Rayman Legends February Release Date

The bad news: Rayman Legends, Ubisoft's follow-up to the wildly imaginative and endlessly replayable Rayman Origins, is a Wii U exclusive. So if you're looking to get your cooperative platforming on, you'd better also pick up Nintendo's new console.

The good news: if you happen to have already picked up a Wii U, or plan on receiving one over the holidays, the wait won't be long for Rayman Legends to hit store shelves. Or at least that's Ubisoft's plan.

The news comes to us from the publication Pure Nintendo (a spiritual successor to the now defunct Nintendo Power) who claims that Rayman Legends should be hitting store shelves on February 26th of next year. Deciding not to be coy about it, Ubisoft then confirmed that Legends is, in fact, targeting an early 2013 release, although they would not corroborate the specific February date.

Nonetheless, this is good news for fans of Ubisoft's platforming franchise as it puts less than two years between the release of Rayman Origins and Legends — a game that was first teased by a Rayman Origins survey and then wholly outed by a Wii U demo video. And from there it wasn't long before Ubisoft confirmed the sequel's existence, and then detailed the game's Wii U specific controls at E3 2012.

At the time of the demo, however, gamers were unaware that Rayman Legends was being positioned as a Wii U exclusive. Obviously the title's GamePad controls — allowing the player to tap on electoons, create platforms, and, in effect, increase the duo's overall score -- are a major selling point, but are they worth the price of a shiny new Wii U.

Rayman Legends - Dancing

Gimmicky? A little, but the implementation was solid enough that playing through the Rayman Legends demo on Wii U appeared to be a decent evolution of Origins' formula.

As far as we know, it's apparently all hands on deck for Rayman Legends' development as well, with Ubisoft Montpellier pulling much of its work force off of Beyond Good and Evil 2 and focusing on getting this game out early next year. There is no rush with BG&E 2 anyways, as Michel Ancel has already revealed the sequel is bound for the next-gen.

As far as Rayman Legends is concerned we'll keep you posted when Ubisoft confirms a release date for the game.

Would you be willing to pick up a Wii U for the chance to play Rayman Legends? Could this be the first must-have title for the console?

Rayman Legends is rumored to be releasing on February 26, 2013 for the Wii U

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Source: Pure Nintendo (via CVG)