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Ubisoft Aspires To Be Kinect King
Following a Kinect-centric event held by Ubisoft yesterday, Gamasutra sat down and talked shop with North American Ubisoft President Laurent Detoc about the company’s future with the new technology, as well as its long-term strategy as a whole. Ubisoft is obviously throwing their weight behind Kinect – proudly promoting titles such as Child of Eden and Your Shape: Fitness Evolved – but its plans for the future are much grander.
“It's our intent to be the biggest third-party publisher on that machine,” Detoc boasted to Gamasutra. “So time will tell, and the strength of the brands... But I think we are in a good position because we have solid tech; we have a lot of R&D that has generated a lot of prototypes. We're only making like half a dozen games; we could have made like 12. There's a right balance to have.”
Detoc continued to explain that Ubisoft has an inherent advantage in that they come from a culture of R&D. He believes that this focus will aid them in expanding their reach with Kinect. Detoc even divulged that they have over 100 internal prototypes of “things you can do” with Kinect.
Is Detoc concerned about interest in Kinect, or that the price will act as a barrier to entry? Will Microsoft be able to secure the sales?
“Yes, I think so – because it's cool. It's a piece of technology. Why do people buy iPads? I have an iPad. My wife has an iPad. Why? You've gotta have it,” said Detoc. “Kinect, you put that on top of your TV. You've got to have it. It's cool.”
Despite the push for publishing Kinect titles, Detoc reinforced that Ubisoft’s strategy as a whole is “less games, more depth,” meaning a focus on cohesion between franchises and popular brands.
“Instead of making six or eight Petz games on DS every year, maybe we should make two or three, and make the MMO, and make sure it talks to the DS games. And we should have some toys that actually have a connectivity element to the MMO, and we should have T-shirts and a TV series, and these all help and affect one another... And we will be able to allow people to express creativity. You decrease the number of things you do, and there's more places to go.”
Ubisoft’s dreams of ruling the Kinect kingdom have a good chance of coming to fruition if its early adoption and support of the Nintendo Wii is any indication. As one of the only third-party developers to commit to Nintendo’s new technology early on with games like Red Steel and the popular Rabbids series, Ubisoft now claims a large portion of the market while other developers struggle to play catch-up. It wouldn’t be surprising for them to duplicate this success with Kinect by establishing a strong presence on launch day.
Check out the full interview here.
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