Ubisoft Devs <3 Wii

Here’s a news byte running quite contrary to the sporadic rumors of the Wii being the object of developer disdian and dread. Ubisoft President and CEO Yves Guillemot recently told RedHerring that Ubisoft developers were actually part of the driving force behind Ubisoft’s adoption of the Wii platform. Said Guillemot; “We had a new machine that our creators loved that would be cheaper and totally different. We said “Let’s go, let’s take the risk.” Developers pushed us. When they understood they could create something [new] it was not a risk anymore—it was an interesting new way of playing.”

As you are all (probably) aware, Ubisoft was behind one of the Wii’s better early titles Rayman Raving Rabbids. In terms of inventive use of the Wii’s unique interface and just plain fun gameplay, Rayman was a home run as far as I’m concerned. Sure a couple of the mini games were a little ‘iffy’ but most of them worked fine and the game has a great twisted sense of humor which more than made up for a couple of wonky minigames.

You have to keep in mind that Rayman was one of the first efforts from a third party developer on the Wii… I don’t have any doubt that subsequent releases from these guys will build on what they learned from Rayman.