By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

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

famousringo on 08 July 2013

Yeah, I'm sure they were expecting to cruise to an easy 1m sales like with Red Steel.

It's too bad. Third party exclusives aren't going to be economical until publishers get over their addiction to production values.



"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event."  — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.

Around the Network
Ljink96 on 08 July 2013

Well of course it wasn't! WHY DON'T PEOPLE GET IT! MATURE GAMES DON'T SELL ON NINTENDO! LEAVE THAT TO SONY AND MS! NINTENDO DON'T CARE ABOUT THOSE KINDS OF GAMES! Why don't they understand? Games like this sell well on Playstation or Xbox. Nintendo's kiddy outlook isn't an insult but this is!



JGarret on 08 July 2013

Very curious to see how Watch Dogs performs on the three 8th gen consoles.



Busted 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 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.

Agree with you but ZombiU is an AAA game? right...

and i don't think $20m comes close, any AAA costs at least three times that



zumnupy10 on 08 July 2013
Barozi said:
Wow so bad ?

Well I didn't expect it to be a financial success, but if it didn't even come close to be profitable with around 500k sold copies then it's pretty bad planning from Ubisoft.


Ubisoft actually believed WiiU would succeed.



Around the Network
ListerOfSmeg on 08 July 2013

The core idea of the game remained the same? It started as Killer Freaks. They took the Rabbids idea and tried to make another game out of it and it turned into a zombie survival game. How anyone can get the impression from that, that the core mechanics never changed is beyond me. It never started as survivor horror in the first place.

I love how at launch it was a crap game getting bad reviews, now its a AAA must own title that not enough people bought. Anything to trash Nintendo though.
The game has a metacritic average of 77. Not exactly AAA. Lots of games have also profited at that number sold. Heck a lot of PS3 games sold less than that with a bigger install base and still were considered successful. I am sure there is more to this but of course when that truth does come out it will be dismissed because it goes against the hate Nintendo mentality a lot of the vocal but minority on the internet love so much



KHlover on 08 July 2013

Copied straight off GAF, but kinda important:

"guys... just a little observation; no tinfoil conspiracy or anything; just an observation:

in the article cited on the OP... there isn't a DIRECT QUOTE of Yves Guillemot saying that the game wasn't profitable; or that the Rayman situation was derived of that.

I studied journalism in college, and there's a rule that says that everytime you paraphrase something, you put the corresponding quote afterwards to back it up. you can see that they use that rule with the Activision and EA guys, but in the case of Ubisoft, there isn't a real quote, just the paraphrasis of the journalist. The only Ubisoft quote there is the one that it says that they are gonna wait for the holidays to evaluate the situation. There's nothing there about ZombiU or Rayman, except the journalist assumptions.

I'm not saying he's lying or something, but I find it pretty weird that he has direct quotes from the other two guys, and not the Ubisoft guy."



Some useful VGChartz tweaks

Member of the "An Unbiased Review" Database team

RedInker on 08 July 2013

Such a shame. I loved this game. Scary as hell, true survival horror.



attaboy on 08 July 2013
Ljink96 said:
Well of course it wasn't! WHY DON'T PEOPLE GET IT! MATURE GAMES DON'T SELL ON NINTENDO! LEAVE THAT TO SONY AND MS! NINTENDO DON'T CARE ABOUT THOSE KINDS OF GAMES! Why don't they understand? Games like this sell well on Playstation or Xbox. Nintendo's kiddy outlook isn't an insult but this is!

So, Resident Evil on the Wii?



chapset on 08 July 2013

Don't do a subpar late port then maybe your games will sale



Bet reminder: I bet with Tboned51 that Splatoon won't reach the 1 million shipped mark by the end of 2015. I win if he loses and I lose if I lost.