Ubisoft Breakingpoint

"Stronger original formulas" i.e. follow whatever trend is going and throw shit at the wall to see if it sticks... and if it works, do it into oblivion.

Ubisoft plummets after slashing its earnings forecast and delaying the release of 3 games

• Ubisoft shares plunged 16% on Friday after it released a profit warning, delayed a trio of video games, and announced an overhaul of its development process.
• The gaming giant behind the "Assassin's Creed," "Watch Dogs," and "Far Cry" franchises cut its projected net bookings for the year to March 2020 by more than a third to 1.45 billion euros ($1.61 billion), and slashed its operating profit forecast from 480 million euros to between 20 million and 50 million euros.
• Ubisoft blamed the downgrades on lower sales expectations for two Tom Clancy games, "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint" and "The Division 2." Their underperformance led it to push back the release dates of "Gods & Monsters," "Rainbow Six Quarantine," and "Watch Dogs: Legion" into its next financial year.
• Watch Ubisoft trade live.

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Ubisoft shares plunged 16% on Friday after it released a profit warning, delayed a trio of video games, and announced an overhaul of its development process.

The gaming giant behind the "Assassin's Creed," "Watch Dogs," and "Far Cry" franchises cut its projected net bookings for the year to March 2020 by more than a third to 1.45 billion euros ($1.61 billion), and slashed its operating profit forecast from 480 million euros to between 20 million and 50 million euros.

Ubisoft blamed the downgrades on lower sales expectations for two Tom Clancy games, "Ghost Recon Breakpoint" and, to a lesser extent, "The Division 2." Their underperformance led it to push back the release dates of "Gods & Monsters," "Rainbow Six Quarantine," and "Watch Dogs: Legion" into its next financial year.

"Critical reception and sales during the game's first weeks were very disappointing," CEO and cofounder Yves Guillemot said in a press release, referring to Breakpoint. Ubisoft underestimated the difficulty of drumming up interest in a sequel to a live multiplayer game, especially after updating and improving the original game, he said.

The company also realized gameplay innovations "need to be perfectly implemented" after Breakpoint's changes "generated very negative reaction" and were "strongly rejected by a significant portion of the community," Guillemot said. A third problem was Breakpoint's failure to stand out, he added.

"We're not happy with the fact that our decision here impacts significantly the short term of our financials, but we believe that we're taking then this opportunity to definitely further elevate the quality of all of our games by coming with stronger identity features, differentiation," Guillemot said. Future games will also feature "original new formulas" and "highly optimized experiences," he added.

Guillemot shared more details about Breakpoint's issues during a call with analysts. "There were more bugs than expected at the launch," he said, and players viewed its large online store as a cash grab and it was "really not appreciated at all."

Ubisoft assumed a gap of 30 to 36 months would be long enough for a sequel, but that timeframe was too short to optimize gameplay and build enough anticipation and momentum, Guillemot said. Changes to gameplay can be "unsettling" so they have to be seamlessly introduced to win over players, he added. Ubisoft also recognizes all its games need to be "strongly differentiated," he said.

The group tried to take the sting out of its profit warning by announcing bullish forecasts for the year to March 2021. It expects 2.6 billion euros in net bookings and 600 million euros of adjusted operating income, although those figures are flattered by anticipated revenues from the delayed games.

Classic case of too much nature and not enough nurture...

No kidding. Humanity needs to wake up.

Or maybe people are getting sick of all these games being full of monetization out the ass.

I remember reading what they said during their shareholders/earnings meeting or whatever, and it was more or less:

"We didn't try enough new things with Breakpoint..."

Wrong. You tried too much. You tried to cram like five genres into a damn shooter.

Less is more, Ubisoft. LESS IS MORE!

They need to stop making service driven games, flat out.

What does all of this means? Nothing.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How many similar games does Ubisoft have now?

-AC - spin off of the PoP series - is getting it's own Spin off
-Far Cry + spin offs
-The Division
-Watch Dogs
-Ghost Recon
-The Crew

Like all these games sharing some of the same mechanics and DNA, it gets boring.

Been playing Odyssey lately, but I can't take it anymore. I feel done with the Ubisoft style. I just can't push myself through these massive games anymore. It's almost physical at this point. Doing the same shit over and over, my stomach revolts. Just gonna play linear games from now on. Or perhaps OW games of smaller scope like Spiderman.

Enough about me, no-one cares.

I think the market for this type of game is getting saturated big time. I know I'm not the only one feeling this way. It's still easy to fall for these big releases, because they do look incredible on paper. But people can only get fooled so many times. These are empty husks of games with zero respect for the player. They drain your energy rather than make you feel excited.

