Just when you think that Ubisoft might “catch a break” and have something good happen to them, a report going around seems to indicate that one of its “big projects” has not only floundered, but gone back to the “drawing board” to try and make things work. To be fair, lots of developers and publishers have projects that go a “certain distance” in the game development process before being scrapped in one form or another, but this one, “Project U,” is a bit different. We say that because the project was in development for five years and then was in the “public eye” for the last two before being sent back to basics.
As noted on Reddit, Project U was supposed to be a special kind of co-op shooter with various PVE elements. The biggest crux of the game was that Earth had been invaded by machines, and people had to team up to go through “zones” and take on enemy AI. The further the groups got into enemy territory, the tougher the enemies would be.
If that sounds familiar, that’s not unlike a certain other PVE co-op title that came out earlier this year via Arrowhead, and, in fact, the reason that Project U isn’t being canceled outright is because Ubisoft is looking at what Arrowhead did at the launch of its title and hopes to mimic its success eventually.
So, what was the problem with Project U that caused it to go so far backward? Ironically, the same issue that plagued Arrowhead’s title: replay value. After all, even with certain difficulty spikes, facing the same kind of enemy repeatedly while also trying to achieve the same goal repeatedly wears on players. That’s why the player retention rate for Arrowhead’s game plummeted within the first month. There’s a difference between having a “really hot start” and being able to “maintain players over time.”
The budget for Project U apparently spiked many times over due to the development teams trying to fix the replay value but never succeeding. Thus, it’s been returned to an “incubation period,” and whether we see it again is debatable.
One of the ironies here is that this is another case of Ubisoft trying to “chase a trend” with live-service games, spending years trying to make it happen, and then failing to deliver. Then, when they focus on single-player content, it’s not anywhere close to the quality that gamers deserve to truly praise a title.
The company can’t keep doing things like this if it hopes to stay open.
