After the Watch Dogs fiasco over the last couple of days, there was many a debate as to how well it would actually sell on Wii U and whether it would be profitable. Through curiosity i decided to see, using VG chartz numbers how many games in total Ubisoft has sold on Wii U and try to determine whether their output has ultimately turned them a profit in total. There are 11 titles on Wii U from Ubi, with a total sell so far of just over 2 million. Its hard to speculate how much the ports cost to make, but im sure i read somewhere that Ubi said porting to Wii U is pretty cheap costing around $1.2 million. If that is true ( it may not be im only speculating) then that would cover Splinter Cell and the Assassins Creed games. You then have the just dance, Your Shape and Sports connection games that are probably cheap to develop. The games that may have had a negative impact on Ubi's profits would be Zombi U and Rayman legends, both of which were built from the ground up specifically for the Wii U. So what do the great people of VG chartz think? has Ubisofts Wii U adventure so far made them money or not? please remember this is just speculation on my part and not proper facts :)

I don't think it matters much. The releases on the other consoles easily compensate the losses on the WiiU. But it's part of the Ubisoft business philosophy to port games to as many consoles as possible so I don't think they will stop anytime soon.

Though Watchdogs for WiiU may be a disaster. Seeing how low AC4 sold I don't see Watch Dogs doing much better. Especially if you consider that Watch Dogs on all other consoles will easily be a multi million seller.

The problem with the porting costs is not only the costs you have to port a game but that your employees use their time for this port instead of working on another game in development as long as you don't let another company do the port.

Can't really answer your question because of stuff like that and have no clue who made the ports but it is possible that a game can hurt a company financially even if it makes more money as it cost.

Even if they are profitable after all, there is always a question, whether it wouldn't get them more profits just to relocate those people working on ports towards games for PS4/X1, and Ubi seems to be missing their release dates for a couple of games so it would not be unfounded. The answer is yes.

i have no idea either, but if it costs 1 million to port and only sells 100,000 at $60 and a third of that goes to ubi, then they're doubling the investment on ports. If it sells 200,000 they're quadrupling thier investment. etc.

I agree with what you are all saying about porting costs, and to add on games like Watch Dogs cost a ridiculous amount to make, and that extra 12 - 20 million dollars the Wii U version brings in could easily be the difference between profit and loss.

Zombie U wasn't build form the ground up on Wii U it started like on ps360 as alien freaks. Ironically I liked the look of that game more lol.

The reason they didn't make money on Zombie U is because of poor management of the development.

Rayman unfortunately sold shit everywhere and as much as people hate to admit it delaying the game only pissed of gamers because majority of them don't think long term.

Before Rayman got delayed that is all Ubisoft told us about.

After it was delayed and the uproar happened suddenly they announced all those other games liek Splinter Cell ACIV and Watch Dogs.

Now call me crazy but I would take a delay plus additional guaranteed games on your system then no delay and never getting additional games. However as I said most gamers think short term and didn't see the added value and still boycotted Rayman which now has a negative impact on future Ubisoft projects.

 tough decision to make, i suppose Ubi go with the Wii U ports because they are quick to do and have at least a chance to double their investment or better. They build their engines on the other machines and im willing to bet that the resources they have on the Wii U version is very limited, perhaps a team that doesnt even hit double figures.

Not sure how many copies ubisoft needs to sell to make a profit, but it costs $1.3 million (around) to port to the wii U which is fairly small.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-07-23-ubisoft-says-wii-u-ports-costing-under-USD1-3-million

According to some in the comment section (of the article), Wii U ports needs to sell around 50k to break even, anything above that they are making a profit.

Hopefully, someone can bring more light to these figures.

This comes up time and time again and I never ever save my post about it for easy copy-pasting.

Ubisoft used the $1.2m figure as a blanket number for porting their launch titles.  Their launch titles included Assassin's Creed and Just Dance.  Obviously, one of those games is going to cost a lot more than the other to port, so I don't think we can really assume that it's the case for every game they've made on the console.

Regardless, if we do assume $1.2m, then a game needs to sell ~ 50k copies at full price to be profitable.  I can show you the breakdown of how I worked that out if you really don't trust me on it (just quote me and I'll dig out the graph), but it'd be easier if we just went with it.

Therefore, I don't think that Splinter Cell profited on WiiU.  Your Shape: Fitness Evolved; The Smurfs 2 & Rabbids Land are a long, long way off profitability.  Marvel Avengers I also believe wouldn't be profitable at the majority of copies were sold at bargain bin prices.

Assassin's Creed I think probably is profitable on WiiU.  Even with a higher threshold due to it being a title that I believe exceeds the $1.2m porting cost quote (rather than being under it like Just Dance) it'll still make it, with both games having sold ~ 100k or so at full price.

Just Dance is the biggest success story on WiiU.  I'd imagine it costs peanuts to port and it just keeps selling, so yeah.

Rayman was likely profitable.  Though it didn't sell much at full price, it sold well at bargain bin prices.

ZombiU is one I can't really extrapolate for, so all I have to go in is the comment from Ubisoft themselves that the game didn't profit, so there's that.

However, I know this thread isn't really about that, but there's more than just profits though.  After all, in the case of Assassin's Creed, it's bringing in meagre profits.  Ubisoft will have to decide whether there's a legitimate possibility of the userbase expanding on WiiU to embrace the Assassin's Creed games to bring in more profit.  If the sales curve from AC III to AC IV is anything to go by, then it's not looking too good.

If the resources used from porting it could be better allocated elsewhere then I'd imagine Ubisoft would do that.  Then again, I don't believe Ubisoft are a malicious publisher and would probably keep on pushing with WiiU just because they can.