Another live service game bites the dust.
Ubisoft clearly has other problems as well, releasing too many games in a few key franchises, pushing buggy games out before they’re ready, to name a couple of the issues. They’ve pretty much completely flopped on the live service front though. Wish publishers wouldn’t keep forcing that on studios then closing them down when it doesn’t work.
The problem is that most big publishers (and not just Ubisoft) have fallen into the blockbuster mentality. Going for the big payoff of a live service game doesn't cost much, if anything, more than a contemporary one-and-done game but it keeps on bringing money year after year with minimal incremental costs.
The reason they fell into it is because that is where the market is. That is where gamers are: time sink games. Buy once, play forever.
But that means that once gamers commit to a live service game--overwatch, Elder scrolls online, Fortnite--or an online multiplayer community--COD, HALO, MINECRAFT--or a mod heaven single player game--SKYRIM, FALLOUT, BALDUR'S GATE--they tend to stick and it takes a real big screwup by the publisher to lose their players. (Cough*Destiny*cough).
If anybody had been paying attention, Phil Spencer has for several years been preaching the gospel of engagement as the dominant metric of the time. We're approaching the endgame of the old business model and the publisher without time sinks are turning into prey for the publishers with them to eat up.
Now, consider that Game Pass is to all intents and purposes a live service play and look for all the time sinks that take up most of the rankings in the top played games on Steam. Repeat on XBOX. SONY. NINTENDO. Who owns what? That'll tell you who is looking to survive and who is going to have to scramble to "control their fate" as the UBISOFT exec just said.
How long have they been around?
There is still room for newcomers (Multiversity, Palworld, Marvel Rivals) but they need to be something unique and engaging. XDefiant wasn't distinctive enough. Concord, not at all. Sega cancelled theirs because they realized going forward was throwing good money after bad.
Or, if you want to stay in the one and done space, keep costs under control.
Sega's retrenching to their vintage IPs and sticking to smaller regular releases. Smaller profit but smaller losses if they miss.
Which UBISOFT did try with Prince of Persia but flubbed it.
Right now the company is more marketable than its recent games.
Not good.
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