Ubisoft: Watch_Dogs will be the last “mature” game published on Wii U

The guys at Game Informer recently caught up with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot to discuss Nintendo, after it was announced that Assassins Creed: Rogue would not be coming to the Wii U, despite the fact that Nintendo’s latest home system is currently outperforming Microsoft’s Xbox One in terms of total units sold to consumers.

Guillemot is apparently surprised about how quickly people are upgrading to the new generation of consoles, saying that “What we see is that this year is still fine for the PS3 and 360, but next year because they are selling very quickly, we’ll move to the new hardware. After 2015, it will be hard for us to create games for those systems.”

It’s worth noting that while the Wii U is actually part of the current console generation, alongside Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One, its hardware has more in common with the PS3 and Xbox 360 - similarly to how the Wii’s hardware was comparable to the system specifications of the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox. By stating that the publisher doesn’t see a future for developing games on previous-generation hardware, that all but signals the death knell for ongoing Wii U software support.

When asked about Ubisoft’s relationship with Nintendo, Guillemot had the following to say: “It’s very simple. What we see is that Nintendo customers don’t buy Assassin’s Creed. Last year, we sold in very small numbers.”

Looking at the raw numbers, this seems to be the truth. If you look at Ubisoft’s sales portfolio you’ll see that Nintendo Wii U sales (excluding the original Wii) only represent three percent of the total revenue for the publisher’s last fiscal year.

So what does that mean for both Ubisoft and Nintendo? Well, Ubisoft has said that they aren’t abandoning Nintendo completely, but rather changing their focus in terms of what they develop for Nintendo’s latest home system.

“What we see is that [Wii U owners] 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.” Guillemot stated. The exception to this rule however is Watch_Dogs, which will apparently still be heading to the Wii U but “will be the only mature game we publish on it [moving forward].”

What’s your view on this news? Do you think that Ubisoft is correct, or are you a Wii U owner upset by the lack of third-party support for the console? Let us know in the comments.

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Oliver Zimmerman

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South-African raised, Dublin-resident. Oli loves games in all their shapes and forms. He particularly loves RPGs. He's also a keen wordsmith, and can often be found not just playing games, but also discussing their rights and wrongs.