Nintendo Wii Fanboy

As hated as Ubisoft's Petz games are by the "hardcore" blog-reading crowd, kids apparently eat them up (the games, not pets). They're so important that, according to Ubisoft's Benoit Galarneau, the company's Montreal studio (Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Assassin's Creed) is handling development of the latest Wii game in the series, Dogz 2008. "We did this one internally," Galarneau said, "because we feel that as the casual market is growing, we feel that our Petz line will explode, and we need to raise the quality of the game to make sure that no competitor will steal our position as pet people."

This interview is actually the most we've heard Ubisoft open up about this type of game. Galarneau discusses the differences in regional markets, in-game advertising, and failure states in casual games. But the really interesting part comes at the end, when the subject of the Z came up. Ubisoft inherited the "Petz" naming convention from the original PF Magic-developed series, and kept it. Now the company sees it as kind of an identifying trademark. "But one thing we have to make sure of is that people understand that the one with the "z" is the one we're pushing. It's not just "Pets" or "Dogs", as any dog or any pet. It's Petz. My team would say "Dog Z" most of the time."

When told by Gamasutra's Brandon Sheffield that "Dog Z" sounds like a specific dog, Galarneau said "There will be Dog Z in the game, in fact."

Poor old Ubisoft. Contrary to popular belief, it turns out that casual games won't pay for your entire HQ to be paved in gold. According to Ubisoft North American president Laurent Detoc, this is because any savings made on developing such titles goes towards marketing the things, which apparently costs an arm and a leg.

"The margins on these games are good when you look at development, but it takes a lot of marketing dollars," revealed Detoc to Gamasutra, instantly endearing himself to all of us hardcore gamers who can't stand a lot of the casual tat on the Wii. "It's like packaged goods. You have to think about marketing, retail space, branding." My, isn't it nice to see that the creative flame still burns bright in the industry?

Anyway, Ubisoft is especially struggling with its Wii line-up of casual fare, with Detoc admitting that much work is to be done if Ubi's games are to "sell as well as Nintendo's own Wii titles." Needless to say, our hearts bleed.

Wait! Before you roll your eyes and scroll past this post in search of non Petz news, we want to make sure you know that unlike the DS and PC versions, Petz Catz 2 isn't your garden-variety shovelware pet sim.

It's more of a light RPG adventure in which you, a kitten, set out to retrieve a magical top hat from a mean wolf. Of course, along the way, you'll have several different minigames and side quests which you can pounce into, instead. Also, you can put hats on cats.

If that short description -- or the prospect of adorning cats with hats -- interests you at all, Amazon has the game on sale for a super cheap $7.99 until the end of the day. If you're more of a puppy person, you can also pick up the palette-swapped canine complement, Petz Dogz 2, for only $9.99.

[Via CAG]

Read - Petz Catz 2 for $7.99
Read - Petz Dogz 2 for $9.99