Ghost Recon Breakpoint had *that bad* of a launch
Ubisoft doesn’t want a repeat of Ghost Recon Breakpoint. As such, it’s delaying three games – Watch Dogs: Legion, Rainbow Six Quarantine, and Gods & Monsters – into its next fiscal year, which starts April 2020. Going a step further, Ubisoft is implementing “significant changes” to its production process.
“While each of these games already has a strong identity and high potential, we want our teams to have more development time to ensure that their respective innovations are perfectly implemented so as to deliver optimal experiences for players,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said of the delays.
Under the new plan, the company will have five AAA games in its fiscal 2020-21 release calendar.
During an earnings call with investors today, Ubisoft reported a “sharp downward revision” in its revenue expectations due to Ghost Recon Breakpoint and, “to a lesser extent,” The Division 2.
In the case of Breakpoint specifically, Ubisoft cited three hurdles:
- First, it is harder to generate interest fora sequel to a Live multiplayer game, when prior iterations benefited from years of optimization. Consequently, we need to make sure there is more time between each iteration of Live games.
- Second, our strategy of introducing gameplay innovations in our games has had a very positive impact on our brands. However, to win over players, these innovations need to be perfectly implemented in order to offer an optimal experience. This has not yet been sufficiently the case with Ghost Recon Breakpoint. While the change of formula has been very well received by some players, with an average daily playtime per player of over three hours, it also has been strongly rejected by a significant portion of the community.
- Finally, Ghost Recon Breakpoint did not come in with enough differentiation factors, which prevented the game’s intrinsic qualities from standing out.
Even in its busted state, I kind of just expected Breakpoint to do well enough to make Ubisoft happy, so to hear that’s not the case – and it’s so not the case that three games have been delayed – is wild.
Ubisoft Updates Financial Targets and Release Schedule for 2019-20 [Ubisoft]