Ubisoft cancels three more games, issues dire update

Armenius

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During a recent earnings call, it was revealed that Ubisoft is cancelling 3 more unannounced titles in addition to the 4 cancellations revealed last year. Ubisoft also only has plans to release one new triple-A title through the fiscal year beginning in April 2023 and ending March 2024, and it's not the frequently delayed multiplayer pirate title Skull & Bones. Skull & Bones was pushed back into the next fiscal year, meaning April 2024 at the earliest. Estimated operating income was lowered by $1 billion for the fiscal year starting in April. Ubisoft is looking to cut $200 million in costs over the next 2 years. CEO Yves Guillemot placed blame on the current macroeconomic conditions for the revised estimations on economic performance for the rest of the fiscal year, and suggests that other big game publishers will need to face the same reality. For reference, the gaming market including mobile shrank by 4.5% for the 2022 calendar year. Ubisoft is expecting a further 10% recession for 2023.

https://www.axios.com/2023/01/11/ubisoft-cancels-update

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I mean... they could try not making the same game over and over. Seriously, the make one game. You run around and explore, climb up tall things to unlock the map, find lots and lots of random collectables, and murder dudes and critters. If you want to do it in a historical setting with blades, it is Assassin's Creed, if you want to do it in a modernish setting with guns it is Far Cry and if you want to do it in a Cyberpunk setting with cellphones it is Watch Dogs. Perhaps people are getting a little tired of that?

I've never been a fan of their games, but even people who I know who are fans seem to get burnt out. My girlfriend wanted to play Assassin's Creed Valhalla and had fun for a bit but got tired of the repetitive grind and the fact that it really didn't feel like anything interesting, just a new Viking style coat of paint.

They have to be one of the least creative studios I've seen, yet they pour TONS of money in to these games.
 
couldn't have happened to a better company.

Edit: Before I hear "But Those Poor Developers!!!"

Listen: if there is a demand, the developers will find jobs elsewhere. Yes it's stressful going through this, but Bad things should happen to bad companies, and the fact that the developers are hurt is even more reason Ubisoft is a bad company.
 
I think it's a bit a column A and B. People aren't going to buy as many games at 60-70 dollars when food costs as much as it does, and also Ubisoft's games have been stale since Xbox 360. The first two assassin's creed games were revolutionary back in like 2008, they haven't really innovated since then. Really looking forward to the whole economy collapsing because we can't implement price controls (hasn't been done since Nixon admin) for some reason or do any kind anti-trust enforcement. Just have to make the fed drive people into unemployment, so pathetic.
 
I was kind of interested yesterday in watching a synopsis of the AC games. I was interested in them since the first game, but just never got around to playing any of them (when reviews dropped and AC became an annual release I changed my tune, but 2007 was ages ago in PC gaming history).
Anyway, never found that, but did find videos of people making fun of the AC games. With one poignantly saying that the latest game had 3 quest types repeated 300 times for a total of 100 of each type of quest. And that the game had maybe 4 hours of enjoyable content, covered in 36 hours of busy work as well as unenjoyable, unskipable, cut-scenes.

I more or less figured that was what the franchise was like from just looking at it. Honestly the "open-world-ification" of all of these single player titles has just lead to worse games. In the same review, the idea of just the cool stuff you want to do in games, AC was compared to Uncharted. And I felt a sincere amount of irony, because Uncharted is quite literally everything AC is not from a design perspective. It's totally linear and forces you down a pipe. But that allows the game designers to give cool set pieces that you won't forget and it minimizes filler. A "tight 10 hour game" that's packed vs a "40 hour game" that has meaningless content.

I'm glad people are starting to finally figure this BS out. I was already SUPER aware when open world games such as Skyrim were becoming "a thing". I've made multiple posts talking about how you can do anything but that anything is devoid of all meaning. I forgot which game journalist said this, but it describes this issue perfectly: the game has the width of an ocean but it's only an inch deep.

Anyway, that's my Ubisoft game rant, but the other half of the issue is their insistence on using a terrible launcher for their games and forcing people to use it, when no one wants it or likes it. And frankly none of their titles or good enough to keep people coming back to it. It's just an extra point of friction that doesn't need to exist.


tl;dr: Ubisoft needs to make better games and stop doing dumb management decisions. It's "easy", but something a bean-counting company like Ubisoft doesn't want to do.


