Ubisoft Will Publish Fewer AAA Games
Ubisoft has announced that it will not be releasing as many AAA games next fiscal year as it has been doing so far. Their place will be taken by smaller titles and F2P games.
In a nutshell:
- Next year, Ubisoft will move away from its model of releasing several AAA games a year;
- The company will still develop big-budget masterpieces, but it intends to its smaller brands and create free-to-play games.
Changes are coming to Ubisoft's publishing policy. According to IGN, the French publisher will no longer rely so much on AAA games. The company wants to start ing its other, less profitable brands and free-to-play titles again. Fiscal year 2022 (April 2021 - March 2022) is expected to be the last one to be dominated by big-budget works. The decision was announced during summary of Ubisoft's third quarter 2020 financial results by CFO Frederick Duguet.
"We said for a number of years that our normal template is to come with either three or four AAA games, so we'll stick to that plan for fiscal 2022. But we see that we are progressively, continuously moving from a model that used to be only focused on AAA releases to a model where we have a combination of strong releases from AAA and strong back catalog dynamics, but also complimenting our program of new releases with free-to-play and other experiences."
One of the reasons behind this decision was revealed by Ubisoft's boss Yves Guillemot. He said that the key role in the new publishing plan will be played by both smaller games and those already on the market, which bring long-term profits. He cited the success of attracted millions of new players and is still one of the company's most profitable games.
Duguet also listed the titles that Ubisoft is currently working on. These include: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. He also mentioned a mobile game from the Assassin's Creed series, which is to be released on the Chinese market in cooperation with Tencent - one of the shareholders of the company's French brand.
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