Wii U features “really hard to get across”, says ZombiU dev

By Brenna Hillier

The Wii U’s potential for interesting new gameplay is difficult to message, according to Ubisoft’s Xavier Poix.

Poix, the managing director of Ubisoft’s Annecy, Montpellier and Paris studios, told Gamespot that ZombiU’s middling reception may have been caused by its failure to communicate the game’s core ideas ahead of launch.

“ZombiU was designed to be a game for core players launching with a new Nintendo console,” he said.

“We should have communicated better in this respect to let people know what kind of experience to expect. It wasn’t obvious enough that there would be a new controller and new gameplay and a new skill set to develop.”

Thios problem applies to the Wii U in general, he added.

“The depth of what you can do with that console is really hard to get across unless you play with it,” he said.

“It’s different from the Wii, where seeing was believing. With the Wii U, people really need to experience it. The whole idea of the asymmetrical gameplay and using two screens to do two very different things is not simple to explain to people.”

Nevertheless, Poix said new consoles are an exciting thing for developers, and the current state of the industry, with games breaking into the mainstream, only adds to that.

Thanks, GamePolitics.

Comments