Ubisoft: More Sequels, More Often and More Multi

[Andy Chalk]

Ubisoft: More Sequels, More Often and More Multi

Ubisoft [http://www.ubi.com] is charting a bold new course for major videogame publishers, announcing that it plans to release more sequels, more often, and that it wants to shoehorn multiplayer into every game it makes.

Oh, you got me: Ubisoft's plan is neither bold nor new. Activision is all about the online component [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/93992-Activision-CEO-People-Like-Sequels]." Now Ubisoft has apparently decided that the best way to forge a vision for the future is to just take those two strategies and mash 'em together.

"Our clear goal today is to come more regularly with our top brands. For example, it took three to four years to come back with Ghost Recon [http://www.splintercell.com/]. We believe we can launch them more often without risk of brand fatigue," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said during a financial call yesterday.

He added that the commitment to existing franchises won't mean the end of new IPs, as the company plans to launch two new titles in 2011 and 2012. But as Ubisoft CFO Alain Martinez explained, franchises are where it's at.

"When you add up the three Assassin's Creed [http://rabbids.uk.ubi.com/] has kept selling and is still one of our best sellers. Bringing a game regularly is actually maintaining a better sell of your back catalog because you are more present and people will buy the new title or the cheaper, cost-effective ones."

You know what else is big these days? Multiplayer. So in the future, Ubisoft is going to make sure that it builds multiplayer action into, well, everything. "We've made big investments to make sure all of our brands could become multiplayer," Guillemot added. "We're coming out with Driver, Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed, and Ghost Recon, which will all have multiplayer."

Well, why not? Meaningful single player experiences are hard to craft and not many people seem all that interested in them anyway, so you can hardly blame Ubisoft for hopping on the bandwagon. The "everything multiplayer" approach also dovetails, sort of, with Ubisoft's plan, Guitar Hero [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/97778-Ubisoft-Details-New-Anti-Piracy-Plan] every day so it's probably going to work out just fine.

Source: IGN [http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/106/1068060p1.html]


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[TheDoctor455]

Oh bloody hooray. They're going for the EA strategy.
Yeah. When hasn't the "more games more frequently" plan translated into "more shitty games released more often so that you can drown yourself in the shit"?

 

[Therumancer]

If they squeeze their titles out faster that means less time in development, and likely inferior games that will kill the brands.

What's more I think people are missing the point that we're in an economic crisis, people only have so much money to spend. Trying to emulate games that are selling well does not nessicarly mean you will sell more games, because in the final equasion people aren't going to be spending more money on entertainment until the economy recovers and people have more money to spend.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

As long as they don't turn into Activision, I'm sure we'll be fine.

 

[CriticalGriffin]

Ubisoft, what happned to you? You used to be cool.
But now you're either publishing shovelware or you just do... this.

 

[Xesumie]

How about another Settlers game in the old style of Settlers 3 Ubisoft?

 

[Sir Ollie]

How about this instead?

New games, More time to develop and no crappy online DRM system!

 

[Crimsane]

Yay. Lower quality games because less time is spent polishing them, and more of the lessened time spent developing them is now spent adding mediocre multiplayer. Everyone loses! Woot.

 

[Sylveria]

Ubisoft shall rain shit upon the land for 40 days and 40 nights and a flood of shitty sequels will cover the land! Thou shall build an ark and bring two of every original game aboard.

These are truly sad days for gamers.

 

[Flying Dagger]

Enough links to be a TV Tropes page.
I cannot see how assassins creed could use a multiplayer, though i guess if you got people to have the same models as the npcs, it could be all about blending into the crowd whilst trying to work out who you have to kill.
actually that would be fucking awesome.

 

[esperandote]

As long as people keeps buying whatever comes out they will succed to less quality=more profit

 

[SinisterGehe]

Why people been sticking in to multi player? Well at the least my issue with single players been that very few companies bother to even to fuck try to make them good...
"I know it is hard to be original now days... BUT YOU COULD EVEN FUCKING TRY!"

 

[DoctorNick]

And now I guess I'm going to be buying even fewer games than I do already. In almost every case I've seen this decade "adding an online component" to an existing franchise really means "shorter and less polished single player but the multiplayer TOTALLY makes up for that! (/blatant lies)"

I don't particularly like multiplayer in most cases and I judge games by how good of a single player experience they are. All this means to me is that games are only going to get shorter & shorter, oh and here, have some day one DLC that has major parts of what little story line there is in it but will always be tied to this one xbox live account.

And require online activation even if we do put out a physical copy of it.

...Which we'll shut down the servers to as soon as we feel it's no longer worth our while.

But we'll put out a patch for that, we promise!

 

[tyrannus007]

I'm sick of mediocre, shoehorned-in multiplayer. When I want to play multiplayer, I choose a game with interesting, unique play and/or a game that was specifically geared towards multiplayer, like Team Fortress 2 or Halo 3.

 

[oppp7]

I can't wait to see crappy remakes of games that came out a year ago. I also can't wait to stop buying games. Multiplayer in everything? Yes, multiplayer typically has a significantly higher amount of playtime than other games, with that playtime being almost as good as single player (depending on the person), but that doesn't mean it's for everyone.
However, since this means they'll have multiplayer for gametypes that have never had multiplayer, I'm honor-bound as someone who supports new ideas to say that I support this idea.

Plus new, crappy games means more achievements at a lower price.

 

[Worgen]

I want more heroes of might and magic but the whole online thing reeks of bad design choices and making the single player less good

 

[Jared]

I will believe it when I see it. Steam said something similar about one ifs francises once...hmmm

 

[Ddeviled]

I always thought ubisofts strength was that they never over crowded their catalogue with cheep meaningless sequels....looks like this is gonna change though.

Also i think its wrong that their quoting IGN as a reliable source of information, that site is always haveing to repost articles and retract articles....plus they never spellcheck their own articles

 

[Srkkl]

BioShock 2 so far has been awesome and I've played one multi-player game on there with my bro and had a blast, if they can imitate that and put as much effort into the single player as the multi-player it couldn't be too bad.