Ubisoft bringing Wii U titles to tablets, smartphones

It’s easy to take it for granted, but this is one of the most exciting times in the game industry. Case in point, the announcement that Ubisoft will be porting Wii U titles to smartphones and tablets. It’s true that companies have been porting console games to mobile platforms for years now, but this particular reveal is interesting in light of the current gaming climate. There’s big money in the mobile market, and Ubisoft is using that to leverage the costs of developing for consoles.

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It’s easy to take it for granted, but this is one of the most exciting times in the game industry. Case in point, the announcement that Ubisoft will be porting Wii U titles to smartphones and tablets. It’s true that companies have been porting console games to mobile platforms for years now, but this particular reveal is interesting in light of the current gaming climate. There’s big money in the mobile market, and Ubisoft is using that to leverage the costs of developing for consoles.

“The new content you can’t port on the other machines but what you can do is port it to mobile phones and to tablets. So it’s a way to create content that you will be able to port on the generations of tablets or phones that work well,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told a group of journalists last night. With that in mind, it’s easy to see why the company will have a total of eight titles available on the console at launch. That, and having a wealth of titles available on the Wii and 3DS at launch proved to be a successful move for them.

Easily my favorite part of this announcement is how much it appeals to both players of games and investors alike. It appeals to investors because it puts Ubisoft in a better position to recoup development costs, and it appeals to gamers because, well, more platforms to choose from. Synergy!

With the Wii U arriving later this year, we’ll soon be finding out how much effort Ubisoft will put into making games work on both platforms. Given that they each share a touch screen interface, there’s plenty of potential for the company to pull it off. Pricing the games in a way that doesn’t make either platform holder feel ripped off will be another problem, but again we’ll have to wait and see. Until then, let’s all remain optimistic about how this will all pan out.