VandenBerghe says motion controls must become standard, shares Red Steel 2 sales
This information comes from Ubisoft creative director Jason VandenBerghe…
“I isolated this factor called audience willingness. There is a small group of people that is willing to get up and move and exert themselves for fun… We had to ask ourselves: how many gamers are willing to move? I don’t know how many there are, but it’s no higher than 20 per cent. That’s actually probably optimistic. Things might suck now, but I think they’ll get better. If they put motion control standard in the box, suddenly the model expands. THAT is money. My recommendation to you is that you should ship on multiple platforms. Nobody will want you to. Sony won’t, Microsoft won’t, Nintendo won’t. But the market will… Many genres will remain unchanged, and some people will still not want to exert themselves. But if the hardware remains an add-on, motion control will remain niche.”
In addition to the quotes above, VandenBerghe stated that Red Steel 2 has only sold 270,00 copies worldwide. That’s quite an unfortunate figure, as the game is one of the few hardcore, high-quality titles on the Wii that supports MotionPlus. And don’t forget that there was also a MotionPlus bundled offered – it doesn’t appear to have made much of an impact on sales.
