When it comes to Ubisoft, the studio has been around for years. It’s brought out quite a few big-name franchises though most recently, the Ubisoft name wasn’t as big of a hit that they likely had hoped for in 2019. With both The Division 2 and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, not hitting the biggest strides, followed by several IPs being delayed, it was clear the studio needed to rethink their approach going forward.
That’s exactly what happened as we’re finding out Ubisoft is going through a slight restructure which should allow the studio to differentiate their games. In the past, Ubisoft had an editorial team in Paris that oversaw all the projects being worked on. From the scripts to the gameplay, this editorial team was responsible for the variety of video game titles coming out and it was overseen by Serge Hascoet. As a result, some fans have found that certain games felt like a copy of previous works.
It seems that these similarities between certain titles in Ubisoft were mainly due to the editorial team and the various personal tastes or opinions. That will soon change as Ubisoft will be adding a number of VPs into the mix and each will be control of a franchise. According to Ubisoft’s CEO, Yves Guillemot, who spoke with VGC, the studio is reinforcing its editorial team to be more agile and accompany their development teams around the world.
With more VPs that can take over leadership of a franchise, there will be more various opinions and decisions that should be more specific to that game series rather than bleeding one feature over across different IPs. Likewise, this should free up some time for Serge Hascoet, the Ubisoft chief creative officer who will remain as the lead editorial but will now check-in with various franchises as they reach milestones.
Only time will tell if this change-up will help Ubisoft out or not. For now, there are a few big title releases from the studio that are currently in development which could really make for a successful year if all release within 2020 such as Watch Dogs: Legion, Gods & Monsters, and Beyond Good and Evil 2.
