Ubisoft to Stop Making “Mature” Wii U Games

Watch Dogs still progressing as planned.

By Andy Hoover. Posted 08/19/2014 15:00 4 Comments     ShareThis

The industry stopped beating around the bush long ago– third-party content tends to struggle for traction on Nintendo’s consoles. While many publishers have all but jumped ship at this point, Ubisoft seemed to be one of the holdouts, having released major titles like Assassin’s Creed IV and Splinter Cell: Blacklist on Wii U alongside its more family friendly titles like the Just Dance series and Rayman Legends. Unfortunately, the French publisher has announced it too will be changing its approach to Wii U.

While the company will still be releasing games on Wii U, Ubisoft has stated that after releasing Watch Dogs, it will no longer be offering “mature games.”

“What we see is that Nintendo customers don’t buy Assassin’s Creed. Last year, we sold in very small numbers,” stated Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. “What we see is that they are very interested in Just Dance, very interested by other kinds of games. So what we are trying to do is to focus more on the types of games they are interested in.”

The CEO also reveled that only three percent of its total software sales in the last fiscal year came from Wii U, while Wii was still contributing 11 percent, and the newly released PS4 and Xbox One contributed nine and six percent respectively, despite their only being on the market for roughly four months at the time.

While it is nice to know that Ubisoft is sticking to its commitment to bringing Watch Dogs to Wii U, it still remains a little disheartening to hear what I think many were expecting. I imagine many of us will always see plenty of value in Wii U based solely on Nintendo’s titles and many might argue that “mature” games from the big publishers are becoming less relevant and interesting, but the fact remains that those games have their place in the industry, and sometimes fresh and interesting ideas find their way to market. What remains to be seen, though, is whether or not we will still see Ubisoft’s weirder, more creative titles, like Rayman or Child of Light, because I doubt they sold like crazy either.

Source: Game Informer

4 Responses to “Ubisoft to Stop Making “Mature” Wii U Games”

  • 207 points
    Jon Stevens says...

    As one of the last major publishers making games for the system, that’s definitely disheartening. Especially so, as many were hoping that more games would be coming to the system in the future as sales pick up…

    While I’ve bought all the Assassins’s Creed games on Wii U though, it’s hard to argue with the sales figures.

  • 1379 points
    xeacons says...

    Well… that sucks. It’s times like this when you wonder what could you have done differently. It’s hard to fight the masses.

  • 1555 points
    penduin says...

    Bummer. ZombiU is one of my favorite Wii U games, and I’ve really enjoyed Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed. It would feel backwards to play them without the gamepad at this point.

    Granted, we’re now at the point where Nintendo will be able to more or less carry the platform on its own if it has to (it worked for the N64) but Ubi has been fantastic, and it’s sad to see them pulling back support. Here’s hoping we at least get more Rayman and Child of Light type magic.

  • 819 points
    Toadlord says...

    Through all the delays Watch Dogs has had, I’m still interested to see what Ubisoft does with the Gamepad.

    It’s just a shame that Ubisoft MOSTLY publishes M-rated games, because we really are missing out on a variety of titles.

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