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Lynxara was off interviewing some guys (some silly little company called "Sega" or something, I don't know) while the Ubisoft press conference was going on. That means you're left with me, official member of the OMG Nintendo B-team, to cover Ubisoft's decidedly "B" selection of games.

Now, before any of you hardcore nuts start screaming at me, bear in mind that we're only covering the Nintendo content available at the show here. If you're looking for Prince of Persia, Far Cry 2, or Brothers in Arms, you'll have to go elsewhere. If you're looking for Rayman and girl-oriented shovelware, dive right in behind the cut!

The Ubisoft conference started out with the company's NA President Laurent Detoc informing us about Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party, the latest game in the popular franchise. He spoke with real affection about the long-running Rayman series (which, along with Raving Rabbids spinoffs, has sold an impressive 23 million units since its conception in 1995), and declared it his favorite of their many franchises with a sincerity that was truly charming.

Now, you may remember Lynxara's mention of the "ass-controlled balance board" game in her post on Nintendo, and indeed, this is that game. It's one thing to read about it, though, and quite another to watch a middle-aged man in a suit get down on his butt to simulate a rabbit snowboarding down a mountain on a flailing, inverted yak. It gets even stranger when he scores a combo on a jump, leading the rabbit and the yak to make out with each other in triumph.

Following that amusing display, a full trailer for the game was shown (which reminded me of another thing I love about the Wii that we haven't had since the NES days: commercial montages of gawkingly happy nuclear families playing video games together). In addition to the snowboarding game -- in which up to three other players can "play along" by sabotaging the main player with snowballs -- the trailer demonstrated a dance game that lets the player wield the nunchuk and remote in imitations of disco-like dance moves.

Only the Wii version was shown at the press conference, but Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party comes out in November on both Wii and DS.

This segued into a collection of upcoming entries in Ubi's more adult franchises: Band of Brothers, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy. Of these, the only one of any interest to this particular blog is Tom Clancy's Endwar, the first video game to be controlled solely with the player's voice. Though you wouldn't have known it from the photorealistic trailer, the game will apparently have a DS itereation, which makes sense given the microphone technology. (Though now that the Wii Microphone has been announced, I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually saw a Wii iteration as well.)

It was after this testosterone-fest that the awkward part of the press conference began. Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing Tony Key came out to talk about Ubisoft's burgeoning "Games for Girls" franchises. It started out well enough, with Key describing the growing importance of the female demographic. Apparently, six of the top ten third-party games for the DS are games targeted towards women, including the top-selling Imagine series, Petz, The Sims, and Cooking Mama. The number of women using DSes has grown 63% since the first three months of 2008, and Ubisoft's franchises have been a big part of that. Don't call them casual gamers, he said: these girls are truly passionate about gaming.

Unfortunately, the good feelings began to fade from there, as Key began to discuss the actual lineup: more games in the Imagine and Petz lines, as well as brand new franchise Ener-G (a series of girl-oriented sports games). There was an almost sarcastic air to the applause that followed the trailers filled with cuddly kittens and girls in cheerleading outfits, and it became increasingly obvious that Key was uncomfortable trying to sell the importance of these games to a room full of hardcore, primarily male gamers. As he deadpanned his way through descriptions of games like Dance Squad and Party Babiez, his continued citations of sales figures and focus groups began to sound less like bragging and more like an apology.

In retrospect, it's really hard to understand why Ubi even bothered with this segment. A sizable portion of the E3 press demographic simply doesn't care about girl games one way or another, and those who do care are perfectly aware that Imagine and Petz are basically crap. As much as I appreciate the heartening statistics and the lipservice directed towards my gender, I would much prefer it if they'd direct all that energy towards actually making better games.

As uncomfortable as that segment clearly was for everyone involved, though, good will was soon restored with a piece on Shaun White Snowboarding. The version on display was obviously the PS3/360 version, so I can't speak to how much of the touted sandbox exploration aspect will be available on the Wii. Shaun White came out for a brief appearence as in the Nintendo conference, leading to a joke about how he seems to be everywhere despite not having a badge.

The conference closed with a couple of promising titles: Ubisoft's newest brand, a seemingly disaster survival-oriented game called "I Am Alive" (for 360 and PS3) and of course, the new Prince of Persia. As with Endwar, the presentation for Prince of Persia focused on the next-gen console versions, despite there being a DS release also in the works. In fact, the DS version wasn't even mentioned in Producer Ben Mattes description of the game.

All in all, between the DS shovelware and the heavy push on the PS3/360 versions of their cross-platform titles, it's easy to conclude that aside from Detoc's own pet franchise (which lends itself naturally to party games), Ubisoft has no particular interest in developing software for Nintendo platforms. It may not be unexpected, but it is disheartening.

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