I know it’s pointless to look back and say what if but it’s such a shame that MS wasn’t all in on gaming from the start. If Xbox had leaders like Satya and Phil from the start they would have bought Twitch instead of Amazon. The massive impact Twitch would have had on not just (PC) gamepass but any of their games as well. Sigh.
They reportedly tried and failed to buy Discord. Who knows how things would’ve been difference but the future is very bright now.
There is no publisher that has a similar structure to Ubisoft. And these games are really easy to compare to the open world titles of PlayStation.
There is no doubt that developing for one platform is way easier.
But the Ubisoft games are suffering under the stagnation of improvement. The Ubisoft way is to make these games bigger, not better.
It seems like they are at a creative low point, with no recovery in sight.
The chase of trends like Battle Royale or GAAS always leads to failures, because development of games just needs time.
Don’t let me start of the push for NFT.
And Ghost of Tsushima! Even the middle parts of Last of Us 2 could be considered open world.
As much as I love Assassin’s Creed, FarCry and Division you have a point here!
All of those games are big third person worlds but are completely different, plus Sony have far fewer employees than Ubisoft (yes I know they outsource their work too).
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Im not sure you two are discussing the same thing. Ubisoft is putting out three or more huge games a year on PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, PC etc is absolutely some of the best AAA output in the industry. We aren’t talking purely about the quality or preference.
Mile Morales was 6 hours long and recycled the map from a game that came out two years prior. Zero Dawn came out 5 years ago. In that same time Ubisoft put out
- Ghost Recon Wildlands
- Far Cry 5
- Far Cry New Dawn
- Far Cry 6
- Assassins Creed Origins
- Assassins Creed Odyssey
- Assassins Creed Valhalla
- The Division 2
- Ghost Recon Breakpoint
And that list is just giant open world games and ignores literally dozens of other games released in that time span.
List of Ubisoft games: 2010–2019 - Wikipedia
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~313 releases in a decade
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~41 from 2020 - Current List of Ubisoft games: 2020–present - Wikipedia
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I guess MS iant just going to keep buying for the sake of it, do any future acquisitions will only happen if it carries some amazing IP that they want to own, or if it fills a need in their portfolio. Those gaps are really only platforming, Japanese games and third person story based adventure games. So the type of IPs would be GTA level, and studios would be Playtonic, Platinum, Asobo etc. If they got those I think they are done.
At this current rate MS will be able to have a new first party AAA game on every second month.
Look, hear me out.
The problem is not the quantity. The problem is the amount of bloat in these games, without any kind of innovation.
Ubisoft is on a incredible creative decline. There are only sequels and games under the Tom Clancy banner.
The one one bright spot is a licensed IP, if that isn’t poor I don’t know what is.
The reception of these games are getting worse each year. And at some point it’s going to hit the sales numbers.
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I’ll never not laugh when I remember this stuff from 2016/2017:
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This!
Valhalla is one of my favourite games in 2020-22 but much of the content is repetitive and/or filler (e.g. go stack these stones zzzz)
I’d say they have a number of gaps. At this point I don’t see Platformer as one of them. They just need to rededicate Toys for Bob to Platformer. IP wise there they have Spyro, Banjo, Crash, and Psychonauts. That’s plenty to be honest.
Their gaps I’d say are party, jrpg, 2d rpg, fighting, exploration, puzzle, rogue, moba, gacha, sandbox and horror.
I can totally see them doubling down on someone that focuses on other genres they already have though to secure premium IP and mindshare.
Have you played any of those Sony games you mentioned? Every single one has as much, if not more bloat per inch than Ubisoft’s games. Or do the copy/paste street crimes of spider man not count? How about Ghost of Tsushima which was literally referred to as an Ubisoft-formula game with some of the weakest side missions of modern games?
I have plenty of problems with Ubisoft games but let’s not pretend the zeitgeist around Sony’s open-world games are anything but disingenuous. I’ve played them all, beaten most and if formulaic applies to Ubisoft, it absolutely applies to Sony’s open-world attempts.
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Capcom & SEGA would sort that 
On a more serious note once they stop acquiring, it’s very unlikely they will only rely on first party content. They will need to buy third party exclusives whether that’s just GP or timed exclusives. I can imagine there will always be gaps.
For sure they will have gaps. I kind of envision just a few top notch partnerships to fill maybe a large hole with the other gaps filled by indie games and 3rd party AAA multiplats.
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That’s hilarious to read now.
The path Ubisoft feels like it’s decided by people looking to maximize the profit. And the saddest thing is, they seem to be shit at that.
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Executive reads how much money the current trend does.
