14 DAY TRIAL // Nintendo’s Wii U hasn’t been doing very well lately, but even Ubisoft believes that the platform’s luck can change with a few hit games, one of which might be the upcoming Super Smash Bros.
The Wii U, just like the Wii before it, has the potential to reach a much broader audience than just the core gamer one of the heavy hitters, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but so far it has struggled to gain a stable footing.
Out since late 2012, the home console has already been outsold by Sony’s latest computer entertainment system, the PlayStation 4, which was released just nine months ago and has just topped 10 million units in sales, and the Xbox One is very close behind as well.
Ubisoft has been one of the system’s supporters so far, in spite of the company admitting that it’s sitting on a finished Wii U game and waiting until its user base grows, and in spite of revealing no intention to support it with further mature, core games, after its latest action-adventure game, Watch Dogs, will be released on the platform.
Mario Kart 8 showed the power that a single game has on the platform, but even that did not manage to get the console moving at the desired pace. Fortunately, the Wii U has a bunch of upcoming titles that might change it fortunes, and Ubisoft believes that Super Smash Bros. is one of them.
“Super Smash Bros. has some of the best moments that Nintendo has shared. I think that franchise could be magical for the Wii U,” the company has told GamesIndustry.
“To be honest, we always want more consoles. Just Dance 2015 is resonating very well. We think it will please a lot of [existing] Wii U owners and push more families to buy extra Wii Us. But we also believe that Super Smash Bros. will be a trigger to increase the momentum of the Wii U at Christmas,” Ubisoft, European boss, Alain Corre, continues.
Although the console lacks momentum for now, Corre has expressed his optimistic view that the console will recover in the future and once again become an attractive system for many third-party game developers, but that the ball is in Nintendo’s court.
“Nintendo has some of the best franchises in the world and it knows how to make great games. It proved that with Mario Kart, and it will prove that again with Super Smash,” he concludes.
Interest in Nintendo’s Wii U console registered surges after both E3 in June, as well as after last week’s Gamescom, but it still faces an uphill battle.