Taking to the matrasses.
Okay, I swear I'm not victimising this one video game company with unending scathing coverage out of some deep seeded vendetta directed toward Yves Guillemot; they're just so good at getting in the news for all the wrong reasons that they all but force themselves onto this here blog! I know that sounds positively batty, but you have to hear me out; I don't want to say their name anymore than I have to. Bear in mind, please; that Ubisoft are the absolute bottom of the barrel in my eyes. Their games are trending towards getting worse, they've offered nothing but bloat and trash to the industry; I like fooling myself into believing that games are getting progressively better as talent refines itself across the board and Ubisoft is like a glaring example of why that is absolute not true. What did they announce, like 5 Assassin's Creed games at once? And they're having trouble making a single Assassin's Creed game that the community doesn't immediately turn on after a single week? Someone needs to stop them, post haste!
But to be honest it might already be too late for that. Ubisoft as it exists now are just a joke pilled ontop of other jokes in the shape of a huge industry joke. They're still inexplicably prestigious to have on one's CV, and they have to pay a decent wage, but those are literally the only reason why anyone would seek to stay or work at Ubisoft in the modern age. They don't put out quality or ambitious games that an artist could feel proud to say that they worked on, teams don't ever get the chance to work on projects that they actually want to make, because the company culture is known to be beholden to the whims of a group of people with hilariously out-dated tastes in gaming content, and their only forays into 'changing things up' throughout the past years has been an NFT collaboration so ill-timed that it killed off the already struggling Tom Clancy game it was painfully attached to. The company is a mess.
And for once this isn't just my observations saying such- Ubisoft have been forced to admit it themselves through some troubling actions they've had to take. Namely, with the cancellation of three unannounced projects that they were working on within the same stretch, just after Christmas, which is quite the killing spree for Ubisoft higher ups! Of course, we don't know what state of development any of these projects were in, and it's quite possible these were just a bunch of pre-production ideas that were still shoring up resources before the plug was pulled. But then, would such a cancellation warrant mentioning at an investors call? Plus, isn't it still pretty damning for projects with no hope of making it to maturity being cancelled during preliminary gestation? It sort of speaks to a general disorganised attitude which would go someway to explaining the Ubisoft we see today.
Plus, they've delayed Skull and Bones again which is just... come on, guys! For the love of god, the game is not going to live longer than a month. It's going to drop like a pebble with a little bit of a splash for the curious, until the general aura of any Ubisoft game whittles down the hopeful to that small core of dedicated Ubisoft fans who pain these games because, I assume, they've never played anything else in their life. No one has been waiting this long expecting the game to be good, every delay just tries us beyond our last nerve. It doesn't matter if the thing is buggy, a perfectly wrapped up bug-free experience isn't going to materialise a substantial audience where one doesn't exist! Cancellation would just be cruel at this point, but so is dragging this out, for the sixth delay!
In their own words, these set-backs come on the heels of a tough year for results under the company banner as Mario and Rabbids undersold right next to Just Dance. I don't know who relies on that all important 'Just Dance' money to feed their young, but I'm genuinely shocked that the game somehow underperformed last year. What else could people who play 'Just Dance' every year be spending their money on? Revolving shoe display cases? Actually- yeah, it probably was that, wasn't it? (Bad luck, Ubi; CES morons stole your target demo!) To the eyes of Ubisoft, the company has struggled because the industry is trending towards mega-franchises with expanded brands, not like poor Ubisoft who just has to rely on- wait a second, what is Mario then? Isn't Assassin's Creed a prospective hopeful Mega-franchise? Hasn't Ubisoft's entire brand been about falling back on big franchises ever since the Prince of Persia movie flopped?
So then, what could be the reason that Ubisoft isn't having itself a good start to 2023? Well, for one they didn't release any big title over the holiday. Mario and Rabbids may have the big M attached to it, but it's not a game made by Nintendo and fans know that, which is why they don't stick it on their 'must buy' list. That and the novelty of Mario but Xcom, has somewhat questionable staying power. I suspect this self-imposed austerity is as much in anticipation of the year to come as it is for the year that just passed. A year that will see the release of two Assassin's Creed games, and an Avatar game, and whatever other huge franchise title that Ubisoft is trying to force out of it's doors for a revenue bump. It's too much aimed at an audience they've successful managed to turn against them through the single sure way to get through to even the most market illiterate consumer- by making a bad product.
Ubisoft's reputation for boredom has surpassed into the mainstream. Assassin's Creed Valhalla had no pacing whatsover, playing Watch Dogs Legion is the only entertainment product worthy of being legally classified as torture, their Tom Clancy deluge of games is spread so thin that Tom Clancy himself is morphing into a generic military author from beyond the grave. Ubisoft's seal no longer equals quality, and they've ridden by so long for just being consistent with the amount of games they put out. Well now they're about to tip that scale in the other direction and overwhelm gamers with new titles, in a year just packed with high quality releases from other studios that still have a reputation to gamble. Is any Ubisoft game strong enough to win out against Resident Evil 4 on release? How about Starfield? The next Cod?
Honestly, pulling back on the three unannounced projects was probably the only smart move that Ubisoft has made in the past five years; but it's only really the beginning. Ubisoft needs to start pulling back on their coming tent, give their franchises some time to breath... oh yeah- and gut the company of all the backwards and self-sabotaging executive prats who have been poisoning the brand for years now! The Ubisoft name isn't going to start meaning anything anymore until they start putting out worthwhile games again, and I think all the brands they have at their disposal are squeezed far too dry to manage that. Sinking further under the saftey of 'big brands' is only going to backfire as the creativity runs dry, the quality tapers off and Ubisoft's value dissipates entirely. But hey, at least they'll get out that Assassin's Creed Live service! (That'll solve everything, right?)
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