Watch Dogs Coming To Wii U Holiday 2014

There's been a lot of talk about the Wii U's version of Watch Dogs. Lots of guesstimating about the game being canned altogether or Ubisoft just cutting their loses and putting it on the back burner. However, there's no Nintenshame going on in the Ubisoft camp; they're just trying to make the most of the Wii U's secret sauce that they can.

Nintendo Enthusiast managed to reach out to a Ubisoft representative and asked about the game's release status on Nintendo's little console that could. As stated in the article...

“We’ve reached out to a Ubisoft representative for a confirmation and were told that the game is indeed targeting a Fall 2014 release date.”

Well that's a huge relief.

The last bit of news we heard about the Wii U version of Watch Dogs was that Ubisoft had to take some of the specialist programmers off the project to help with the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, but Ubisoft's Bucharest studio were keen and lean when it comes to utilizing the Wii U's secret sauce.

Unfortunately, we actually don't know much about what kind of utilization Ubisoft will make of the Wii U's capabilities, but we do know that the Gamepad is likely to play a big role in the hacking elements of the game. As we all know, Watch Dogs kind of centers around hacking, so hopefully the Gamepad utilization is as keen in Ubisoft's hacktion title as it was in Ubisoft's Wii U launch title, ZombiU.

Of course, the one thing we can't ignore is why the Wii U's delay is so far removed from the release of the other consoles? Watch Dogs for the geriatric twins and the new-gen PS4 and Xbox One is set for May 27th, just a few days from the launch of Nintendo's prime-time player, Mario Kart 8.

Now there's a running rumor that Ubisoft purposefully delayed Watch Dogs on the Wii U to avoid direct competition with Mario kart 8. Given all the positive press, the pre-order momentum and all the peripherals and accessories launching for the game, it does stand to reason that Ubisoft doesn't want to be schlong slapped by Mario Kart 8 coming out of the gate. Heck, the game did manage to briefly out-pace the PS4 in Japan for a while. Effectively, Watch Dogs on Wii U could be cannibalized by everyone picking up the exclusive Wii U racer instead. It's possible.

Of course, until Ubisoft makes it known what their true reasons are for the delay, we can only speculate. Hopefully the fall release isn't pushed back anymore than that, as I'm sure the delay will already likely diminish some of the sales of the game with other titles like Monolith Soft's 'X' and Super Smash Bros releasing around that time-frame, too. Still, at least we now know the window for the game's launch, which is better than nothing.

You can learn more about Watch Dogs by paying a visit to the game's official website.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.