It’s always interesting to see, for better and for worse, what developers/publishers in the gaming industry feel they NEED to do to try and get money instead of thinking about what might be best for the company itself. A perfect example of this has just popped up, for Tom Henderson seems to be reporting, as noted by xcancel, that Avatar Frontiers of Pandora might be getting a “director’s cut” version, and that version will arrive later this year. That raises all sorts of questions about what Ubisoft is doing and why they feel this is the best thing to put out this year.
To be fair, there are two particular reasons why this could be a good idea. The first is that the third movie in the franchise is dropped later on in 2025, likely in December barring another delay. If that is the case, then that means there will be buzz around the series, especially due to how the film series is still made by James Cameron, and the two previous films both grossed over 2 billion dollars. So, perhaps Ubisoft is hoping to bank off of that.
The second reason is that the game could release in this “new form” on the Nintendo Switch 2. Ubisoft didn’t put the game on the OG Switch, and by the time December comes around, there will be millions of units out there with people hungry for games to play. Perhaps, if billed right, some people will want to try it out.
Even with all of those factors, it’s unlikely that the game will “suddenly become a hit” once it releases its “director’s cut” version. When Avatar Frontiers of Pandora was first announced, it was a surprising thing, especially when it was revealed that James Cameron helped make it and that the game was actually canon to the movie universe, it just took part on another continent of Pandora itself.
The game took quite a while to release, but every trailer made the game feel even more beautiful than before. Ubisoft even harped on the beauty of the graphics that you’d experience on high-end PC models.
However, when the game came out, despite it being visually stunning, the gameplay was something that everyone had seen before. It was “yet another Ubisoft clone” of another franchise, just with blue alien skins on it. As such, the game didn’t sell very well, and Ubisoft took yet another hit.
While this “director’s cut” hasn’t been announced yet, it does feel like something Ubisoft would do to try to regain ground.
