sense. Rayman did not sell well either I don't hear him saying that non-"mature" games sell badly on the U.

The bottom line is that games can sell well on the U if you play your cards right. Let's just say Ubi failed badly at making money on the U, and Just Dance I doubt will help them any more.

You make stupid decisions, you pay the price. At 700k sales for ZombiU, there is money to be made. Sure they were unprofitable for Zombi U, but it doesn't negate the fact that 700k is a lot of sales for a game. The highly acclaimed Demon's Soul sold 1.5m. It's not GTA sales but it's still decent. If the budget were better managed and marketing was more strategic, it's no stretch of the imagination that a game selling 700k on the U with last gen graphics could be profitable.

Shovel Knight is a great example because that indie dev is happy with their results on the U and are making money. Sure it's on a smaller scale but the lessons are equally applicable. Grow the budget a little and it's basically the same equation.

 Yves Guillemot on Zombie U and Rayman Legends -

 

"Yves Guillemot, Chairman and CEO of Ubisoft, is typically one of the biggest proponents of new systems, but betting big on the Wii U didn't work out well for the company. ZombiU, one of the most popular launch titles for the system with players, was not profitable, he says. Not even close. As such, he says, there are no plans (or even desire) for a sequel.
It was, in fact, because of that game's performance that Ubisoft decided to make Rayman Legends a multiplatform game.

For EA, at least, it's the system's lack of a rich multiplayer environment that's one of the big concerns - especially for sports titles. (That's part of the reason Madden won't appear on the system this year.)
"The lack of online engagement that we see on Wii U [is troubling]," says Moore. "It's so integral to what we do. They're so small it's hardly worth running the servers. It seems like a box that's out of sync with the future of EA - which is one that gives a real social feel to our games. The Wii U feels like an offline experience right now."


For one thing Zombie U was a launch title. Secondly, it was heavily bundled with Wii U (Deluxe) systems. Going by sales of earlier games, it makes very little sense in investing in exclusive content on a platform that has yet to provide a valid reason to do so.

As for Zombie U. The game was marketed and bundled and it wasn't even close to profitable. With the sales of that and performance (all round) for third party software on Wii U and Nintendo consoles its quite easy to see why they are Ubi are wary of the platform. They tried. Which is more that can be said about other publishers.