Ubisoft, EA discuss their early mistakes in approaching the Wii, say they’ve learned their lesson

May 5th, 2009

“What we did on the Wii was a little counterintuitive. When you look at the last cycle, the GameCube wasn’t different enough from the other two systems to get people excited about making exclusive titles for that machine. […] We were lucky enough to have good relationships with [Nintendo] at a high level where we had really good conversations about their next system and what they wanted to do with it, and we immediately believed in them and they believed in us and we went for it very early and made a couple exclusive Wii titles.” - Ubisoft VP of sales and marketing Tony Kee

“I don’t think we — I don’t think almost anyone — had the vision a few years ago to really understand the phenomenon this would be. [We didn’t anticipate] the number of people that would come to gaming as a result of the Wii. It’s kind of hugely exciting and a complete revolution for our business. We ported a bunch of stuff like everyone else did, but what we found out was that none of that stuff sold. The only stuff that sold was the stuff that was made for the Wii and that’s been true since the first day that the machine came out, and that’s the thing that people took a while to figure out.” - Carolyn Feinstein, EA’s Group VP of North America

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They better.

"The only stuff that sold was the stuff that was made for the Wii"

Almost. RE4, House of the Dead 2&3, and a few others sold great. But they really showed off the Wii there.

I think UbiSoft actually came in with a pretty good approach early on with Rayman and Red Steel.... they just fell short of the bar because they rushed the games (Red Steel at least... though wasn't the supposed abomonation: FarCry game by UbiSoft too)

However... looking at Red Steel 2... as long as it is a solid game and has a decent amount of content (it's 1 player only so it needs to last me a good 10-15 hours minimum really THEN we can talk about replay value) then I will be pleased. It already looks really nice graphically... kind of like a cross between Wind Waker and the recent PS360 Prince of Persia game.

Neither understand the Wii if making everything a cartoon and removing blood along with any significant difficulty is how they think it should be done.

Better late than never.

Hopefully their sentiments reflect the feelings of the entire industry.

"Neither understand the Wii if making everything a cartoon and removing blood along with any significant difficulty is how they think it should be done."

Cell shading is not making a cartoon, at least not the context you seen to put it in. Often it's to achieve an anime look, like No More Heroes. From the trailer, it looks as though Red Steel 2 is going for a look similar to some recent anime.

speaking of ubi

Ubisoft says Red Steel 2 is going to give us something we’ve never seen before

May 5th, 2009

well both Ubi and EA have givin me some big Wii hits so keep it coming.

Hrm, that really gets me excited for this game. I can't wait to see what they have to show at E3. Time to get on the hype train! Dun dun dun!