NPD Lifetime sales:
Rayman Legends
...
And I would respond with the following:
1) Rayman Legends sold well on Wii U because it was hyped as a Wii U exclusive for many months. I know people who purchased a Wii U BECAUSE Rayman Legends was supposed to come out exclusively for it.
You forgot to include that it was delayed for half a year or so. Which means most people had already forgotten that it was meant to be exclusive. I bet Ubisoft even managed to get less Wii U sales than what they would have gotten without delay. I bought it for 15pounds a few weeks ago.
I would consider this to be a fair point, in case Ubisoft released it immediately and created ports later. But they simply didn't. They fucked it up. Those few PS3+360 owners wouldn't have cared, if the Wii U version would have been released back then.
2) The game sold quite poorly universally.
Is this something new? Rayman Origins sold quite poorly as well. It took quite a while to reach a million or so. There is nothing to shoot. It made sense that those games didn't get superb sales. It's (sadly) not what the masses want.
3) Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Assassin's Creed IV have performed ABYSMALLY on Wii U. While there may be more merit for colorful, mascot platformers, their core, mature titles don't perform nearly as well, and Ubisoft realizes this.
Double Agent was released on Wii in 2006. And none of the AssCreeds were ever released on Wii. What did they expect, I mean really?
Or do you think that many PS3/360 owners jumped to Wii U and/or owned one of those on top of Wii and would then buy all games released on Wii U from then on? Why do you think that?
Reminds me of people calling Mass Effect 3 Wii U sales abysmal. The sales were not abysmal. Their own behaviour was abysmal, it's actually their own fault for not supporting the best selling platform last generation and in case of Mass Effect not releasing the trilogy on Wii U and instead releasing the 3rd game in a series of games, where one of the major selling points is "decisions matter, even over the course of several games". It's fascinating that ME3 even sold any copies at all, because it makes absolutely no sense to buy it on Wii U.
And I'm sorry, but you really consider AssCreed to be "core" and "mature"? Maybe your definition of "core" is not the same as mine. AssCreed is the definition of mass-appeal and simplistic gameplay aka "casual". And it never changed. A pseudo-platformer without a jump-button is anything but "core".
I played the first 2, noticed that it was the exact opposite of games, that I enjoy and wasn't even interested in any of the followups since. Maybe most Wii U owners feel like me. Funnily "core"/"hardcore" gamers were supposed to be the target audience for Wii U, so that actually would make sense.
And for Blacklist - it was even a miracle, that I bought it on PS3 after the fucked up Ubisoft PR. After playing through it, I actually bought a second copy for Wii U. btw. didn't Ubisoft manage to have broken multiplayer for months on Wii U and they even removed coop multiplayer?
