The Wii has been known to cater to the less-than-hardcore gamer, but Ubisoft says it can bring core gamers to the system with Red Steel 2. Bold words indeed. Creative director Jason Vandenberghe made the statement while speaking with CVG.
“I think we’ve got a great chance of bringing people back to Wii,” he said. “If you haven’t played on your Wii for a while we’ve got the game for you.
Vandenberge criticized developers who categorized gamers into two groups: hardcore and family friendly. According to him, gamers are gamers, each with varying tastes and preferences.
“Personally, I call this the great hardcore Wii Jihad,” he continued. “I don’t really care about the religious war! Some developers who are making hardcore games for the Wii made a big deal about the separation of church and state, saying (puts on deep voice) ‘there’s hardcore and there’s family friendly.’
“F*** those guys! I don’t feel that way. I think there are gamers and there are gamers of different opinions and different tastes so the goal was to create games that gamers want and to see how many people like it.”
I’m not sure if I can agree with Vandenberge on this one. It’s hard to know how much success Red Steel 2 will see. The Wii’s userbase consists primarily of what some call “casual” gamers, and this title is not going to be on their radar. Then again, I guess it depends on what your definition of “success” is, but the industry standard would be the break-even point. 300,000 copies? Hardly. There have been multiple “hardcore” games on the Wii, such as The Conduit and Mad World, yet they have have been poorly received. Third-party games simply don’t do well on the Wii for the most part. That’s why developers are shying away from the Wii.