Beyond offering sales updates for The Division 2 and talking about rough release window for the upcoming Rainbow Six Quarantine, Ubisoft also took the time to speak a bit about some of their upcoming releases in their recent quarterly financial meeting. One game they spoke about quite a bit was Watch Dogs Legion, which is arguably their biggest upcoming release.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was of the opinion that at E3 2019 following its reveal, Watch Dogs Legion “made a huge impression thanks to its innovative gameplay”, and that it put the series “back in the spotlight”. However, the company also spoke of strong competition that all their releases might face in the final quarter of the financial year, from January to March (Ubisoft themselves have a number of games coming out in that timeframe, with Watch Dogs Legion, Gods and Monsters, and Rainbow Six Quarantine).
One game that they’re glad they won’t be competing against during the quarter is CD Projekt RED’s upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, with Ubisoft’s chief financial officer Frédérick Duguet admitting that it was “good news that Cyberpunk is not in the quarter” (via Twinfinite).
It’s interesting to see Ubisoft feeling that way- after all, the two games do share some similarities. While Watch Dogs Legion isn’t going to be an RPG, or as story-driven as Cyberpunk 2077, they’re both open world games with cyberpunk aesthetics and systems-driven gameplay that lets players choose how they want to play. Given just how hugely anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 is and has been for so long, it makes sense that most other publishers would want to not try and compete with it.
During the quarterly report, Ubisoft also mentioned that PC has surpassed PS4 as their move profitable platform, while also giving their thoughts on the Epic Games Store and Google’s upcoming Stadia. Read more about both through the links.