EDIT: Found the video I was referring to for reference. Only 5 minutes long and I think lays it out perfectly:
 
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I was kind of interested yesterday in watching a synopsis of the AC games. I was interested in them since the first game, but just never got around to playing any of them (when reviews dropped and AC became an annual release I changed my tune, but 2007 was ages ago in PC gaming history).
Anyway, never found that, but did find videos of people making fun of the AC games. With one poignantly saying that the latest game had 3 quest types repeated 300 times for a total of 100 of each type of quest. And that the game had maybe 4 hours of enjoyable content, covered in 36 hours of busy work as well as unenjoyable, unskipable, cut-scenes.

I more or less figured that was what the franchise was like from just looking at it. Honestly the "open-world-ification" of all of these single player titles has just lead to worse games. In the same review, the idea of just the cool stuff you want to do in games, AC was compared to Uncharted. And I felt a sincere amount of irony, because Uncharted is quite literally everything AC is not from a design perspective. It's totally linear and forces you down a pipe. But that allows the game designers to give cool set pieces that you won't forget and it minimizes filler. A "tight 10 hour game" that's packed vs a "40 hour game" that has meaningless content.

I'm glad people are starting to finally figure this BS out. I was already SUPER aware when open world games such as Skyrim were becoming "a thing". I've made multiple posts talking about how you can do anything but that anything is devoid of all meaning. I forgot which game journalist said this, but it describes this issue perfectly: the game has the width of an ocean but it's only an inch deep.

Anyway, that's my Ubisoft game rant, but the other half of the issue is their insistence on using a terrible launcher for their games and forcing people to use it. When no one wants it or likes it, and frankly none of their titles or good enough to keep people coming back to it. It's just an extra point of friction that doesn't need to exist.


tl;dr: Ubisoft needs to make better games and stop doing dumb management decisions. It's "easy", but something a bean-counting company like Ubisoft doesn't want to do.
Assassin's Creed was really the last original idea they had. It was groundbreaking for the time, and the second game is even better as they tightened up the controls and improved the story. After that they just continued to coast on the "Far Creed" genre, never coming up with a new gameplay idea. With AC:Origins though being lauded as more of a RPG, really just integrated more Far Cry into the series. You break everything down to the simple gameplay loop and every action game Ubisoft has put out for the last 15 years is exactly the same.
 
I think it's a bit a column A and B. People aren't going to buy as many games at 60-70 dollars when food costs as much as it does, and also Ubisoft's games have been stale since Xbox 360. The first two assassin's creed games were revolutionary back in like 2008, they haven't really innovated since then. Really looking forward to the whole economy collapsing because we can't implement price controls (hasn't been done since Nixon admin) for some reason or do any kind anti-trust enforcement. Just have to make the fed drive people into unemployment, so pathetic.

I'd say Ubi is the victim of the same problem that tends to affect Activision and EA. That is, they found a few successful franchises and built their business models around yearly releases (or two years, in some cases) of sequels. It's been a reliable and profitable formula, but it's also becoming clear that it's not a permanently sustainable model. Developers can't take many risks, so they either run out of meaningfully new gameplay experiences or don't have time to implement the ones they'd like.

The tricky bit is shaking things up. Breaking away from the new-game-every-year schedule helps, but there's a financial risk to that... and of course, it's not as simple as spending more time on a project. There have been promising games that took ages to create and still didn't succeed. Ubi might have to make big bets and prepare for the possibility that they won't pay off.
 
