Ubisoft's Disastrous 2024 May Lead To The Company Going Private

Good. Hopefully they'll stop copy and pasting open world slogs from now on.

Well, I will not miss them.
Ubisoft used to be good for providing Imagine series + Petz series for Wii and NDS, The Dog Island as one of my favorite localization on Wii & PS2, Rabbids games on Wii (I have them all).
But now nothing good delivered by Ubisoft.
I cannot even stand with Just Dance games, the worst rhythm game I have ever seen.
I really really want to see Just Dance franchise get stopped so it will give more room for other developers to provide with better Rhythm games to play such as DDR, Beatmania IIDX, Sound Voltex, etc.
Ubisoft doesn't want to make more kids games anymore so I will let them be forgotten.

Considering the tencent buyout, that might not be a good thing.

If they go private though, there might be less investor pressure on the company, allowing them to be more creative and freeflow in the future.

Which might mean more Prince of Persia and Rayman. I kinda want to see that, preferably a sequel to that "prince of thieves" Prince of persia game back from 08.

For something that seemed like it was gonna ape Uncharted and it's flaws, it was surprisingly engaging with it's platforming puzzles.

I’m not on the Ubisoft hate train that most gamers seem to be on these days, so I hope Ubisoft pulls through and keeps going. They rarely make a straight up stinker. All there games are decent length, look great and have great stories and voice acting. I’m a fan and I hope they rebound.

Hopefully them going private relieves pressure from investors who care only about how much money they make short-term, and gives us a GODDAMN Rayman game.

This was their wake-up call.

Well, is it a coincidence that they're doing poorly and they're not making any Rayman games? XD

sigh Fine. I'll buy their new Monopoly game.

Couldn't happen to a nicer company. They're reaping what they've sown. I just hope the hard-working devs and good people there will be able to find their footing at a less toxic workplace.

With every new article about this debacle, the grace dancing gets more and more fun. The gamers finally earn a point against corporate greed! So, checking the score it's now... Gamers: 1, corporate greed: 237. Oh.

Wishing them well, as long as they ditch the idea that gamers have to get used to "feeling comfortable with not owning your game." Otherwise, vaya con dios.

Maybe give us Rayman? I only bought Rayman Legends and the Mario + Rabbids games. If you release more interesting games I will buy them.

People also seem interested in a new Splinter Cell game for years.

I could go for a remaster double pack of the Rainbow Six Vegas games. That would be an instant buy from me!

As others have mentioned, more Rayman would be nice.

Maybe not pander to the audience the Star Wars game pandered to, and maybe not simply brush off criticism of AC Shadows as "toxic gamer talk" would have done them some good too.

I like the Mario + Rabbids games but I'm not really interested in anything else Ubisoft, especially since most of their stuff has way too many unnecessary microtransactions that should've been included with the game already.

I think they'd be fine if they dumped their predatory, anti-consumer policies. They need to ditch Ubisoft Connect and put their focus on making great games, not making more money, which paradoxically has led them to the current crisis.

uibsoft games just too often feel like products and not like a piece of art. very formulaic design in almost all their games. thats also the reason I stopper playing mario + rabbids 2.
just compare those games with stuff like beyond good and evil, prince of persia (ps2 gen) or splinter cell 3. all those games are master pieces... and all of them came without weird preorder bonuses, Microtransactions, bugs, online instalation and they are fully on the disc.

And nothing of value was lost.

Good. Now sell the Rayman IP to other developers - and then go private all you want.

I can't imagine the budget/staff needed to make even ONE of the huge open-world games from the AC franchise...but having yearly or even bi-yearly releases seems like a huge risk. I'd take that franchise in a much smaller, more focused direction. I think it'd make for higher quality, and lower budget. Also, pick another franchise from their stable to alternate with, so that it's not AC overload. I don't like Farcry or Watchdogs personally, but maybe one of those, with smaller worlds and more focused gameplay. I think the huge open world concept takes way too high a budget to be business-sensible, and really doesn't seem to make for better experiences. I'd take a short, narrow, polished game like the RE remakes over any of the open-world stuff Ubi has put out.

