Journalist and insider Tom Henderson published a major investigation into what is currently happening at Ubisoft. After talking to studio employees, he learned about the team atmosphere and future games.
State of affairs within the company:
- Morale at Ubisoft is up “record low”. Employees fear that they will become victims of mass layoffs;
- The company’s strategy is partly responsible for its current situation: In recent years, management has tried to keep up with trends like NFTs and battle royales. According to sources, the Yubiks were working on 12 games in the Battle Royale genre at the end of 2021.
Transfers and their reasons:
- Postponement of matches has also become more common in recent years. One of the most striking examples is online pirate action. Skull and Bones, which has been in development for 10 years;
- Sources say Skull and Bones will cost $200 million to produce. The reason for all transfers would be managers who were only interested in promotion. “The constant change of opinion created a rotten atmosphere where some developers did not understand what they had to do on a daily basis.”writes Henderson;
- One of the team members about the development of the game: “Sometimes I would just sit and watch videos on YouTube.”.
Sales dates:
- Some employees believe that a series of bad decisions have undermined interest in Ubisoft games, which in turn has affected the number of active players;
- Ubisoft released it in mid-January Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. The project received high marks from players and press, but sales amounted to about 300 thousand copies – about 15 million dollars;
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was set to be released alongside the movie Avatar: The Way of Water, but delays caused the game to be released a year late and with limited marketing. As a result, the shooter sold 1.9 million copies, making $133 million. For comparison, The same studio’s The Division 2 earned approximately $264 million in its first two weeks;
- Assassin’s Creed Mirage has attracted approximately 5 million players.
Despite all the above issues, there are some really solid releases coming soon from Ubisoft. These are the games Henderson mentions:
- Star Wars Outlaws – first half of 2024, possible delay;
- Assassin’s Creed: Codename Red – second half of 2024;
- A new part of Ghost Recon (Project Over) about the fictional Naiman War – from 2025 to 2026;
- Two parts of Far Cry: multiplayer Project Maverick and full-fledged Project Blackbird – from 2025 to 2026;
- New parts of Assassin’s Creed with working titles Hexe and Invictus – from 2025 to 2026;
- Remake Splinter Cell – from 2025 to 2026;
- A kind of action shooter in the setting of World War II – from 2026 to 2027;
- Several other Assassin’s Creed 4 games are also mentioned, including a remake Black flag. It is known as Project Obsidian.
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Source: VG Times