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By madness
#4401
Ubisoft confesses to rushing out Wii games, sacrificing quality, but promises to do better.

This is quite a worrying piece of news, knowing that Atari did the same thing with driv3r, but hopefully it won't be anywhere near as bad. We really hope that this doesn't continue and hope that they can find some time to fixing the upcoming "Driver: Parallel Lines" Nintendo Wii Release.

Software giant Ubisoft has admitted that its charge to back Wii with numerous, poorly-thought-out ports of old titles and rushed software has come at the sacrifice of quality, and promises to do better in the future.

The Wii remake of Far Cry Instincts (renamed Vengeance) was particularly bad, while Ubisoft continued its rehashing onslaught with Prince of Persia: Rival Swords, Blazing Angels, and the soon-to-come Driver: Parallel lines. Even its million-seller Red Steel suffered from twitchy, unrefined controls.

In an interview with German magazine Speigel (via IGN), Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot, and European boss, Alain Corre, admitted: "we made mistakes". Speigel explains Ubisoft intended to be right at the centre of the storm for Wii when it launched in November (US/Japan) and December (UK/Europe) last year, but the standard of its rushed games suffered as a result.

There has been no result of the PC release being rushed but only time will tell and we'll see what the final product turns out like.

I really think this is a bad way to start of the driver series after spending 22million on it, what do you the fans think?
By Moonchild
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#4402
Interesting read, Not only did they mess up the titles mentioned but they also screwed up Splinter Cell Double Agent for the Wii.
With the Wii's recent success it's no surprise that UBI rushed out alot of it's games...that's how the business works.

I think that DPL for PC should be good but the Wii version probally will have control problems thanks to the Wiimote(look at Exite Truck)

One thing that sucks for the Driver series now is the marketing and general opinion of the series among critics. I mean, look at the weekly sales of games on vg charts(not the most reliable source but good enough) Driver 76 hasn't hit the top 50 in software sales, which means it's only selling a few thousand copies a week.
That is not good and if this continues there may not be many more Driver games for Ubi Soft to "rush out"
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By madness
#4403
I think that after spending just over 22 million dollars purchasing the driver franchise they would try their best to lead it to success again but when we think about another driver game being rushed we don’t feel all that happy about what ubisoft is starting to do, it’s like their dragging a trend from Atari a bad trend which less to driv3r’s in success.

I think and hope this is only for the Wii release and I do hope they sharpen there act and make sure they put a lot more time, money and effort into the driver series after some time this game will lead to loads of success.

I think we really need to wait for the next generation version to get everyone going, lets hope that they have the anticipation that they had when they were creating driv3r, hopefully they make it a product which they hoped driv3r would have been if it weren’t rushed then I think the game would sell slowly because of the in success of a previous game but after time friends will spread a “word of mouth” fashion of telling everyone else about the game and slowly the game should sell.

I also though Driver: 76 was selling pretty well, I think I’ll check by my local eb games and see if they can give me some sort of sales report.
By Moonchild
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#4404
I agree with you, the real Ubisoft Driver game will be the next-gen console/PC version. DPL for the Wii is pretty much turning out to be just like Driver 76...it's only a month away from release and there still hasn't been any trailers and only a few articles of news released. Why?

These rushed games are the cause of rising development costs and the fact that currently, the Wii is selling like hotcakes. And the easiest way to make money is to just release a bunch of half-assed ports based on popular franchises.

Your right about the word of mouth thing, but it's dissapointing to see that Driver 76 only has an average rating of 59% on Game Rankings, I was hoping that the game would be the steeping stone for future good reviews for the Driver series but their just making it out to be another GTA clone...which shows that nothing has changed.
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By madness
#4408
Driver: 76 sales are in fact pretty high. Here is the latest repot
The most popular PSP games for the week of May 24 - May 31:

1. Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters
Publisher: Sony
Release Date: 2/14/2007

2. 300: March To Glory
Publisher: Eidos
Release Date: 3/2/2007

3. Driver 76
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release Date: 5/9/2007

4. Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End
Publisher: Buena Vista
Release Date: 5/21/2007

5. Prince Of Persia: Rival Swords
Publisher: UBI Soft
Release Date: 4/4/2007
Driver: 76 was one of the best selling games of last week. I also took a look at the PSP's general stastics and they have only sold about 85million units in total and for that 85million on average there have only been 4 game purchases per psp. So you couldn't expect to many people to purchase psp games all that much especially since psp sales have dropped by 75% in the last couple of months.

[hr]

On the issue of an average media rating of about 60%. As you said before you seen an average rating of 59% on game rankings well this was a average media rating. Strangely enough the average public rating is 90% there is a very significant different and I always wonder why there is such a difference between reviews and public rating these days.

So I believe Driver: 76 is selling pretty well. I also think that it would be a great idea if they held onto Driver: Parallel Lines on PC and Nintendo Wii for another month and spend some more time on it making sure but since they've set a release date I guess they have to stick to it. But Atari always found a way to move it around all the time on the release of DRIV3R.
By Moonchild
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#4410
I also took a look at the PSP's general stastics and they have only sold about 85million units in total and for that 85million on average there have only been 4 game purchases per psp
Looks like you have a little typo here, the PSP has actually shipped around 25 million units worldwide. The system has the poorest software sales of any curent hardware so it's no surprise to see that only 4 games are being purchased. Plus most people are buying PSP's to hack it for Emulation and Homebrew Software.

I've actually read that PSP hardware sales have risen the last month because of the price drop.

It's good that the average public rating is 90% but that's probally the fans that are voting. If Driver is going to be king again it needs good reviews from the media because alot of people use reviews as the basis for their purchases. As for the Wii and PC release of DPL, I still believe that the PC version will be good but the Wii release will be a dissapointment. I just don't see how you can control a car fast and accurately with the wiimote, but hopefully I'll be proven wrong.

As for Driver 76, I think it's selling between 5000-9000 units a week.
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By Sedans
#4434
Most people dont stop to think that even though Driv3r was bad due to mistakes, it is also what make the game great, the glitches / glitch finding/ hunting is what added numerous hours of playing time to the game, the game would've died out alot faster without that.
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