Linear games make so much more sense. The game consists of a set of mechanics. The designer creates a string of scenarios that let the player use those mechanics in new and interesting ways. When everything smart has been done the game ends.

BRING BACK PRINCE OF PERSIA!

I for one refuse to buy games that are an online service. If my internet goes out and I can’t play a damn video game then I’m not interested. I hope they slow down and actually release some polished games but I doubt it. I expect more online only games riddled with micro transactions and I’m not gonna touch em.

Ubisoft also recognizes all its games need to be "strongly differentiated," he said.

who knew eh?

Words words words.

More microtransactions is all they're thinking

@Macutchi said:

Ubisoft also recognizes all its games need to be "strongly differentiated," he said.

who knew eh?

Yeah releasing the ”same” super massive game over and over is a pretty stupid strategy. Of course pepople will reject the lower quality ones. Not sure what they’re thinking... Lower budget games need to be smaller...

@R4gn4r0k: To be honest, I don't mind the same 3rd-person DNA for both Watch Dogs & The Division series cause I actually like those games the most. AC and the rest, not so much now and done with most of Ubisoft games besides Watch Dogs & Division. I do agree they need to spice things up and they better do it when next-gen arrives.

So hopefully this mean that the next Division game will be a SP focus one that goes back to NYC outbreak with no looter shooter elements.

The last ubisoft game I played was SC Blacklist. And that was way back in 2013. This whole console generation I haven't touched a single new ubisoft game. Goes to show how sick of them I got.

It would be great if this fuckup encourages them to backtrack on whatever rape they plan to inflict on Splinter Cell and somehow ended up making a 3D AAA Rayman game again that kicked all kind of buttocks.

But, it's Ubisoft. We all know this isn't about "quality" but more about "how do we keep this gravy train going?".

They still have the capability to make amazing games when they try, but instead we get factory line corporate bullet-points shat out.

In regards to Tom Clancy, he's basically saying all the wrong things here imo. It's not about throwing random shit out, it's about having centralised vision for what the brand is about, at this point "Tom Clancy", basically means fuckall, and it's exactly down to Yves Guillemot's mentality, which rather than enlightened, seems pretty much unchanged here.

"The gimmick didn't work this time"

Yeah,true people FINALLY are seeing the light and not giving every cent to them anymore the Ubisoft formula is dying and good riddance.

Live services and GaaS will collapse. There is just not enough time to be grinding away on multiple titles.

If the game has a poor initial perception, the devs and publishers have to work even harder to fix the game before it reaches the point of no return and the community dies.

Assembly line factory made game design isn’t working anymore. Time for Ubi to put some care into projects again.

Ubisoft's big releases bore the absolute piss out of me.

It's games as a service for ya - what are you gonna do? That's how they are designed. You can't really make a good long-term service out of a fun game. While there might be a few exceptions, it's just a few.

Call me if the next Assassin's Creed doesn't sell 10 million.

" players viewed its large online store as a cash grab and it was "really not appreciated at all."

Wow that's really amazing isn't it? You put out a huge microtransaction store with a crap videogame attached and it's 'not appreciated at all'. That's so weird isn't it?

Friggin moron.

lol. I'm so incredibly tired of Ubisoft. Such a shame, because they have talent. It's just completely wasted.

I'm gonna defend Breakpoint a little.

I've put around 30 hours into the game with a friend and we are both having a good time. It's like an extension of Wildlands somewhat.

Not once have we been pressured to buy anything with real money, and the game gives out in game currency frequently and liberally. In fact, you have to want to navigate to the store, it's at the end of the in game menu. I've never even accidentally navigated to it during play. So I feel the entire micro transaction thing is a little over blown.

HOWEVER the game has some issues.

1. The gear level system is confusing. I can get Gold level gear and then 5 minutes later get a blue or green gear with a better level that increases my gear level. Even though the gold gear has better stats. I just don't get it, and it's a chore to be constantly changing gear to increase my level.

2. The AI is dumb! They will walk in a straight line and let you kill them. They show no signs of tactics

3. There's bugs and glitches, nothing game breaking that I've encountered but they are there.

4. No AI team mates makes solo play boring

5. The menu navigation for quests is convoluted! You finish a quest item and then you have to go into the menu to read Intel to progress. Why can't there be an on screen prompt to read the Intel I just collected?

Tennents is better than Carlsberg.

They did say "probably".

Still wildly wrong though.

@Ghost120x: I agree. Only so many can thrive at a time. Not sure why people aren't taking notes from Sony, Nintendo and Capcom who have killed it with quality single player games.