Ubisoft: Wii U Owners Don’t Buy Assassin’s Creed; More Interested in Just Dance

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padib said:

I hear you for the Vita, it deserves more.

I think you're wrong about the U though. It's not up to Ninty to make money for 3rd parties, I think that is a really lame way of looking at this issue. Again, ZombiU. Sells 700k, how in the world was that not profitable? Demon's Soul sells 1.5mil, and the devs were very happy with it. What's wrong in this picture?

There is money to make on the U, and a business has every reason to look to make money where it can be made. If they are too incompetent to, I agree with you that they shouldn't try. But if they are competent, you can be sure that it's not Nintendo fans that are stopping them. The U has sold more than the Xbone, there is an audience to sell games to.

But it was only up to Nintendo to release such an underpowered console. A console that can't run multiplats the way they are designed to play. This causes Wii U ports to be worth less in the eyes of gamers and they skip this version - thus the bad sales (I'd never choose a Wii U version of a multiplat over a PS4 version, not only because of graphics, but even such a stupid thing like trophies). If Nintendo decided to go upstream, search for a niche, then they are responsible to make this whole endeavour worthwhile for their partners. Look at Ubi - what kind of a company is it? It's a company that makes AC, FarCry, Tom Clancy's, Watch Dogs, etc. Core games. If their games don't sell on a given platform, should they bend over backwards and at any cost create games that would sell on it? Or should they stick to their guns and continue releasing massive hits on PS and Xbox platforms? It's not their fault that Nintendo shaped the Nintendo gamer the way it did. It's not their fault, that AC doesn't sell on Wii U.

Every company has shaped its gamer and we all know that. Xbox crowd is mainly FPS oriented (MS did it with Halo and CoD deals). PS crowd is more varied in taste, more TPP and jRPG fans here (Sony did it releasing many different games covering different genres and getting the most jRPGs in the past). Wii crowd is people playing cartoony games (Nintendo did this releasing pretty much only casual and cartoony games). If anyone is to fight to try and change its image and its gamer, it's the company itself, not 3rd parties.

Nintendo made two massive mistakes. One - Wii U is too underpowered. Two - they have neglected the mature franchises. And they are too stubborn to realize this. The best selling Zelda games are the mature ones. Still, the next one remains kinda cartoony (though bearable). People are voting with their wallets to get a mature Zelda, yet Nintendo doesn't get the message. If they keep neglecting mature gamers, don't release mature games, 3rd parties won't be giving them any, cause people who were interested in such content leave the platform. The only positive thing I find is the fact that Nintendo did acquire Bayo2 and the Xeno franchise, there is also Devil's Third coming. Maybe, just maybe, they'll manage to convince some of their gamers to get into mature games. We'll see, these are steps in the right direction, but they will need more than just these and it will take years to get Nintendo gamers into more mature content.

You keep talking about Zombi U as an example of success. You are aware, that the reason it sold that much is the combination of being a launch title, getting a great bundle and being exclusive. Even if we leave the first two factors out of it, exclusivity is mandatory to sell at all on Wii U. As AC and CoD have proven, the console is way too underpowered to run PS4One ports on par with these consoles and gamers don't buy them for being inferior/not liking such games. So now you say - make exclusive games! The development is going to be even cheaper! Cool. So a 3rd party dev makes a game for the Wii U with a lower Wii U level of graphics... So why not put it on PS360? They can run Wii U games easily. So what happens? Wii U loses exclusivity! Why? Because putting the game on PS360 guarantees much higher sales than keeping it exclusive on Wii U. Obviously, since the game is no longer exclusive, it sells like crap on Wii U, but should the 3rd party dev care? Not at all! Cause the whole project just made him more money. If anything happens, they will dump the Wii U version next time, since it sells the worst.

This is the vicious circle Wii U is in. And it's not 3rd parties fault. They just try to adapt to the market reality and earn their living. The burden is on Nintendo, just like it was on Sony with Vita. Sony quit Vita (and I'm f***** pissed at them for this, it's such a great console with massive potential), we'll see what Nintendo does with Wii U.