Product Placement said:
But... I liked that game.
Seriously, why didn't people buy it?
It never seemed to be promoted very well, nor were many copies of it ever produced. It's one of those games that went over well with the people that DID find out about it and buy it, but the game was pretty much sabotaged by it's own handling. It's fan base more or less increased slowly over the years after it's release, where word of mouth lead more and more people to try it. It's one of those games where you can find tons of people singing it's praises in almost any gaming forum, but it's considered a failure because Ubisoft didn't make much money off of it, and honestly most of the people who played it doubtlessly pirated it as their only way of getting it.
To be honest it seems like this is a game Ubisoft greenlit, regretted approving, and then tried to cut their losses by doing minimal promotion and production, in hopes of not losing even more money on a projected failure by producing tons of product they would wind up having to warehouse somewhere (or maybe dump in the desert somewhere). The game however succeeded at a trickle, and that makes it awkward since Ubisoft already lost money on the original one due to it's own management. Not to mention that the very fact that people played this game in numbers far beyond the sales Ubisoft received probably makes them angry as it reinforces the threat of piracy and used game sales.... to a corporate mentality the fact that they never produced many copies for sale comparatively speaking is more or less irrelevant to the irritation that comes from thinking someone stole from them.
It's one of those games that has come up a lot in discussions about gamers and the gaming industry in a number of contexts over the years.
Ubisoft is also a corporate Godzilla if there ever was one, easily as bad as it's competitors, and probably worse than either EA or Activision on a lot of levels. Ubisoft has done a lot to promote the whole "go big or go home" attitude towards game development. I think they said flat out not too long ago, if they can't spin a game into a franchise they can do yearly or bi-yearly installments of, they aren't interested. I'm not especially interested in "Watchdogs" as a result, because as cool as the game sounds, I have little interest in playing a game that is going to wind up being nothing but an advertisement for the next game (so to speak). When you look at something like "Beyond Good And Evil" and Ubisoft's lack of interest in it nowadays, even if they could tap the fan base and rack up a worthy amount of sales, it's not a franchise that will stand more than a couple of sequels, it's the kind of thing that is going to require a resolution at some point or else it will become gradually weaker and kill itself with sequelitis a lot quicker than things like "Assasin's Creed".
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As far as the initial article goes, I just wanted to say that I almost laughed when it was mentioned about taking good game ideas that big business balks at and going indie. To me that kind of dismissive attitude is what's destroying the industry, and has generally created an environment where it seems increasingly you can either have a good game with depth, innovation, or even both, or you can have a game that looks good and is shallow and does little that is new. There are exceptions, but that's the general rule. While it has little to do with Beyond Good and Evil, I'm an RPG gamer, and honestly it seems like when RPGs come out I can either get a pretty one that is shallow, or something deep, that looks like refried arse.... deep RPGs with all of the modern technological bells and whistles more or less do not exist anymore. Some companies like InXile are working on rectifying this, but honestly it's a mixed bag because while their games are looking quite good for crowdfunded productions, they lack the oomph of an actual AAA release. Imagine what could happen for RPG gamers if you had Inxile's game design expertise and sensibilities and the budget and technology of an "Assasin's Creed" title? Sadly I doubt we'll know the answer for a long time to come.
