Ubisoft says It’s Changing Approach to Concentrate on More ‘High-End Free-to-Play’ Games

ASSASSIN’S CREED FIRM SAYS IT WILL NO LONGER DEPEND ON 3-4 AAA GAMES Every YEAR

It is drifting away from its conventional strategy of releasing 3-4 premium AAA titles every year but plans to commence “high-end free-to-play” games for all its major franchises.

The company offered an update on its game development approach during its full-year earnings call on Tuesday when it said it proposes to be less dependent on AAA releases as part of its in general product mix.

“It is no longer a proper sign of our significance creation dynamics. For instance, our anticipation for Just Dance and Riders Republic is constant with some of the industry’s AAA performers.

“In addition, we are putting up high-end free-to-play games to be trending towards AAA ambitions over the long-term,” he added.

“This is purely a monetary communication evolution and doesn’t alter the fact that we persist to anticipate a high cadence of content delivery comprising powerful premium and free-to-play new releases.

Posting on Twitter, one of Ubisoft’s senior analysts declared the company’s comments were an indication of “F2P becoming a huge share of the revenue pie, not a sign that there will be less conventional paid games like AC.”

They wrote: “The content mix is increasing, not varying. A superior comp is the development of CoD since Warzone… I mostly wanted to guide the convo away from ‘F2P games are restoring AAA paid games’ to ‘F2P is going to be a further way to experience some of these IPs'”.

Last week Ubisoft declared plans to develop The Division with the latest free-to-play and mobile games.

Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland is being led by Red Storm Entertainment and is portrayed as a separate experience set for release on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. No details were exposed on the separate mobile game.

“We distinguish this is the first year we are coming significantly into space. That’s why we need to make rational assumptions for year one on the top line as well as on the involvement, but of course, we want to make sure this is a well-built contributor in the long-term to the development of the overall brand on relief and PC, and then, of course, will come mobile at a later time.”

Duguet convoluted on the new direction: “We think that we have a great opportunity to significantly enlarge the audiences of our biggest franchises.

“We have taken the time to study from what we did last year with Hyper Scape. We are also learning of course with the launch we’ll be creating of Roller Champions and we’ve been learning a lot with Brawlhalla, which is speedily growing.

“And we think it is now the time to come with high-quality free-to-play games across all our major franchises across all platforms, but of course it will take time before proving it in a more self-assured way. That’s why we want to be vigilant in year one. If we are successful, that can have a very significant brunt on the value creation of Ubisoft.”

The publisher said on Tuesday that the present fiscal year ending on March 31, 2022, will comprise the releases of Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Quarantine by September 30, in addition to the Riders Republic, The Division Heartland, and Roller Champions.

And it established during its earnings call that it has no AAA games scheduled for free during the second half of the fiscal year, which comprises the Christmas season.

Open-world pirate game Skull & Bones was intended for release during the present fiscal year, but Ubisoft told on Tuesday that it had been belated yet again. The game is now planned for release during its next fiscal year beginning in April 2022.

Ubisoft also told the Assassin’s Creed franchise recorded its highest sales year to date in the company’s last fiscal year.