I swore a permanent boycott of Ubisoft back in 1999 when I made the egregious mistake of buying Tonic Trouble on N64 when I was a child on the recommendation of a Nintendo Power endorsement that was clearly paid for. That game nearly killed the joy I had for video games. I am not joking, for the first time in my young life I felt depressed for weeks after I bought this game (who wouldn't when as a kid you can afford to buy maybe three games a year and you paid the full price of an N64 game for a game that was this bad). I basically had to force myself to play it and pretended to enjoy it because otherwise I had to admit to everybody that I was scammed. I cannot understate how bad it was, I knew elementary kids that made better games than this in a week-long game design summer camp:



Anyways, ever since then I have watched quietly as Ubisoft grew into this giant game design company but all the while we still get these traumatizing glitches that are clearly the result of horrible game design:
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I would never trust Ubisoft with my money for anything that they develop in-house. I think gamers know when there is an underlying lack of desire to create something great and that comes through in the final product in so many ways. I know Nintendo is not a perfect company but when it comes to putting out quality content, Ubisoft should look to them and see how they can re-conceptualize their entire business model. Who knows, maybe it is not too late for them to reinvent themselves as a quality game developer.
 
I'd say Ubi is the victim of the same problem that tends to affect Activision and EA. That is, they found a few successful franchises and built their business models around yearly releases (or two years, in some cases) of sequels. It's been a reliable and profitable formula, but it's also becoming clear that it's not a permanently sustainable model. Developers can't take many risks, so they either run out of meaningfully new gameplay experiences or don't have time to implement the ones they'd like.

The tricky bit is shaking things up. Breaking away from the new-game-every-year schedule helps, but there's a financial risk to that... and of course, it's not as simple as spending more time on a project. There have been promising games that took ages to create and still didn't succeed. Ubi might have to make big bets and prepare for the possibility that they won't pay off.
While the people with deep pockets continue to do the same BS in Hollywood and the gaming industry, thankfully there are "smaller studios" making content that is actually worth watching/playing. If these mega-corps want a piece of that, then they're actually going to have to make *gasp* new games that are interesting, novel, and fun. Considering they literally have all the resources to do so, I have zero pity for them when they can't figure this out. That aspect of Ubisoft is 100% a management issue. They have bean counters trying to reverse engineer profit from a product that by its nature requires it to be fun to sell well.

In literally every industry, including ones that have high barriers to entry and razor thin margins the way to make it all work is the same: make a good product first and foremost. 2 support it well. 3 be competitive with pricing models.
A first year business student could tell them this.
 
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I like the AC and Far Cry games, but they've definitely gotten stale. The fact that they try and make them all so damned huge (quantity vs. quality) hasn't helped. In the past both franchises have reinvented things every 3rd game and both are coming up on sequels that will (hopefully) follow that formula. I'd rather have 'em get delayed by as long as it takes rather than give me the same exact thing again.
 
Can't think of the last time I bought a Ubisoft game...the original Watch Dogs maybe? And that was a mistake.
 
Can't think of the last time I bought a Ubisoft game...the original Watch Dogs maybe? And that was a mistake.

I just went though their entire list of games going back to 1986.

The only games on there I have bought and/or enjoyed have been the Far Cry series, starting with Far Cry 2 (the first one was kind of trash, and I didn't even think they made the first one, I thought it was in house developed by Crytek)

And even the Far Cry series has gotten old. The game concept started out decent with 2 (the first one was a completely different game) and got better. 3 and 4 we're excellent, but ever since it has felt like it got boring. Too much "conquer base, prince and repeat". I've felt for a long time they needed to do something different than drop the same game in a different geographic setting over and over again.

To be fair they did change stuff up a little with 6, but I thought it was for the worse. It felt dumbed down somehow, and more like a shitty mobile game. That and the forcing you into 3rd person view in camps was utterly obnoxious.

Other than Far Cry 2-6, I've never bought an Ubisoft game.

And as far as 3-6 go, while I own them all, I've never installed the purchased versions because they require me to sign into Ubisofts store and online system, something I refuse to do for a single player game.

So I bought them all to be able to say I did, but the only versions I played were "community editions".

I guess what I am trying to say is, Ubisoft could disappear entirely and apart from a copy paste open world game series i enjoy on occasion, i probably wouldn't even notice. They just don't make the type of games I am generally interested in. Far Cry being the exception, but they really overdid it with the copy and paste sequels, and I'm just not sure I can bring myself to care anymore.
 
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As others have said - I think they are depleting the groundwater by pumping the same wells a bit too much.

That said, I actually adore the art and world building they do. Amazing work from those teams. They just need a fresher game on top of it.
 
