Ubisoft plays the politician

UbisoftUbisoft is in a great position now. They were quick to recognize the potential in the Wii and got a gob of games out for it in time for launch. A bit too quick, however, as many of the games lacked the polish and finish of some of the more robust Wii titles to date. Seriously, I think Far Cry didn’t even have an intro screen. It just started you off in level 2.

Regardless, they made bank off the Wii even if their effort was sub-par at best.

Even if their low quality fare dampened the system’s overall potential, Ubisoft is sitting pretty and can fire off statements like this one at Next Generation without worry of any real reprisal:

Speaking to German magazine Spiegel, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and the company’s European head, Alain Corre admitted, “We made mistakes,” having been over-eager to capitalize on the promise of the Wii. They stated that future titles would be of a higher quality.

The pair also reaffirmed their belief that Nintendo’s rivals Sony and Microsoft should drop the price of the PS3 and Xbox 360 respectively in a bid to boost sales. “Sony should set a new price point soon if it still wants to sell a satisfactory amount of units this year. Microsoft, too, by the way.”

Ubisoft is a quality software company. There’s plenty of IP out there to prove that point ten times over. They knew exactly what they were doing when they released schlock for the Wii. Personally, I think it was lazy and they should pay for it in the long run. However, professionally I think it was a shrewd business move and showed they at least recognized the Wii had the chops to be a software seller even as the mainstream media and many gamers wrote the system off. They threw a buch of crap against the wall and some of it stuck.

All that said, I’m giving Ubisoft a second chance (I didn’t buy any of their games for the Wii). I hope their second crop is a bit more serious than the first. They made the money with round one, now they can make an effort in round two.