'Assassin's Creed' EP Admits Ubisoft Does Not Know Where Players Are And How The Company Can Reach Them
'Assassin's Creed' EP Admits Ubisoft Does Not Know Where Players Are And How The Company Can Reach Them
Assassin’s Creed Executive Producer Marc-Alexis Côté recently admitted that Ubisoft does not know where players are and does not know how to reach players with its games.
During the Q&A portion of an interview at the XDS24 conference, Côté was asked how external development will affect Ubisoft in the next three to five years.
He responded, “I think we’re in an era of peak change. I don’t know what the industry is going to look like in five years, but clearly we’re transforming. And I think it can create anxiety. I see it as a challenge that we need to solve together because whether it’s in the AAA or even in the more indie space the recipe for success as it’s been in the last maybe 20 years is dramatically shifting.”
“So we still need to innovate,” he continued. “We need to control our costs because they have ballooned, clearly, over the last five years.”
Next, he shared how the company does not know where players are and does not know how to get them to play their games.
He said, “We need to find where players are, which has been a question I’ve been having for the last two years. Where are players? What are they playing? Where do we reach them? All of this will become clear in the coming years as our industry transforms.”
Ironically, earlier in the same interview Côté revealed that one of the company’s main goals with its games is to change people.
He revealed that one of the first questions that CEO Yves Guillemot asks when he’s being pitched by developers within the game is “What will players learn?”
Côté explained why he asks this question, “What I think has driven Yves for 36, 37 years now is this idea that video games can change the world. And you start changing the world by changing people.”
“And if you give them something to think about even while they’re having fun, right, if they can learn something, then you can like change one person you can change the world,” he added.
Regardless, Côté’s admission that Ubisoft does not know where players are and does not know what games they are playing reflects a year of disasters for the company. The company released Skull and Bones earlier this year and then eventually on Steam in August. The game only hit a peak concurrent player count of just 2,615.
Similarly, it also released Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown in January to Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox, but it did not arrive to Steam until August.
The game peaked with just 1,446 players and it’s been rumored that the team that developed the game was completely disbanded with the host of the French-language ORIGAMI YouTube channel sharing, “In recent days at Ubisoft Montpellier, we are transporting boxes from one floor to another and it is quite a symbol because it is that of dissolution, not announced to the public, but completed of the team Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.”
The company also released a free-to-player looter shooter with XDefiant in May. The game’s Executive Producer Marc Rubin revealed in October that the game’s player counts are down amid rumors that Ubisoft might shut the game down at the end of Season 4 due to low player counts and poor monetization.
Rubin wrote on X, “To be crystal clear there are NO plans to shut down after season 4. I’ve literally been in meetings as of last week to discuss our Year 2 plans. But, right now we are super focused on improving the technical experience (which includes netcode) and adding more content for Seasons 3 & 4.”
He then admitted that player numbers are down, “We have done very little marketing so yes our numbers are down but that is just to give the team the time to get the game in a better place before we do bigger spends on marketing to bring new players to the game and to bring back players that have left.”
The company’s biggest flop was Star Wars Outlaws. The game was supposed to sell at least 5 million copies in its first copy based on conservative estimates from financial analysts; however, a rumor from Insider Gamer claims the game only sold 1 million copies in its first month.
Ubisoft has not released any official numbers but did admit that the game’s sales “underperformed sales expectations.” Furthermore, Ubisoft announced that Drew Rechner would be the game’s new Creative Director seemingly replacing Julian Gerighty.
READ: 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' Peak Player Counts Decrease Over 30% From All-Time Peak In Just A Week
Finally, in the wake of Star Wars Outlaws’ seemingly massive financial disaster, the company delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows from its November release date to February 14th.
Rumors indicate the company is making massive changes to the game. Tom Henderson claimed that the company was “changing some of Yasuke’s story and how he’s portrayed in the game, fixing architectural details, and ensuring that the game is historically grounded while fitting into the Assassin’s Creed universe.”
Henderson also added that “The game is currently not at the stage it needs to be for release, and I’m told that there have been some tweaks to some gameplay mechanics and elements that are going to take time to incorporate.”
YouTuber Endymion also shared information from his source that claimed that Ubisoft is planning to make changes to Yasuke. He said, “One of the things for sure getting removed from Shadows, according to my sources, is indeed the rap, hip-hop music for Yasuke. Apparently Ubisoft brought out a questionnaire and they were unanimously told that the rap music was tonally wrong and completely unneeded. And that it was actually offensive that Ubisoft believed Yasuke needed a hip-hop battle theme in a game that was set well before such music existed and it was only implemented ’cause Yasuke was black.”
“So that’s going to be gone for sure,” he declared.
“They are also going to be removing dialogue from the game that according to my source told me that it would actually enrage players it they heard it,” he added. “I wasn’t given concrete examples of what kind of dialogue but the source assumed it may have been Yasuke saying some sort of sociopolitical pandering nonsense about he was sold by white men or something and that he hates white men and white supremacy must be abolished and such.”
“They’re also removing this because, of course, if that were in the game it would absolutely be highlighted and used to detract even more people from supporting the game in the future,” Endymion stated.
What do you make of Côté admitting that he and the management at Ubisoft seemingly have no clue what they are doing in the current video game market? Join as a paid member to leave a comment and support our journalism.