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."

When house pets attack (video games) must be the theme for the FFV this week, as DSF is featuring a frisky feline and we here at Wii Fanboy present a dog with a dislike for all things Mii. As you can see above, its mouth claps open and shut as it tries to consume the virtual representation of a real human being. We just fear that once the dog puts two and two together, it'll realize that attacking Miis in the real world is much more satisfying. Also, real life Miis probably taste better.

EA just announced that the Wii is getting The Sims 2: Pets and really, we can't say we're particularly thrilled. In fact, we're officially torn. The Wii, as a system, is terribly young, despite all the SuperCube remarks some folks like to make. The Wii only has a couple of years behind it, after all. Because of that, we're trying to be patient. One can't expect a revolutionary control system to immediately take root and manifest itself in awesomeness. So we're waiting. And while we appreciate the urge to throw us a few bones while we're waiting, we think we may speak for everyone when we say that, really, we have enough ports. Games that released year are ... well, they're pretty much last year's games, and if we wanted them, we probably played them then. Sure, we understand that if there's a buck to be made by printing a few more discs, someone's going to rush in to make it, but it just seems more and more gratuitous with every new generation. Enough already!

Or are we alone in this sentiment? Maybe we just don't have enough love for the Sims any longer. It's hard, when we're so busy thinking of MySims.

There is one thing that's interesting about The Sims 2: Pets, and that's the possibility of online features. Hurray!

[Thanks for the Sims tip, Limpit!]