Also the Predator mission from whatever Ghost Recon that one was was fun. Me and a friend played that on some free trial. Rest of the game was eh bland.

Also Uno lol
 
Apparently unpopular opinion but I actually enjoyed some of their games, off the top of my head: Anno 1800, For Honor, The Division and even some of the Assassin's Creed.
Always found their art/production on the high side of the spectrum. They provided me plentiful of good hours of entertainment on my book.
As with everything else, if they make a game that I enjoy and deliver it reasonably i'll play/buy, otherwise I'll pass, don't see a need for the hate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Soon it's just gonna be Valve digitally distributing Sony's and Microsoft's games and that's all there is 🙃
 
Soon it's just gonna be Valve digitally distributing Sony's and Microsoft's games and that's all there is 🙃
Sucks that game companies make sequel after sequel (kinda like hollyweird) and people get tired of the same shit.
 
Sucks that game companies make sequel after sequel (kinda like hollyweird) and people get tired of the same shit.
It is a dance, people adore sequel after sequel, they release over 400 movies a years in theatre, almost all of them original one and yet, the most popular every year will be almost all sequels:


Similar with games, if it is not a sequels doing well it will be something of a very well known format.

Would people get actually tired it will be over right away, it is strong market force that decided the sequel model, would we have not get excited for the new Unreal Tournament and Half-Life2, it would have never caught up and studio would have happily never made them and expressed new idea.

Will see with GTA 6 and the next ElderScrolls sales numbers if people are really tired of sequels, I have doubt, but with Top Gun-Avatar numbers it is certainly not the case with movies or TV Shows, season 2-3-4, prequels-sequels are extremely populars.
 
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Sucks that game companies make sequel after sequel (kinda like hollyweird) and people get tired of the same shit.

also cause they decided with games a while back all titles/franchises had to be annual releases for the bottom line

led to copy + paste everywhere very quickly
 
As mentioned before, I don't think it has much to do with market conditions. Ubisoft likes to rework games over and over again because many games don't have a clear vision. Recently they have settled on the "everything is an open world" and "everything needs to be made up of dozens of meaningless activities".

Most of what they do is fairly similar. The formula has become predictable and the downsides to massive, generic games with quickly generated areas have gotten old. Think of the most memorable scenes or areas in video games that you have played. They tend to be level/mission based and not open world and generic. Some open worlds actually do create a world that is memorable but those are few and far between. Every game wants to pretend it is Fallout, but 90% of the open world games just have empty areas you visit once and don't do anything in. You go there because a marker on the map told you to go there to get a quest. The quest then has you run to another marker in another equally unimportant area.

At this point everything Ubisoft is doing blends together. Generic fat NPC that looks inhumanly large = heavy guy with more HP. GR: Wildlands, Watch Dogs and Far Cry 3/4/5/6 all have them. Fat dude who tends to wear EOD armor and carries a machinegun or shotgun; something that does an abnormally high amount of damage. Even Assassin's Creed games have them although they carry a big axe or something.

Ubisoft games used to have some diversity. Splinter Cell is has been dead for a while (probably for the best). That was a great level based stealth game. Story based, gameplay based. No nonsense of collecting things or running around a map chasing icons. They decided to let that fall to the side to make more generic games. All their games generally look and feel similar to. Bright colors, and the cartoon grade characters of games like GR Wildlands, R6 Siege, Watch Dogs and Far Cry.

Harsh reality is Ubisoft's products have gotten stale and they can't make a serious toned game with a well written story and theme fitting look even if they wanted to. It seems like all of that talent was thrown on the window long ago. Maybe they will pull their head out of their asses but I doubt it.
 
