Watch Dogs for Wii U definitely not canceled

The Wii U version of Ubisoft's much-anticipated open-world action game Watch Dogs is definitely not canceled, producer Dominic Guay has confirmed.

"Yeah it's still alive," Guay told Polygon. "We still haven't defined a ship date for it, though. So it's on hold, to a certain extent for shipping." He said a 2014 ship date is a "possibility."

The Wii U version of Watch Dogs is the only iteration of the game not in development at Ubisoft Montreal, with development duties instead handed off to Ubisoft Romania. Guay said Ubisoft developers there want to take the time to leverage the Wii U's unique features, even if it means the game won't ship alongside the other versions.

"We wanted that team to have the time to explore the GamePad and be able to have fun with it and see how far they could push it," Guay said. "It's also an interesting platform, because it has its own strength, which we want to take advantage of, and we didn't want to delay all the other platforms for that one. So we're going to take the time we need to make sure the game is good (technically) when we ship it and that it also, game design-wise, makes good use of the specifics of the Wii U."

Also in the interview, Guay revealed that Watch Dogs was not originally set up to run on the Wii U and that he's been impressed by how quickly developers at Ubisoft Romania got it working.

"They were the perfect team to do it. Our Bucharest studio is super strong, super strong engineers and I was impressed by how quickly they got to get the game running on the console," he said. "And they were so autonomous in doing it."

Watch Dogs was originally expected to launch in November 2013, but Ubisoft delayed the game in October--just one month before release--to a new launch window of spring 2014. Just yesterday, Ubisoft confirmed that Watch Dogs will launch on May 27 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC. The Wii U version's release date is officially labeled "TBD."

Looking for more Watch Dogs content? Be sure to check out GameSpot editor Shaun McInnis' recent extensive hands-on preview of the game from his recent trip to Ubisoft Montreal.