Ubisoft's 'Drawsome Tablet' coming to Wii on December 6

UBISOFT® INTRODUCES DRAWSOME TABLET

New Drawing Peripheral for Nintendo's Wii™ System Bundled with Two Games

SAN FRANCISCO - November 8, 2011 - Today, Ubisoft® announced the development of the DrawsomeTM Tablet, a new drawing peripheral for the Wii™. Set to release exclusively in the United States on December 6, 2011, the video game tablet allows the entire family to show off their artistic creativity through an intuitive and engaging device. The Drawsome Tablet comes with two games, DrawsomeTM Artist and Drawsome Sketch QuestTM. Both games encourage players to unleash their creativity as well as challenge players to embark on fun family-friendly gaming adventures.

"Ubisoft is always looking for new ways to marry quality family time with a quality gaming experience," said Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Ubisoft North America. "With the Drawsome Tablet, Ubisoft is bringing to the market a peripheral that will allow families to sit down together and create their own unique works of art while participating in fun, creative adventures."

The Drawsome Tablet features a large 6.5x5-inch screen that allows for unrestricted drawing movements and features an innovative transparency layer that covers the drawing area, so players can trace their favorite images. The tablet comes with a wireless stylus which means players movements will not be limited by a tether; the size, shape, and feel of the pen also allows for a user-friendly experience for children. Everything drawn on the tablet will be displayed in real time on a home television. Using an SD card, users will be able to easily share their masterpieces with friends and family.

In Drawsome Artist, players can draw, paint and color by sketching on their own or learning advanced art techniques step by step. They even can interact with their favorite characters from The Smurfs, the world renowned animated brand, and learn how to draw and color them thanks to a huge gallery of predefined models. Also included is Drawsome Sketch Quest, in which players embark on an adventure to help a variety of cute animals race through their world by drawing bridges, trampolines and more. With 40 characters and 80 levels there is never a dull moment in either solo play or family-friendly four person co-op.

For more information on Drawsome, please visit: www.drawsometablet.com

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Ubisoft's 'We Dare' to ruin parties for PS3/Wii owners

by JC Fletcher on Feb 24th 2011 2:50PM

Finally, a Wii and PS3 game that encourages absolutely reprehensible behavior. If you've been looking for a way to make your parties way more uncomfortable and insulting, Ubisoft has just the product for you. We Dare is a collection of "dare" minigames, including (based on the trailer after the break) spanking, "kissing" the controller, and, um, more. Like, apparently, being driven to spontaneous passion behind the couch while two dudes watch, apparently.

It's worth noting that the game is primarily shown in the trailer to make women at a party "perform" in a way they don't want to -- and that's the trailer. That's the "ideal" situation presented. In real life, thankfully, it's more likely people would just leave when you broke out the "naughty" minigame collection.

As far as we can tell, We Dare is a European exclusive, so American partygoers are safe for the time being.

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Dance games made it rain on Ubisoft's holiday quarter

by James Ransom-Wiley on Feb 14th 2011 1:40PM

Ubisoft today reported sales figures for its fiscal-year third quarter, which ended December 31, 2010. For the period, the French publisher recorded €600 million ($809 million) in total software sales, up just over 21 percent from the same quarter in 2009 (though factoring in constant exchange rates -- nearly 60 percent of sales were made in North America -- year-over-year growth was closer to 15 percent).

In 2010's three-month holiday period alone, Ubisoft shipped a staggering 10.5 million copies of dance titles, which included Just Dance, Just Dance 2, Just Dance Kids, Michael Jackson: The Experience and Dance on Broadway. Additionally, the company claimed an 18 percent market share of the Kinect platform in the US (and 21 percent in Europe), following its push to become the "top third-party publisher" for Microsoft's successful motion-control add-on. Ubisoft put its Kinect game shipments at over 2 million -- "a very nice level of profitability," CEO Yves Guillemot said in an investor call today -- for the fiscal third quarter.

Add in all those copies of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and Ubisoft outsold its projected quarterly sales total by €80 million ($108 million), bringing its nine-month fiscal 2010-11 year sales up to €861 million ($1.16 billion) -- a marked increase over the €661 million in sales generated during the same period in 2009, and making it a near certainty that the company will return to profitability at the end of its current fiscal year (on March 31, 2011). With a relatively quiet fourth quarter of scheduled releases, however, the publisher anticipates its total fiscal-year sales to reach only €1.02 billion. Still, "cash flow generation is expected to be positive."

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