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"everything needs to be made up of dozens of meaningless activities".
I think that resume well what I think of many games:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/modern-games-should-do-less

I think a lot about the original 1989 Prince of Persia, pictured up top. When I first saw it as a 7-year-old I was blown away by its fluid and realistic animation, and grew to find it a wonderfully organic adventure story with surprise after surprise in store. It’s a completely linear experience. Would it have benefited from some of the artificial non-linear storytelling you see today? No. Would it have benefited from RPG elements? God, no. You do develop over the course of the game, in that you add more bullets to your life bar. But the important change over time comes from iterating on the core experience - better sword fights, the mirror level, that fat guy. You use the same abilities in new and interesting ways. How about Half-Life 2? It’s a profoundly linear experience, and that linearity helps to add drama and intention. I’m sure if it came out today you’d be earning experience and choosing to put points in, like, Physical, Tactical, and Hacking or something, but it would be a worse, more diluted experience

Plague Tales for example, do you really need to have some crafting involved, usually it completely take you out of the games (I am fleeing for my life some disaster but at the same time I am on the lookout for some strings and taking some detours for them) and to gain what ? All of that could have happened automatically if they wanted too during the animations-interactions without getting you involved if you want less sound when you throw versus larger rock inventory, it is really like they feel forced to add crafting-leveling. Modern God of war is another one.

 
Apparently unpopular opinion but I actually enjoyed some of their games, off the top of my head: Anno 1800, For Honor, The Division and even some of the Assassin's Creed.
Always found their art/production on the high side of the spectrum. They provided me plentiful of good hours of entertainment on my book.
As with everything else, if they make a game that I enjoy and deliver it reasonably i'll play/buy, otherwise I'll pass, don't see a need for the hate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don't think it's "hate" per se, but that is the fastest adjective to describe why Ubisoft profits are tanking.

To put it other terms, Jackie Chan has virtually never made a well reviewed movie in his career, but he's very popular. Again, not to be insulting, however, people can enjoy low-brow entertainment. (I like Jackie Chan, but calling a spade a spade. I've seen stuff spanning his early-days Hong Kong cinema stuff to his more well known Hollywood stuff).
Similarly CoD is also not rated well, but has an enormous player base consistently.

Ubisoft games are now experiencing both ends of the spear, poorly rated and not really played. So if "hate" isn't a good descriptor, not sure what else we can say about it? If you're enjoying the games, that's cool, but it's obvious that there aren't enough people specifically like you to sustain their current way of making games. If that's the case, then everything we're discussing follows that train of logic. We're just discussing the "whys", but if you can't acknowledge there is a problem, you can't really discuss the whys.
 
Anno 1800 is the Ubisoft game I enjoy the most of recently and will buy basically any DLC for it because it just adds more layers to the gameplay. I'm 200+ hours into my save and still have things to do and I love to optimize my production systems. I think Anno is one of their more popular series so, hoping its safe.
 
Apparently unpopular opinion but I actually enjoyed some of their games, off the top of my head: Anno 1800, For Honor, The Division and even some of the Assassin's Creed.
Always found their art/production on the high side of the spectrum. They provided me plentiful of good hours of entertainment on my book.
As with everything else, if they make a game that I enjoy and deliver it reasonably i'll play/buy, otherwise I'll pass, don't see a need for the hate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They choked For Honor and ended development. Its pretty cool and thankfully, it was purchased and allowed to live on.
 
I personally am enjoying the hell out of AC Valhalla. It's graphically beautiful in a cool historical setting and I'm obsessed with hunting down all the artifacts, treasures and mysteries to be found. I'm maybe half way through and definitely see myself finishing it.

That being said... it's my first AC game. Maybe that's why it isn't stale bread for me. Far Cry 6 was exactly that, because I played the first five. Can't blame people for being frustrated with the repetitive nature of Ubi titles.
 
Ubisoft has made a lot of missteps. They tried to turn Ghost Recon Breakpoint into a live service game which didn't go over well. They spent the next two years revamping the game and making it right and most of that stuff was free. That was a significant effort and had a significant cost. Ubisoft has a tendency to release ultra-broken games just to fix them over the next six months to a year after the fact. Wildlands was a huge piece of crap for at least six months or more after it launched too. It just didn't have the design issues Breakpoint did. Ubisoft also made several errors in judgement resulting in a lot of money spent and a lot of backlash. Specifically, it's Quartz initiative went over like sudden diarrhea in a crowded hot tub.

Ubisoft spent a ton of money on a battle royal asset flip of Ghost Recon Breakpoint which led to such a backlash that the game ended up being cancelled outright before it wasted even more money. Assassin's Creed makes money, but there may be some franchise fatigue there. I don't know. I don't play those games.
 
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