Ubisoft CEO Explains the Avatar Effect

[Logan Westbrook]

Ubisoft CEO Explains the Avatar Effect

Yves Guillemot, the big boss at Ubisoft, has explained exactly why the Avatar [http://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Playstation-3/dp/B002EZH804/ref=sr_1_2?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1280784022&sr=1-2] game sold so very poorly.

Avatar has not exactly been a triumph for Ubisoft, selling so badly that it was specifically named [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/97465-Avatar-The-Game-Puts-the-Hurt-on-Ubisoft] in the company's third quarter fiscal report as one of the reason that Ubisoft was revising its sales targets for the year. Now, in a recent company conference call, Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot has explained what went wrong with the game, and apparently, it's not the game's quality that is to blame.

According to Guillemot, the problem was the timing of the movie's release: "We knew we were taking [some risk]. The fact that the movie was coming in December was a potential problem, and it did result in a problem." Sales of Avatar tailed off as the holiday period ended, resulting in sales that were roughly one million copies lower than expectations.

Guillemot also said that his company will reduce its focus on movie tie-ins in the future, saying that they are not the license to print money that one might think: "The goal is to reduce the investment in licenses, and put more emphasis on making our brands bigger [and appear] more often, with very high quality," he said. "It doesn't mean we will stop, but we are going to spend less on licenses in the future."

Guillemot did also mention the quality of movie games, and while not mentioning Avatar directly, it's not difficult to figure out what he means: "We want to make sure with those kinds of games, we have time to polish as much as we want. The pressure of the release of the movie is always difficult in our industry, so I would say our goal in the future is to make sure we can have those games ready a long time in advance."

Source: GamaSutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26842/Ubisoft_CEO_Guillemot_Explans_What_Went_Wrong_With_Avatar.php]



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[HT_Black]

I'll give him some credit as not being a total liar here-- I have the game, and it's really not as bad as I expected.

It's not good, but it's not total shite either.

 

[TxMxRonin]

Game adaptations of movies and vice versa don't work! So stop doing it.

 

[The Kangaroo]

The Avatar game sucked but it could've been so good it's actually annoying. Just giving the Na'vi some free running mechanics and it would've been drastically improved, make it so that 1 arrow takes something down and 1 well placed arrow will kill almost anything would've improved the game drastically also.

 

[Ankhwatcher]

Movie tie-in makers deserve this every quarter.

 

[The DSM]

Its because film tie-ins bearly get out of mediocraty, few actually go up to decent and rarely theres the good film tie-in.

In short, its becuase most tie-ins are cack.

 

[HardRockSamurai]

He's partly right. While on the one hand, stating that a movie tie-in game's poor sales record has nothing to do with the games quality is an act of complete and utter stupidity, on the other hand, the game's release in December might have had something to do with it.

December 2009 was a pretty dull month for video games, partly due to the fact that the most recent month, November, featured one of the fastet selling games of all time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_Modern_Warfare_2]. Unless you were planning on releasing a good game, December 2009 was probably the worst month for a game release. Along with the fact that one of the highest grossing films of all time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%282009_film%29] was coming out in the same month, releasing a video game in December 2009 and making money from it sounds near impossible.

 

[Jared]

Sounds like someone is making excuses to me...

Well, maybe now they will learn

 

[Weaver]

Or MAYBE consumers have finally smartened up and realized movie games almost always suck so they stopped buying them.

 

[oliveira8]

Maybe if they released it in early January, when the movie started to break records they could have sold a bit more.

 

[The Rockerfly]

Hopefully this will stop people buying video games based on films, although that is wishful thinking
Ah well, I can still hope

 

[Void(null)]

Totally had nothing to do with TAGES? 3 machine activation limit used on a shitty movie tie in game with a meta critic score of 62.

 

[Random Argument Man]

Maybe they shoudln't hurry to release it with the movie and take their time to polish it.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

Thumbs up: Not planning to make a lot of movie tie-ins anymore, and expressing the desire not to be bound by movie release-dates.

Thumbs down: Not acknowledging that Avatar failed because it was a poor game.

 

[Woodsey]

Hooray!

Less tie-ins!

 

[Ironsouled]

I'll give him some credit as not being a total liar here-- I have the game, and it's really not as bad as I expected.

It's not good, but it's not total shite either.

I'm with him... and Woodsy

Hooray!

Less tie-ins!

It's not that bad, and now that I've played it from both sides I'm probably not going to play it again for quite a while... but at least the CEO admitted it and promised better in the future.

 

[evilartist]

Game adaptations of movies and vice versa don't work! So stop doing it.

*Except for Goldeneye, and Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (although the latter may not technically count, since it was an entirely different event from the movies).

 

[Quaidis]

It sounds to me like he's trying to point the blame at everything but Ubisoft. It's the economy, it's the fan base, it's the movie's release, it's the holiday season. Anything to keep from tarnishing the image of the company, itself.

 

[Royas]

I wasn't even going to look at Avatar to start with, since movie games are rarely worth the bits they are made of. The limited activations were the topping. That's always a deal breaker. Even if the reviews made Avatar out to be the second coming of the gaming messiah, I still wouldn't have bought it with the limitations. DRM is a game killer, in my mind.

 

[triorph]

Did they consider that the game just looks ugly when compared to the movie? I saw the ad for it in the cinema and seeing those shitty graphics in comparison just made me feel depressed.