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Orders to develop such a game.
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Game flops because there are already a lot of established games in the market.
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Go back to step 1.
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???
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Money.
Yeah I forgot about fighting. Thats a deff need. Toys for Bob was a great pick up, but I feel they need another studio as well. From the sounds of it Moon arnt going back to being an exclusive second party for MS, Rare does not want to go back to do any Banjo stuff, and Toys for Bob would do another Crash or Spiro before any of the Rare IPs. Phil said he wanted more E rated content, so I assume he is talking about family friendly platformers.
On the PlayStation side I played:
- HZD
- GOT (most overrated game in existence)
- Spiderman
- Spiderman: MM
On the Ubisoft side I played:
- Ghost recon: Wildlands
- The Divison
- The Divison 2
- FarCry 2-5
- Almost every Assassin’s Creed in existence
- Watchdogs
There is without a doubt also a lot of bloat in the PS games. There are basically no open world games without this. But Ubisoft is on another level in this regard.
If we speaking about completing (100%) the games. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla probably needs almost the same time as every game on the PlayStation side together.
“Quality” wise there is also a difference, but that’s obviously the fault of the sheer size of the game.
I’m the first to say that a lot of Sony games are overated. But at the moment they just seem to better strike the balance between length/content/quality.
It’s disappointing because Ubisoft could easily do better.
Capcom & Sega is the solution. Though I am really not sure what Sega has now aside their IP.
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Difficult for me to encourage more acquisitions after today
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It makes zero sense that a game being multi-platform undermines the value of Game Pass, or even your Xbox console for that matter.
If anything, a multi-platform approach in the near term makes it way more feasible to imagine acquisitions of Asian studios and/or publishers. Let them stay mutli-platform and get their games and brands to more gamers than ever. Someday, when consoles give way to streaming services it will make sense to follow favored devs and franchises to Game Pass someday. To grow globally, Xbox could utilize the reach that Sony and Nintendo have to their benefit to grow audiences for any international studios/publishers.
I still want Xbox to prioritize long-time partners such as Asobo, Frontier Developments, Certain Affinity, Moon Studio (I know Thomas’ current stance), and Sega. Beyond those I’m curious to see what developers with IOI and Stoic. I wouldn’t be mad at a Platinum with Xbox resources and more focus.
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I think people are perhaps underselling Ubisoft games here (I say having played all the mainline AC games, can’t speak so much for the wider Tom Clancyverse and so on) - yeah they’re big, TOO big and there’s not a lot of broader innovation but there’s pretty constant refinement in the games and when you stack them next to other open world games you really start to notice the differences. I played Ghost of Tsushima and AC: Valhalla back to back and my biggest take from doing so was just being surprised how vast the general reaction was between them was.
GoT is a great game, the combat is fun, story is enjoyable and it’s dedication to the presentation really pays off but as an open world game? Eh. It relies on a lot of the same things Assassin’s Creed games have been doing for years, and often relies on stuff AC games have refined past already. You were still clearing enemy camps, climbing towers (shrines), hunting animals for upgrade materials (which wasn’t the best implementation), gathering collectables around the map (which is what headbands and such amount to) and hell, chasing a fox to a shrine which depending on how you look at it either just another collectable or chasing feathers like in AC2. There’s even dead ass some missions in the game where you have to stealthily follow enemies by running from bush to bush (when was the last time Assassin’s Creed did that? Black Flag?) and a few legit awful moments of escort missions.
AC Valhalla might be TOO big but I’d legitimately argue that the general quality of open world content is actually notably higher. One of the major improvements of Valhalla is that a significant amount of open world content has been swapped out for “world events”, mini side quests that all take place in a small localised area. In one I was tasked by a man kicked out of his nudist group to go ruin the groups fun, instead I took my characters armour off and got a cutscene where she happily joined them. In another I met two feuding brothers who owned a business together and both believed they deserved the lions share, so I burned down their business. There was one where I met an old man whose kids claimed could beat in “one wallop” (a one wallop man you could say) leading to a tense boss battle where I had to slowly chip away at him while dodging like my life depended on it (which it did, they weren’t kidding). They add so much character and charm to the game, and make up a good portion of the open world content. And, to avoid rambling much further I won’t go into much detail, the rest generally feels a lot more restrained, and cuts some of the duller stuff of prior entries.
It feels a genuine shame to me that recent AC games are held in such disregard these days, if they simply made these same games but to a more manageable scale I think they’d be viewed much more positively. Which, from todays news seems to be the direction the franchise is taking with a shorter standalone game planned for next year and AC Infinity planning to release shorter campaigns as part of a GaaS release.
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