In November, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise made the jump to virtual reality with Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, an action-adventure title touting the series’ trademark stealth and parkour mechanics, translated to a VR experience. And though the game certainly received solid reviews (currently sitting at a Metacritic score of 78), that doesn’t seem to have led to solid sales.
During the company’s recent quarterly investors call, when asked about VR platforms like the Meta Quest headsets and Apple’s recently-released Apple Vision Pro, as well as what Ubisoft’s plans are in the space going forward, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guilletmot said that the company doesn’t intent to increase its investment in VR gaming. That’s down to Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, which, according to Guillemot, is doing “okay”, but has failed to sell to the level that the company was hoping for.
“We have been a bit disappointed by what we were able to achieve on VR with Assassin’s Creed,” Guillemot said (transcribed by VGC). “It did okay, and it continues to sell, but we thought it would sell more, so we are not increasing our investment on VR at the moment, because it needs to take off.
“We have been very impressed by what Apple came up with, and we think it’s fantastic hardware, but we continue to look at this VR business as something that we have to look at but not invest too much in, until it grows enough.”
Based on Guillemot’s words, it certainly seems like Ubisoft is taking a step back from VR space, so even if we were to see the company releasing more VR experiences, they’re unlikely to be of the scale of something like Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR.
Back in 2020, Ubisoft said that it was also working on a VR Splinter Cell game, but a couple of years later, the company announced that the project had been cancelled.
