
Yesterday, a rather negative company report brought news that Ubisoft has cancelled three unannounced projects recently as it seeks to restructure its efforts towards delivering more successful game launches. In related news, it appears that the company's CEO is trying to rally the troops behind the scenes as well.
Kotaku is reporting that, alongside Ubisoft's financial call, CEO Yves Guillemot sent out an email to staff asking for further commitment on the company's "path to success". Here's how a segment of that email read, according to Kotaku:
"Today more than ever, I need your full energy and commitment to ensure we get back on the path to success..."
"I am also asking that each of you be especially careful and strategic with your spending and initiatives, to ensure we’re being as efficient and lean as possible."
One area that the company seemingly isn't being very efficient with is developing and releasing its upcoming pirate adventure Skull & Bones. Since its announcement back in 2017, Ubisoft has delayed the game six times, with the most recent delay pushing the launch window to somewhere between April 2023 and March 2024.
Even with all of this doom and gloom, the company says it is "leveraging the biggest pipeline of games" in Ubisoft history, naming Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Skull & Bones and "other yet-to-be-announced premium games" in its financial report.
What do you make of Ubisoft's upcoming lineup? Let us know which Ubi games you're interested in down below.
[source staticctf.akamaized.net, via kotaku.com]
Comments 17
Morale at the studios must be extremely low having everything cancelled, wasting years of time for nothing. I wouldn't be surprised to see them loose staff and sell Ubisoft (hopefully to Microsoft).
Ubisoft needs to sort itself out and make some original games not the same franchises. People are bored of the same cut and paste games which is why they are failing.
We’re definitely past the Ubisoft hayday. They can put out games like Mario x Rabbids but they mostly known for bloated AC games, trend chasing Tom Clancy games and forever delayed projects; Beyond Good & Evil 2 and Skull & Bones.
It’s a shame.
At a glance "please be frugal with spending" sounds really bad from a large company like that. But on the other hand when we look at how wasteful they've been with megabudget vaporware projects.....it's more or less a polite way to say "please stop flushing billions down the toilet because you had a fever dream and no plan."
@Cyberpsycho After ABK there's a 0% chance MS buys another large publisher. Smaller studios, sure, large publishers, no. And in a practical sense they'd no longer want that kind of overhead added.
I don't think Sony would be interested either. Tencent, Disney, Comcast, Apple, Google, AT&T..... Yes, the future looks bright at Ubisoft....
I recently interviewed at a Ubisoft studio and they promised they would get back to me either way. Still waiting for that contact… if they could get the energy and commitment to send an email that would be great.
In other words oh no upper management has messed up yet again with Thier decisions let's take it out on the ones that do the hard work and do what their told by upper management ....next step letting some of those poor ppl go instead of sorting out the management
Assassins Creed is hands down my favorite video game franchise of all time. I would not be upset if Ubisoft made only Assassin Creed games from now on and made 2 or 3 a year on a smaller scale and 1 every 5 years on the massive scale.
I used to look forward to their games have put a lot of hours into ACV and into farcry 6
But not just UBI open world games but nearly the whole open world game arena for me has gone stale, same old thing for me now.
The only open world games I’m looking forward to is BOTW2 and maybe Starfield.
We've cancelled over seven projects but need "your full energy and commitment to ensure we get back on the path to success..."
Please understand...
embracer/tencent (forget which) own 49%.
so thats who would get control
@grumpypotato the obvious difference here being they will offer all products to each platform. not make it exclusive
@Kaloudz
Well let’s see how mirage turns out.
Think it’s out this year.
@Clankylad Probably best to set expectations lower, from all reports this was a Valhalla DLC pack they "promoted" to a standalone release to keep the franchise active whilst they work on the first batch of infinities titles.
I see a lot of people take the wrong message from tall of this. Ubisoft is doing poorly right now due to poor performance of two titles: Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope and the latest Just Dance.
Practically every large publisher has a yearly franchize that keeps money flowing year after year, for UBisoft, its Just Dance. It starting to perform poorly, combined with their one large project of the year underperforming, is what hurt them.
Things will likely stabilize somewhat whenever Mirage comes out, as much as everyone hates it when Ubisoft just publishes more AC/Far Cry/Rainbow Six, those are the titles that bring them money. Just Dance too, but seems that vein is drying up. I got to say I am surprised it lasted this long past the Wii lifespan.
Isn't Ubisoft doing a game service thing like Game Pass?
It seems to me that doing those takes away from putting out quality games.
But really, people don't want quality, they just want the next new piece of trash.
Looking rather grim. A shame too, since I enjoy their games.
I know Ubisoft ha smade some wrong choices and all that about the toxic working environment...that's all their own fault, to be honest.
BUT...I have liked their games since the late 90's, and I can honestly say that I spent many happy days enjoying their output. So, I would like them to get their act together sooner than later and start making some smart moves, even if it seems unlikely.
I rather them take their time than to milk franchises like ghost recon and ac. These games should be released every 5 years, not 2 or 3.
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...