Ubisoft: Only Triple-A Games Are Profitable

[Tarakos]

Ugh, this is not the stuff I want to hear from a major developer. I mean, AAA games are the MOST successful sure, but not the only successful games. So I guess we're not getting any new IPs from Ubisoft ever again. Way to stagnate guys!

 

[InnerRebellion]

Oh ubisoft a little game called torchlight would like a word with you!

Avatar made that more humourous.
OT: Uh...Ubisoft...get off the high horse, plenty of indie and low budget games kick more ass than some of your games do.

 

[ucciolord1]

...and they're wrong.

 

[Psydney]

I disagree with them, but I like their policy. They focus more on one or two games so that their quality goes up. I dislike the reason but like the results. The ends justifies the means.

I'm not convinced the quality always does go up, though. One thing franchises have is built-in recognizability - its own form of marketing and a stash of pre-existing good will. "Oh, it's the next one of *those*, well the last one was good so I'll buy this one." You have to do some bad, bad things to a franchise for the frogs to realize that the water is coming to a boil under them and hop out of the pan.

I do wonder whether people would be less tolerant of an indie-style game from Ubi than, say, an indie developer. Torchlight is really neat but it doesn't have the production values of Assassins' Creed, and if the response to Ubi making a Torchlight-style game was "Oh, they did that on the cheap," I can see why they'd get risk-averse.

 

[Roan Berg]

" Because if those three or four games are not at the right quality level, you are sure to lose money."
Except that the quality level isn't the problem, because games like Beyond Good & Evil were good because the ideas behind them were good. It's like saying that if some of the money used to develop Braid was put somewhere else the game would have failed.

 

[ActionDan]

Oh ubisoft a little game called torchlight would like a word with you!

Also Plants Vs Zombies, Gish, Trine, Plain Sight, Audiosurf, the list goes on.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

I thought this was common knowledge.

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

What about From Dust? It certainly doesn't look like a big budget AAA game.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

To quote a great man, shut the fuck up. What does that make Torchlight, Trine, and Portal, among other examples?

 

[matrix3509]

I only just thought of this: The videogame industry is a wholly unique industry from all other forms of media. Why? Because they have not only experienced unparalleled growth in the past 20 years, but they have done it with a shotgun pointed at their heads this whole time, a result of idiotic business decisions like this.

 

[Akalistos]

"When you have a triple-A blockbuster it costs more money to develop, but at the end of the day there's also the chance of a good return on it."
"To a certain extent it becomes less risky to invest more in a single game or franchise than spreading your investment between three or four games. Because if those three or four games are not at the right quality level, you are sure to lose money."

In response to the changing nature of the business, Ubisoft has changed the way it makes core games. "With hardcore games that we're not sure are reaching the right level, we stop work on them," he said. "And that's why we concentrate more on key franchises, because that's what the market wants - something new with huge quality production behind it. The market is not supporting the full range of product that it used to anymore."

It's not overly thrilling to hear that potentially good new games are being killed because they don't fit well with focus groups.

I think you miss the message here. From what i can gather from your source material, he's it's more about quality then quantity. Funny, because that's the motto of another big developer... what was it.. mmmmmm.. oh, that's right: BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT!

I do agree with him. It's more profitable to make a full retail game like Assassin Creed instead of making Five Shanks. Overall, we believe that low priced game are either shit or just fun for a while. But i don't think that kill Originality. Instead of making a X-box live arcade game, they will most definitively put work into making their next game (AND ORIGINAL IP) a triple A title instead. And as far as I'm concern, they have a better hit and miss ratio then some other dev *Cough* Capcom *Cough*.

 

[Blue Musician]

So, they say that it's okay to have a CoD, Halo and AC #1234?

Profitable? Yes; Original? No; Special? No; Will I care for those games? Probably not; Will attract more people to that franchise? Probably no; Will people not get tired of the franchise? HELL NO!

What I want is more IP's, games like Pathologic, Scratches, The Void, etc.
Not another Call of Duty: Modern Rehash.

 

[lacktheknack]

Actually, incredibly low-budget games with an excellent idea and gameplay, with a bit of marketing, are GUARANTEED to be profitable in the current market.

 

[Super Toast]

If they aren't able to make any profit whatsoever of smaller games than they're doing it wrong.

 

[TheMadJack]

Again Ubisoft shows they know nothing, or that they refuse to learn.

