They say that “pride cometh before the fall,” and in the video game industry, if you rely too much on your pride and “what’s worked before,” you’ll end up with your face in the dirt and gamers potentially losing interest in you. The sad irony here is that this true statement can apply to numerous developers and publishers right now. We could talk about how 343 Industries is now “Halo Studios,” even though some can argue it’s failed to capture the wonder of the original saga by Bungie. We could talk about others as well such as Bioware who went back to their roots for its latest title release. But right now, we want to focus on Ubisoft because it arguably had the roughest set of years lately.
Case in point: Assassin’s Creed Shadows was supposed to be out right now. It should’ve been out, with gamers playing it and critics potentially calling it one of the best games of the year. Instead, the game got delayed until February 2025 because the title wasn’t ready for launch.
Now, on the bright side, that’s good on Ubisoft for acknowledging that there was a problem and trying to fix it. The dark side is players could say that they didn’t do this with numerous other titles, and thus, its stock price is in the dirt. Now it seems that an Ubisoft producer is making note that they are still learning on how to connect with gamers.
Thanks to a report from Tech4Gamers, we’re learning that at XDS24, Marc-Alexis Côté made several statements about the state of Ubisoft and the game industry itself, with this quote standing out above all else when asked about what he believes the industry outlook will be in a few years time. Mac-Alexis Côté noted that the industry is changing and he doesn’t necessarily know what it will look like in the future. You can view the comments made in the video below at around the time mark of 48:40.
“We need to find where players are, which has been a question I’ve been having for the last two years. Where are the players? What are they playing?”
According to the report, Ubisoft will try and figure this out after it sees where the “industry is going,” which you could say is part of the problem in the first place.
That’s because we’ve seen quite a few instances where it seems that studios felt that the “industry projection” was that of live service games where developers/publishers could rake in money over time versus just getting the initial payment from players. However, that hasn’t been the case, and numerous single-player titles have not only won Game of the Year but have sold numerous millions, even if they didn’t have the biggest hype going into their launches.
Hopefully, Ubisoft can land on its feet and deliver some incredible games going forward. But we’ll have to wait and see if they can once again find a way to connect with players with their next big title release, Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
