Wii U flagship title ‘ZombiU’ wasn’t profitable

ZombiU was the first, perhaps the only game so far for Nintendo’s Wii U to truly show what the console is capable of. It made the Wii U Gamepad more than a gimmick, it displayed compelling HD graphics, and the game itself was actually quite good. But according to Yves Guillemot, chairman and CEO of Ubisoft, the audience simply wasn’t there. He told GamesIndustry International that the game wasn’t profitable, not even a little bit, and there won’t be a sequel as a result.

It’s the latest bit of bad news for Nintendo’s Wii U, which is struggling to attract any third-party developers to build games for the console. As we discovered at E3 2013, Nintendo is pretty much relying on Mario and company to drive sales. Ubisoft is still porting upcoming games like Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag to the Wii U, but ambitious exclusives like ZombiU are out, and even former exclusives like Rayman Legends are going multiplatform in the hopes of making a profit.

Of course, other big third-party developers like Electronic Arts are practically withdrawing support for the Wii U altogether. EA’s Peter Moore spoke to GamesIndustry about that as well, and pulled no punches. “It’s been a disappointment when you look at sell-through and, as a company, we have to be very judicious where we deploy our resources,” he said of EA’s early Wii U titles.

But according to Moore, one of Nintendo’s biggest problems is getting users to play games online. “They’re so small it’s hardly worth running the servers,” he told the publication. “It seems like a box that’s out of sync with the future of EA — which is one that gives a real social feel to our games. The Wii U feels like an offline experience right now.”