Look at Minecraft, look at Torchlight, look at Portal. Those three games were not AAA games unless the definition of triple-A has changed recently. Portal was a tentative step into a new gameplay mode, one that was accepted and welcomed with joy by the gamer cohorts. I could enumerate countless arguments, but it's not worth it. Ubisoft has it's fat head on the ground listening to input (as I remember them saying a long time ago), but the problem is their ears are on the wrong planet. Hearing nothing, they think that silence is an acknowledgment of their stupid thinking process.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

So we can expect nothing new from Ubisoft then? The market plan there is the keep going back to the same franchises until there is nothing left to do with them, so they are forced to start scraping the barrel, then fans of said game will start saying how the old games were better. The next market plan will be to re-release the original games, but with better graphics and new content (a-la RE5 Gold Edition), but no one will pick it up because they already own it. Thus, Ubisoft will wonder why their sales are in the red, then someone will come in with a bold new idea--you know, Jim two doors down, with the same idea he had THREE years ago--and Ubisoft will call him a genius because his original idea and new game will make them millions. Then the cycle will repeat again with Jeane down the line, with Ubisoft not learning the lesson. Great...

 

[TheMadJack]

Again Ubisoft shows they know nothing, or that they refuse to learn.

Look at Minecraft, look at Torchlight, look at Portal. Those three games were not AAA games unless the definition of triple-A has changed recently. Portal was a tentative step into a new gameplay mode, one that was accepted and welcomed with joy by the gamer cohorts. I could enumerate countless arguments, but it's not worth it. Ubisoft has it's fat head on the ground listening to input (as I remember them saying a long time ago), but the problem is their ears are on the wrong planet. Hearing nothing, they think that silence is an acknowledgment of their stupid thinking process.

 

[Akalistos]

Scott P failed for far more reasons than a niche market,

You are right... but for all the wrong reason. Let me share some light on the subject.

for one Cera's performance sucked ass, and he has stared in many suckish films lately.

Right, He did make many shitty film but it wasn't his performance the problem. He did pretty well, in fact. It was a departure from the timid, nerdy, unable to defend himself to a action role and PEOPLE LOVED IT... at least, those who see the movie. I haven't meet someone that did care about the franchise (it came from comic before being a movie) that hated Cera. Some hatred to non-viewer are due to his name and the shitty film he's been to. It's what i call the SHIA BEOUF effect. You know that a Shia film will suck... even if he turn a Oscar winning performance. Hell, i saw Joseph Gordon-Levitt like a old Cera until I saw his kickass action scene in Inception. Expectation base on a name can either make or brake... but don't call the actor without having seen the movie.

Second, they released the same day as the expendables which as we all know went with "look at all these famous people, it has to be good!" not saying it wasn't, I've not seen it, but that's what it did, and as we all know most men when looking at "I have lots of video game references and games are cool!" and "EXPLOSIONS!!!!" will probably go with explosions,

There's as equal action in both film. As i said, a name can help or hurt... but when was the last time when a forgotten action star came back to the big screen and made a good movie?

if only because they seem really manly.

Ok, aside the obvious... why? Why do you care? It's a movie, not a [censored] that you have to [censored]!

Now, Scott P's demographic was males 15-25 ...see the problem there?

Yeah! It's not the right demographic. It's 25-30. It's full of really old reference to Nintendo. You need to have grown in the 1980' Nintendo era to fully catch them. Examples:
Enemy that burst into coin came from River City Ransom made in 1989... at least in the U.S.
Kyle and Ken K. are a spoof of Billy and Jimmy Lee from double dragon... and goes as far as doing the DOUBLE DRAGON KICK from Double Dragon 3. It's a hard move that you can only do in co-op when both character, next to each other, do a Dragon kick at the same time.

That's practically the same as The Expendables demo. Also the 30 second spots on TV hardly conveyed what the film was about and why scott should even give a damn, worse was the fact that the film failed to point out these ideas as well as Ramona spent the entire film being a total *****, as opposed to the comic which was more about the two growing the fuck up.

It still is. I don't know what you have seen there, maybe a carebear movie, but i own the comic and it's a REALLY REALLY faithful adaptation. In fact, the writer of Scott Pilgrim (the comic) change the comic ending due to bad response from the first public screening (that contain the ending that he envisioned)