Ubisoft sued over Yourself!Fitness Wii port that never happened
ResponDesign is a little ticked off. If you ever played Yourself!Fitness for the Xbox, PC or PS2, know that they had a Wii version planned to capitalize on the success of Nintendo's Wii Fit. Ubisoft was developing My Fitness Coach, with an agreement between themselves and ResponDesign to use some of Yourself!Fitness's assets, including the virtual trainer Maya, in the game. Part of the agreement was to launch in early 2008, to coincide with Wii Fit's release (and thus capitalize on its popularity). Since that didn't happen, ResponDesign is most upset it lost out on a lot of money in royalties.
The lawsuit was filed on July 16 in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles. ResponDesign also had claims Ubisoft "never disclosed that it was developing a game that would be entitled My Weight Loss Coach or any other game in the My Coach product line that would directly compete with or replace the My Fitness Coach game." The agreement was to apparently see ResponDesign receive $250,000 for the initial game elements, $50,000 when Ubisoft completed the first playable version of the Wii game (which was supposed to be completed no later than Nov. 18, 2007), and an additional $50,000 after Nintendo approved the gold master for the finished title.
ResponDesign feels cheated and claims "from the outset [Ubisoft] failed to diligently pursue development of the game, ignored the terms of the license agreement and acted in bad faith."
