The game was originally planned to be released exclusively for the Wii U. However, because of the commercial failure of Wii U exclusive ZombiU, Ubisoft believed that Rayman Legends would not be proftiable as a Wii U exclusive, and decided to make it multi-platform.

However, rather than release the already-finished Wii U version on its previously announced release date and release the other versions later, Ubisoft decided to delay the release by 6 months so that all versions could be released simultaneously. This upset not only the fans who had been eagerly anticipating the game, but also the development team.

To try and counter-balance the negative press, Ubisoft introduced an free application to the Wii U, in the form of a Challenges App, that provided a number of different challenge based levels for users to compete for higher scores and faster times on an online leaderboard without purchasing the game.