Wired Productions’ Leo Zullo on We Sing and trying to find the next indie hit

After a six-year break, Wired is bringing back the We Sing karoake game brand.

The firm has teamed up with publisher Nordic Games and developer Le Cortex to form a brand new company, the aptly titled We Sing Productions, entirely focused on this venture.

Sometimes a break from an IP or franchise is needed,” Wired CEO Leo Zullo says.

The people involved get stale. Ideas run out. The commercial landscape changes and things need a reassessment. That was the case with We Sing.”

We Sing is primarily a family game, a market not served to a great degree by the PS4 and Xbox One. Yet Zullo believes that there is enough of an audience there to make We Sing work.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 surprisingly didn’t have a casual tail like the PS2, although many people expected them to,” he says. Thankfully the Xbox One and PS4 are features of the living room. There hasn’t been a barrage of badly made casual titles, but there is definitely room for fun, non-hardcore genres.

At the end of the day the consoles are entertainment devices. Fewer but better quality titles is the way forward.”

He continues: We are expecting the first console version of We Sing to be a marker title.

We are re-establishing distribution channels and PR channels and so far the response has been overwhelming. A lot of effort has gone into the game, the songs, the look, feel, packaging, and peripherals.

Traditionally singing games don’t review well, but thankfully We Sing punched above its weight. All of us involved are excited, and also a little nervous, but that’s what drives us on.”

As well as working on We Sing, Wired Productions is one of the many companies in the UK looking to release the next indie hit.

For the last four years, the company has been establishing itself as an indie publisher. But this financial year is when that side of the company becomes the lion’s share of Wired’s business.

We produce and co-develop lots of music games, but our 2016/2017 financial year is when publishing becomes the larger share of our company’s turnover,” Zullo said.

Our policy has been slow and steady, and growing with the right resources in place. It is too easy to make mistakes and run out of cash, or over commit and not have the right people for the job.”

One of its upcoming titles is the long-in development Super Dungeon Bros. That title is hitting shelves in Q4 of this year.

[Our expectations are] bloody huge,” Zullo says.

We supported [developer] React so that it wasn’t rushed out. It is our showcase title to demonstrate to the industry and other studios the range of activities that Wired offer to developers in terms of publishing.”

Zullo says the firm is taking an ‘old school’ mentality when it comes to publishing, making sure that every game gets the attention it needs.

We love publishing,” he says. And we are bringing an old school mentality of retail publishing to our approach to each title. Every game needs a tailored solution, but they also need a good effort. So our approach is fewer titles, focused efforts and doing a good job for all partners. Our game selection should give players confidence that we will choose an eclectic but great set of gameplay experiences.

Our ambition is to grow the indie publishing side, and develop our reputation in the industry and with gamers so that the Wired brand is a trusted icon.”