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The June 2006 issue of Fast Company has a nice little interview with Laurent Detoc, president of Ubisoft. In it, he talks Nintendo, why he likes them, and why’s he’s betting their exclusive Wii title, Red Steel, will be the company’s next big hit.
From the interview: “…This year, we’ll be the only publisher besides Nintendo that’ll have an exclusive title–Red Steel, a first-person shooter game–released for the new Wii console when it debuts [in November]. People think this is crazy. Nobody is paying attention to Nintendo. Everyone has been obsessed with the Xbox 360 and Sony’s [upcoming] PlayStation 3.
But a year ago, we decided that the Revolution could be a huge product. Nintendo invented video games and consoles as we know them today. People look at Nintendo, they think of the GameCube [which didn’t succeed], or they think of a bunch of Japanese guys who don’t understand the U.S. market. The partnership with Nintendo didn’t come easy, but we stuck with it, because Nintendo offers something different. The two other consoles compete for the same customer, and they’re heavy on processing capacity. Nintendo is saying, ‘I’ll let these two big guys fight this battle while I focus on good old-fashioned game-play fun.’ Its portable business has been very healthy lately: Nintendogs for the DS handheld has sold 6 million units so far. And the Wii’s new cordless hand controller means a whole new way of playing games. It seemed like a good place to put our money. For my competition, it’s too late to have a game out for the Wii by Christmas. They can’t do it. But we did it. We will be there. Maybe Wii will fail, and I’ll look like an idiot. But if it succeeds, then we will have a new brand on our hands that could be worth up to $100 million.”
[NOTE: being print media, we changed the outdated “Revolution” to “Wii”]
RS for the Wii is shaping up to be what Rogue Squadron 2 was for the GC launch.
Ubisoft REALLY REALLY wants this game to be big. Hopefully it won’t be the “Call of Duty 2″ for Wii .. people buy it just cuz it’s there at launch.
Personally, I think if they stick to that aspect they mentioned where you have to get more precise and use less bullets as you go along it might be pretty cool. Then again, I get really tired of playing an FPS that I can’t switch into God mode.
Don’t know how he can say the GameCube “didn’t succeed”. I guess it depends on the definition of success.
I will agree that it did not dominate the market, but since Nintendo does not sell GameCube consoles (or anything else for that matter) at a loss, it made money for Nintendo. Is that failure?
Way to go Ubisoft. Ubi is getting bigger and they still bring new IPs to all consoles.
EA, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Tom: my thoughts exactly!
I keep hearing again and again that the GameCube was a failure! Same thing with the DreamCast! Why?? I’m not mad or anything, I just don’t understand what people mean by that…
Is it because few people play with those consoles anymore? But that is the lifecycle of all consoles, isn’t it? Was the SNES a “failure”, since few people play with it anymore, and they don’t sell new games for it? How about the Xbox? They don’t sell them anymore!
Honestly, what do people mean by “failure” when referring to the GameCube? I’m just curious…
Well, the Dreamcast was abandoned by Sega. It IS an awsome console, especially for homebrew. Looney Tunes Space Race is one of my all time favorite games on ANY console.
You can get Dreamcasts at EB (subject to availability) for $15 with a controller. An amazing deal. Be sure to look for November 2000 and earlier units…only they can boot regular CDs….
On that line of reasoning, then, the SNES has been “abandoned” by Nintendo, hasn’t it? So, does that instantly make it a “failure”?
Because gaming consoles are electronic devices, their measure of success or failure has to be based on their performance and software within their lifetime, not on whether they were discontinued by the manufacturer, in my opinion. ALL consoles are eventually discontinued, after all!