Ubisoft it almost seems like he's experiencing a sort of identity crisis in an attempt to hit the trend of the moment. In the space of a few years we have gone from the risky (and unsuccessful, in hindsight) strategy of riding the wave of NFTs and GaaS, in particular battle royale, to the extremely conservative one of concentrating the bulk of the efforts on Assassin's Creed. According to Insider Gaming sources, the company also has plans in the pipeline various extraction shooter projects in development. Will it be the right time?
In reality, the desire shown by the French company to find a new trend to ride is absolutely understandable. Triple-A games are becoming more and more riskier and more expensive with the passing of generations and Ubisoft is not the only one that is looking around in search of a sustainable and profitable alternative business (see Sony with GaaS). After all, the days of the annual Assassin's Creed are now gone and some of the company's most important franchises no longer have the luster of the past, such as Splinter Cell, Rayman and Prince of Persia (it seems that The Lost Crown has only sold 300,000 copies since launch ), just to name a few.
The criticisms, however, lie in the perhaps too reckless way in which the transalpine company wants to launch itself into new markets and its terrible timing. For example, it seems that he had a lot in development twelve different battle royales, an enormous effort in terms of money and personnel, but which did not bear fruit: a good part of them were canceled before they even got to the starting blocks based on the less than encouraging feedback from the playtests. And let's draw a veil of mercy over Hyper Scape. The problem would be precisely that of having placed strong bets on a market that is now saturated and which no longer has the same attractive force as it once did, apart from some more famous names such as Apex Legends, Fortnite and PUBG.
The other problem is that of wanting to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone, that is, that of trying new paths by leverage the company's flagship franchises. A strategy, also in this case, which turned out to be counterproductive, as in the case of Ghost Recon: Frontline, rejected by players since the official announcement as it was too different from what they wanted from the series.
The right trend at the wrong time?
According to the latest tip from Tom Henderson, one of the most reliable insiders in the sector, Ubisoft is in development at least three large extraction shootersnamely The Division Heartland (still without a release date), Far Cry “Project Maverick” (scheduled for 2025) and a new IP set in World War II (arriving between 2026 and 2027).
For those who don't know, extraction shooters are a subgenre of multiplayer shooters where, to briefly summarize, the objective is not only to eliminate other players, but also to complete missions, obtain resources and items and escape with the loot before it's too late late. Among the most successful games in this category we mention, for example, Escape From Tarkov, Hunt Showdown and Marauders.
Henderson's source states that There is a certain skepticism among developers regarding these projects, not so much for their quality, but because in their opinion once again the French company would have chosen the right trend but with terrible timing. That is, there is a risk that such productions will arrive on the market when the players have moved on to the next fashion.
In some ways understandable concerns, but at least it would seem that this time Ubisoft has preferred to limit the “experiments” to a limited number of projects, without therefore throwing itself headlong into an uncertain market. Meanwhile, as already mentioned, we know that the company has stepped up efforts on Assassin's Creed and we will see the first results of this strategy already in the next few months with the mobile title Assassin's Creed Jade and the new main chapter Assassin's Creed: Codename Red, which together with the Hexe and Invictus projects should form the initial core of Assassin's Creed Infinity games , the platform that will host various experiences from the series, both single and multiplayer, and in multiple different historical settings.
In short, the idea is that the French company intends to follow a relatively safe strategy with its flagship series and games on very famous licenses such as Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws, and in the meantime experiment with alternative ways, such as extractions shooter and smaller titles (in budget, certainly not in quality) like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
#Ubisoft #focusing #extraction #shooters #flops #battle #royale #NFTs #trend
