Oh, Rayman Legends. How we all want to love you, but how embittered we were—still are?—by your betrayal…
It wasn’t that long ago that Rayman Legends was announced as a Wii U exclusive, only to be pulled back by Ubisoft… delayed… and then announced as a release on all major console platforms, breaking a key rung in Nintendo’s marketing efforts for their brand new system.
From the first announcement to the latest “exclusive content” announcement for PS Vita, it’s been rough going for Nintendo fans and the Rayman title. The question “why???” has come up over and over again, and Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was recently asked by GamesBeat whether he still stood by his decision to delay the game. And the truth came out:
“I’d probably participate more in that discussion. What happened was that we saw the Wii U was not going to sell enough of those games. The game is going to be fantastic, and we didn’t want those creators to wind up in a position where even after making a fantastic game, they didn’t sell well enough. We decided that we had to come out on enough machines that players can try it out on any one that they have, and give more time to both improve the game on the Wii U and create versions for the other consoles.
I think it was the right decision for gamers and for the team. My role is to make sure that the team is happy with the quality of the work they do and the reach they can have. The quality is there now, because they had more time. They’ve expanded the possibilities of the game. It’s much bigger content-wise. We have new bosses in key levels and so on. The experience is much more complete. I think it will be one of the best games we’ve ever done.
Sometimes we have to go against the urge to get to market too fast. We have to make sure we give enough time and resources to our creators to they can reach the potential in their games. This time, they were very close to excellence, but not quite there.”
And you know what? That’s some pretty good, honest reasoning right there. It sucks that the game was delayed and the Wii U lost its exclusivity… but no one’s denying that the delay allowed the creators a chance to improve the game and add much, much more to the experience.
All things aside, this is one title that Nintendo fans and other console players alike are eager to get their hands on—and from what we’ve seen so far? It’s with good reason!
