Watch Dogs will take on Grand Theft Auto, according to Ubisoft director Alain Corre. In an interview with Edge, Corre said that Watch Dogs is poised to break into the sphere of open-world games like GTA and become Ubisoft's biggest brand:
"What we want with Watch Dogs is to try and crack a new genre, which is the open-style GTA genre."
Given the overwhelming popularity of Rockstar's biggest title, and the hype that has been slowly building for the next in the series, you might think it's a fool's errand to hope that players will consider your game an equal (or at least comparable) to GTA. But Ubisoft has a plan. After all, as we suspected when we first saw it at E3 last year, Watch Dogs has been built with the next generation in mind:
"Yes, Grand Theft Auto is one of the biggest brands in the industry and everybody respects the brand and we’ll have fun playing the next one too. But I think Watch Dogs’ positioning is also on next-gen, bringing a lot of features – connectivity, interactivity, companion gaming and so on which is bringing some freshness to the genre."
Rather than struggle to ship Watch Dogs early and get the jump on Rockstar, Ubisoft is happy that GTA V is on the horizon. The team hopes that the game will renew or increase interest in that kind of genre, and Watch Dogs will be able to capitalise on that. Will you be buying both when they arrive?
To help you decide, here are some comparisons (Watch Dogs on the left, GTA V on the right):
Looks like Watch Dogs could be the new GTA after all.
