Ubisoft Making A Wii Sports Game

Tucked into the announcement of a new Ubisoft Vancouver studio is information that Ubisoft has more sports gaming plans to follow up the company's "Shaun White Snowboarding" game of last year. It's not the first time I heard Ubi wanted to get into sports.

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About five years ago I heard that Ubisoft was considering the development of story-based Nintendo DS sports games. Nothing ever came of that.

In 2006, the game publisher did release the "And 1 Streetball" basketball gam.

And last year Ubisoft released "Shaun White Snowboarding," which, yes, counts as a sports game.

What's next? Something sports-related for the Wii according to this paragraph in a press release today announcing Ubisoft's purchase of the Vancouver studio Action Pants:

2009 will see the release of the studio's first title, a sports game developed exclusively for Wii.  This new intellectual property will expand upon Ubisoft's recent success in the sports genre with the Shaun White Snowboarding franchise.

According to the official Action Pants website, the studio was founded in 2006 with the intent to make original games.

The sports genre doesnt' often birth distinctly original games. But Ubisoft is a publisher known to take creative risks. We'll see what we get from this when this mystery game is released later this year.