Ubisoft’s most recent open world AAA launch, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, has turned out to be a pretty major failure for the publisher. The game launched to widespread negative reception (our own review gave it a score of 3/10), with several aspects of the game drawing extreme criticisms, from the loot mechanics to the half-baked survival elements to the bloated open world, and much, much more.
During their recent conference call (later also set out as a press release), Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot laid out just how much of an impact the game’s critical failure had on its financial performance, with the CEO saying that the game felt “significantly below expectations” on both fronts.
After reassuring that Ubisoft will continue to provide post-launch support to Ghost Recon Breakpoint as they look to add new content and fix what it already has, Guillemot nonetheless went into the reasons the publisher has identified for the failure of the game.
“First, it is harder to generate interest for a sequel to a Live multiplayer game, when prior iterations benefited from years of optimization,” he said. “Consequently, we need to make sure there is more time between each iteration of Live games.” Which means it will probably be a while before we see the next Ghost Recon (or even the next Division, perhaps).
Guillemot also admitted that Ubisoft needs to be more careful about what new elements and mechanics it adds to games, and how they are implemented, which is an area where Breakpoint has been found severely lacking.
“Our strategy of introducing gameplay innovations in our games has had a very positive impact on our brands,” he said. “However, to win over players, these innovations need to be perfectly implemented in order to offer an optimal experience. This has not yet been sufficiently the case with Ghost Recon Breakpoint. While the change of formula has been very well received by some players, with an average daily playtime per player of over three hours, it also has been strongly rejected by a significant portion of the community.”
Finally, he added that Breakpoint ” did not come in with enough differentiation factors, which prevented the game’s intrinsic qualities from standing out.”
What’s surprising is that it was Breakpoint’s major failure critically and commercially to Ubisoft deciding that it will be delaying the upcoming Watch Dogs Legion, Gods and Monsters, and Rainbow Six Quarantine. “We want our teams to have more development time to ensure that their respective innovations are perfectly implemented so as to deliver optimal experiences for players,” said Guillemot.
