Alleged Rayman Legends Dev Vents About Delays Online

Yesterday, when Ubisoft announced Rayman Legends’ six month delay and that it was going to be multiplatform, Wii U owners were likely wincing. I even got shocked texts about it from Landon just after our own post went up. But while we were speculating about why the game was delayed—since it was almost certainly finished by then—a forum poster who claims to have been working on the game was just as incredulous about the news.

A poster who goes by the handle Zeta69 and has a history of posting as a Ubisoft insider had this to say (translated by NeoGAF from the Spanish):

“I completely understand you but you have to understand one thing. This is not a decision taken by the development team, this comes from really really high up, so please don’t pick on the game.

If you’re pissed, imagine how we feel. Think on the situation, we’ve been making overtime with this game practically since May preparing E3, and then almost a demo per month ([Gamescom], Wii U presentation, shops, eShop, etc…) and at the same time trying to actually finish the game. We had a first delay because it was obvious we couldn’t finish on time but we gave it all to be there on February. What face do you think we had when the week we had to close the game we’re being told it’s not going to be released? I couldn’t believe it.

For practical matters, you’ll have to wait for some months for the game to be released and will most likely serve for more content to be added and do it better. For us, this means we’ve spent 6 months barely seeing our wives, kids, and friends for nothing because, after all, such a haste wasn’t needed. Believe it, it was a hell to swallow this news.

Even then I’m firm in what I said back in the day, Rayman Legends is an excellent game and will still be, and the team that’s making it doesn’t deserve to have your back turned on them just because some men in ties one day took a wrong choice. This industry is really that shitty.”

Yuck. It must be pretty irritating to bust your ass for half a year, and then find out that the release date’s been pushed back. So now that we know it’s not because the game wasn’t finished, it seems pretty clear: this is related to poor Wii U sales. Undoubtedly, Rayman Legends is going to earn more sales if all platform versions are released at once.

And that way, you only need one big marketing push to sell all the versions, instead of marketing it once during March, and then again during September for the multiplatform release. Not only that, but I’m sure if the Wii U had managed to sell better in the first place, we wouldn’t be seeing this delay at all.

Of course, if Legends had been released during the Wii U launch window as it was supposed to, perhaps the system would’ve sold better. Legends was supposed to be an exclusive title for the system, and something of a killer app. Now? It’s just another platformer. A great looking one, but not anywhere close to a system seller considering its late release and multiplatform launch.

After all that, though, I’m still going to buy it—and I’m going to buy it for the Wii U. I can’t imagine how they’re going to make the GamePad specific stuff work for the other platforms…

Via Eurogamer