Which video game consoles do the people running a giant publisher like Ubisoft like the most?

Possibly the ones on which they can sell the most games.

Yesterday, as part of a sales announcement , the “Assassin’s Creed” and “Rainbow Six” publisher released statistics that show just which consoles help move the most games.

Ubisoft didn’t disclose raw sales figures but did reveal the percentage of the company’s game sales on each platform.

Lessons learned: Given that the PlayStation 3 accounted for 20% of the company’s sales last year, it’s clearly a meaningful machine to Ubisoft. But maybe not as much as the Xbox 360 and the DS, which contributed 26% each.

And what did the Wii do for Ubisoft last year?

You don’t want to know.

Still, you just might learn something about how well Ubisoft is or isn’t capitalizing off your favorite consoles. The numbers are below…

Read more…

Last week I read about an incredible offer for Ubisoft’s upcoming PS3-exclusive first-person shooter “Haze.” According to a flyer published on blog Dark Zero that I saw on Kotaku, the Canadian branch of EB Games (GameStop) was offering gamers what amounted to a one-week rental.

 The flyer reads: “PLAY HAZE FOR A WEEK: Pre-purchase Haze and get full in-store credit back when you trade Haze in within one week of pick-up!”

Was it real? Yes. Is it still being offered?

A Ubisoft representative told me yesterday: no.

Read more…

No one would blame you for being confused about when Ubisoft and Free Radical Design were planning to release “Haze” on PlayStation 3.

Not only has the futuristic shooter changed its platform focus a few times — something eerily reminiscent of “Assassin’s Creed“’s early days — but the release date itself has shifted over and over and over and over — you get the point.

Today, Ubisoft announced that “Haze” is coming in May but didn’t attach a specific ship date. That’s probably because they made that mistake last year and completely missed it.

“Haze” was announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2006 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC for release “sometime” in 2007. For an early reveal, that’s common.

That release date was eventually narrowed down to March 2007 before Ubisoft’s financial calendar indicated “Haze” would be missing that date and arriving before the end of Ubisoft’s next fiscal year, which spans April 2007 to March 2008. Gamers have come to expect delays this generation, so the move was hardly unexpected, but there was already a notable buzz over the game’s unique drug-based mechanics. That buzz would have to hold a little longer.

If you’ve been following “Haze,” however, you know that was only the beginning of the release date shuffling. Read on for the rest of the confusing tale.

Read more…

What’s your favorite way to insult a bad video game?

Do you refer to it as a “flop”? A “failure”? Or use some language your mother wouldn’t approve?

Do you “7.9″ it as IGN famously did years ago with “Mario Kart: Double Dash” (though they insisted that was a decent score). Do you declare it a “6.8″ as GameSpot once did “Shenume” before re-evaluating that game’s merits?

Do you just call it a dud? Or tell others it’s time to bail out?

Then you, my friend, are not Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal. He’s got a better way of trashing junk.

Mallat gave a presentation at the DICE video game summit in Las Vegas last week. Some may have found his discussion about the need for more emotions in games to be the most significant part of his presentation. Others may have been moved by his display of a clip from “Bambi.”

Not I. I was taken in by his casual description of bad games. He was comparing them to “triple-A games.” He called these lower games, these mediocrities, these wastes of business and time… “triple-C games.”

“Triple C.”

I hope that is not trademarked by Ubisoft. Because I plan to use it.

This week, I’ve been posting interviews — more like conversations — I’ve had with women working in the games industry.

First, I spoke with two journalists: Morgan Webb of G4’s “X-Play” and Jane Pinckard of the blog Game Girl Advance. They both had different perspectives about being a woman working in games. Now, I bring you another female voice in the world of gaming but on the development side: Ubisoft’s Elspeth Tory, the project manager for animation on “Assassin’s Creed.”

I know what you’re thinking. With all the hubbub surrounding “Assassin’s Creed” producer Jade Raymond, why not talk to Raymond herself? I originally asked Ubisoft to speak with Raymond, but was told by a company rep that she was “not interested at this time.” Totally understandable. However, Ubisoft suggested Tory, since she was available and another female able to speak about working on “Assassin’s Creed.”

I admit that I knew very little of Tory before the interview, but I learned that she was an animator on games such as Microids’ “Syberia II” and Ubisoft’s “Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.” I didn’t know what to expect, but the 29 year-old gamer was very honest about her experiences when we spoke on the phone last week.

Here’s an excerpt from when I asked her if she’s ever felt uncomfortable in the workplace:

Tory: … At some point, there was a woman who came in for an interview, and she was an attractive woman, apparently. We had these windows in our meeting room that were high up. And the guys, at some point, I so clearly remember this, they actually got up on their desks to look in on the woman in her interview. And they were making comments. Like, that was the kind of working environment that I was in. It wasn’t all the time, but it was ridiculous! … This was at Microids when that happened. I specifically remember it, and I was so disappointed. …

Make the jump to read more of Tory talking about doubting herself, having to do well for womankind, and the comments made about her co-worker…

Read more…

Girls don’t want to be cops. How do we know? Ubisoft asked.

Lately, the leading game publisher of the Tom Clancy games and the “Far Cry” series has been doing research on games for pre-teen girls. And what have they learned? A quarter of DS owners are young girls but less than 10% of DS games are aimed specifically at them. With that, Ubisoft surveyed girls and found that the top activities young girls enjoyed included fashion, cooking and taking care of animals and babies.

The result: the creation of the Imagine line, a series of video games targeted to 6-14 year-old girls. Unveiled at E3 in July, it’s the first non-licensed brand of games dedicated specifically to girls by a major publisher. Based on Ubisoft’s study, the first games in the line, to be released later this month, are “Fashion Designer,” “Master Chef,” “Animal Doctor,” and “Babyz.” “We did research, and we are studying the market… that’s what the girls actually like, so we should try to fulfill their needs,” Shara Hashemi, Ubisoft’s Brand Manager for the Imagine line, told Multiplayer in an interview last week.

Read more…