Ubisoft Talk Casual Games and Wii, DS

Ubisoft UK recently discussed the casual gaming market and their decisions behind the 2008 Wii catalogue.

The company revealed their forthcoming selection of games for Nintendo's system during the Ubidays event in Paris, resulting in a growing number of concerned Wii consumers frustrated at the lack of more "hardcore" games.

The publisher today responded once more, speaking to Gamesindustry.biz on the reasons behind going casual and focusing on family-friendly content on both Nintendo's Wii and DS this year.

Q: With regards to the Wii, Ubisoft seems to be one of the few third-party publishers seeing successful software sales. Is it hard convincing the consumer there's more to the machine that mini-games?

Rob Cooper: The success of the Wii is phenomenal in the UK. David Yarnton (Nintendo's UK MD) and his team there have done amazing work. With the software itself, you've got to get the right sort of game. It's not a hardcore machine. As it's a family-orientated machine it attracts a slightly different consumer � someone who is price savvy, someone who doesn't buy a lot of software. The other issue is the amount of games on a disc. Wii Sports, Wii Play have got ten games, so the Wii gamer sees value for money. If you look at the software on the Wii, we've got to find ways of doing better and doing more sales, because it's hard to get the casual consumer who has bought those two games and is happy with them. We've got to get them to go out and buy more games, encourage them with new titles.

Q: You're not concerned with the amount of shovel-ware making its way to the Wii? You're not worried about loosing shelf space or market share because every publisher wants a piece of that pie?

Rob Cooper: We'll always fight our corner. Our thought process is not to bring games to the Wii that are on every other format, we tend to go more exclusive with the Wii because that's the only way to make sure you get the right business out of it. Just adding the Wii sku to another seven or eight formats doesn't really sell any decent amount.

Q: It might seem a long way off, but are you confident of Ubisoft's sales performance at the end of the year, when all the competitors pull out there big titles for retail?

Rob Cooper: I think it's going to be a vicious Christmas again, in terms of pricing. It's one of those areas that worries me. Some of these big games now are so expensive to make, and as a publisher we've got to make sure we get some return to get back in and reinvest and sometimes we don't necessarily help ourselves as much as we should do. Our market is so active in the UK and retailers will always fight for any part of it. And that actually doesn't always help us as a publisher to try and get money back in.

Q: It seems to me that no matter how anticipated a game, no matter how big the budget for marketing and development, if a consumer waits a couple of weeks, or shops around on the internet, they can get good discounts almost immediately after release. Games aren't worth what publishers think they're worth.

Rob Cooper: I thing the UK consumer is very savvy, there's no doubt about it. GAME has a really interesting system which is shares with its publishers where it can analyse every single store, who goes in and what products to put in those stores. So for example, consumers in Cambridge buy more PC and role-playing games, whereas Leeds will sell more beat-em-ups. Working with that sort of system they can identify closely what to do in each town. I think something like 25 per cent of people going into GAME now are mothers. They used to be stores that felt a little bit intimidating, but now they're attracting a family market.

Q: Do you think the family audience is a fad brought on buy the Wii and DS, or can it be maintained? Let's be honest, these consumers aren't buying an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Can that audience be attracted to gaming in the long-term?

Rob Cooper: I think it can be maintained for a number of reasons. Nintendo is obviously doing so well with the Wii and DS, it's responsible for this massive growth in the market. What that's doing is introducing gaming to people as a form of entertainment, whereas before it was shunned. Sony and Microsoft will always stick to the central, specialist consumer, that 15 � 25 age bracket. But outside of that it's become a family thing. Without Nintendo our industry would have gone nowhere.

The complete interview discusses the company's remaining portfolio and European marketing.