Ubisoft made Rayman Legends multiplatform due to concern over potentially poor Wii U sales, no news on Beyond Good & Evil
Rayman Legends originally started out as a Wii U exclusive. But when the platformer launches later this summer, it will be coming to four different systems.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot explained to GamesBeat that the company was concerned about potentially poor sales on Wii U. Guillemot said, “we didn’t want those creators to wind up in a position where even after making a fantastic game, they didn’t sell well enough.” In order to make additional versions and improve the Wii U version, Ubisoft made the decision to push the game’s release back.
I’d probably participate more in that discussion. What happened was that we saw the Wii U was not going to sell enough of those games. The game is going to be fantastic, and we didn’t want those creators to wind up in a position where even after making a fantastic game, they didn’t sell well enough. We decided that we had to come out on enough machines that players can try it out on any one that they have, and give more time to both improve the game on the Wii U and create versions for the other consoles.
I think it was the right decision for gamers and for the team. My role is to make sure that the team is happy with the quality of the work they do and the reach they can have. The quality is there now, because they had more time. They’ve expanded the possibilities of the game. It’s much bigger content-wise. We have new bosses in key levels and so on. The experience is much more complete. I think it will be one of the best games we’ve ever done.
Sometimes we have to go against the urge to get to market too fast. We have to make sure we give enough time and resources to our creators to they can reach the potential in their games. This time, they were very close to excellence, but not quite there.
While we’re on the topic of Ubisoft, does Guillemot have any news about Beyond Good & Evil? Nope! The teaser image posted to Ubisoft’s Facebook page prior to E3 was simply used for “promotion in the run-up to E3”.
That wasn’t meant to be a tease. It was just part of our promotion in the run-up to E3 – homaging some of the characters from our past. I think that was maybe misinterpreted.
I think the first game was exceptional, and people remember the experience they had, so they would like to see it again. We had a period where we had a demo that went out before it was quite ready, so everybody saw something that appealed to them. That’s why I think they keep expecting something. But I can’t say much more than that.
