Ubisoft CEO On Rising Development Costs: It Is Costing “10% More”

There is no doubt that Ubisoft had the best E3 this year. They were able to showcase a large number of AAA games which shows their continuous commitment to releasing sequel after sequel every year. But all of that comes at a cost. With the advent of PS4 and Xbox One, development costs are not getting any cheaper. Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot spoke a bit about next gen consoles and AAA games development at this year’s E3.

First of all he spoke about the massive success of Watch_Dogs. “We were very happy with the number of machines sold. It’s almost 12 million now [between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4], so it has been very fast compared to the old generation. We expected it to go fast anyway because customers have been waiting ages for the new generation. What are we surprised  by is how fast the current-gen is going down. A big percentage of the sales with Watch_Dogs was next-gen and we thought we would have more current-gen. Customers are quickly moving to the new consoles.”

He also spoke about the rising development costs are due to companion apps and server maintenance. This is a given since Ubisoft have been focusing on combining the single and multi-player components together. “It’s costing a bit more than I expected. So, yes, but it’s a bit more. I would say 10% more. We have to have seamless online offline, we have to have companion apps, we have to make servers that are online 24/7 and we have to make sure all this works perfectly when we launch. You can do different kinds of games that are adapted to next-gen and you need to have the money to make that work.” said Guillemot.

Do you agree with Yves’s views? Let us know in the comments section below.

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