We're not sure if it's indicative of the Wii U's allegedly poor performance at retail, or whether Ubisoft have always had it up their sleeves, but the French mega-publisher today announced that their upcoming multiplayer platformer, Rayman Legends, is no longer a Wii U exclusive. Originally unveiled as a Wii U exclusive at last summer's E3 show, it's now due to be released for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 too later this year. Good news if you've yet to buy a Wii U - bad news if you bought a Wii U in preparation, and bad news for Nintendo, who've lost one of their exclusives.
We're hoping it'll be a bit easier to keep track of yourself this time round...
Essentially a sequel to 2011's Rayman Origins, Legends is a four player platform game along the same vein as New Super Mario Bros., where the limbless wonder Rayman, his fat blue friend Globox and a couple of big-nosed Teensies leap, swing and smash their way through a series of tricky levels after being sucked into a series of paintings. Not that they're famous paintings, like the Mona Lisa, or the Last Supper or anything - just a series of peculiar portraits they in a tent in a forest. Happens to us all the time.
Sadly, the addition of two new formats has come at a bit of a cost, as the game's release has now been pushed back to September, in order to give the developers time to reprogram the game for other machines - so those of you hoping to pick it up on the Wii U come the 1st of March will be disappointed. We can't help wondering what'll become of the Wii U exclusive bits and bobs on the other consoles, too - most notably, floating green cheese-shaped thing Murfy, who, from the trailers (and indeed, the Wii U demo we downloaded) was an integral part of many of the levels, rotating wheels, moving platforms and shielding people from a relentless rain of fire - all controlled via the Wii U GamePad's Touch Screen. How this'll translate to the other consoles, we're not sure - perhaps controlling him will translate fairly well to an analogue stick, or perhaps he'll just move automatically and it's up to you to keep up. Only time will tell.
This week hasn't exactly been the best for Wii U releases, with Scribblenauts Unlimited gets held back and now Rayman Legends has been delayed till September - both of which make the console's current game drought seem all that more expansive. Fingers crossed Lego City Undercover doesn't get shifted as well or we'll be in for a boring few months...