@Tobiaku I'm not pro Ubisoft and I see myself very centered in political things but man I consider 99% of the mob hating ubisoft for AC Shadows to be exactly toxic gamer talk. I really don't understand why people do not accept that Assassin's Creed is fiction and not reality and fictions comes with some artistic freedom. You don't have to like it and you don't have to buy it.

That Beyond Good and Evil sequel is never coming out is it, sigh.

I hope they pull through. I love Assassin's Creed, including the later games like Valhalla and Odyssey. Star Wars Outlaws was great as well. I'm really looking forward to AC Shadows, and hope the delay will result in a more polished game.

going private would be helpful for creativity. They wouldn't be bound to the whims of idiotic share holders

@ShinG67 What's so "woke" about their games?

Talking purely about the games, I'm generally a Ubisoft fan. I enjoy sinking into the AC games - yes you know what you're getting but it's kinda cozy and sometimes I need that kinda chill.

@jojobar Because AC typically has the baggage of being historical fiction. And not the high fantasy kind, but a more re-enactment and remix kind. So if they get a major historical figure wrong like what they did with Yasuke, they are more likely to feel the heat.

Doesn't help that the series has been leaning more and more into a digital museum if memory serves me right

Sooner or later, Ubisoft will go the ways of O.G. THQ and get picked apart. And it’ll be all from their own makings.

@Samalik I doubt going private would be the solution considering all their problems are due to miss management.

Good. A company that hates their customers this much deserves for something adverse to happen.

They'll be fine as long as they become comfortable being a private company. Maybe.

Maybe they should of worked with EA or Vivendi instead of crying about a “hostile takeover,”

I remember someone theorizing that was the CEO's intended goal a year or so back. He had some believable evidence to back that up at the tome, too.

Starting to suspect he may have been more right than I suspect.

It will be a shame to see such a long established company go under. But I guess they did it to themselves. As for everyone talking about the whole “get used to not owning your games”, that’s actually a huge misquote. Either way, will Ubi even be able to rise up from this? Their stocks are plummeting and everyone seems to be extremely fatigued with their games and just waits for the huge sales they do.

as they say, you get what you deserve.

if anything, going Private at least would give Ubisoft the chance to change itself for the better. not that I think they'd be able to.

@jojobar well AC historically has been known to adapt the cultures and time periods of it's settings pretty faithfully. with people saying their depiction of Venice in AC2 to be so beautifully recreated that it belonged in a museum. And Shadows showed itself to be very sloppy, and very incompetent in its depiction of Feudal Japan to the point that it was raised as a point of concern in Japanese Parliament.

Even leaving the matter of Yasuke aside, they had really amateurish and frankly stupid mistakes of the sort that you wouldn't see in past games:
Like having events that happen in different seasons take place all at once (like cherry blossom and rice crop harvesting, also a rice field next to a river, which wouldn't happen as it'd flood the field), Chinese Architecture being spotted, using the flag of a modern-day Reenactment group without their permission, making a promotional figure using a one-legged Torii gate (the only one in existence is monument to the victims of the Nagasaki bombing in WW2), and another promotional stand using an ebay-bought sword from One Piece.

Ultimately, through sheer incompetence, they managed to piss a country that not only is one of the main hubs of gaming in the world, but also one that is traditionally very proud and protective of their history. to the point they had to issue an apology in their japanese twitter account, and cancelled their TGS appearance last minute, so I'd say it's a lot deep than just a usual case of toxic gamer talk.

@ShinG67 Agreed.

Just waiting on AC Shadows to come out.

If they get bought by a Communist Chinese Party company I would never play another Ubisoft game ever again. That is disgusting if it's true.

Nintendo should consider making an offer; they’ve worked well in the past together and Ubisoft typically always supports Nintendo consoles, not likely but would be a bit of a coup to sweep in while they’re undervalued.

No, that three month delay for AC Shadows is gonna turn everything around. It's gonna be their magnum opus guys lol

@Anti-Matter i hate just dance so much. It hardly qualifies as a game, one can get basically the same experience by following along videos of the gameplay because the controls are basically pretend. I miss dance central, which actually required skill. And i wish home versions of pad games would come back.

I also just hate the aesthetic, the white face style is so creepy and obnoxious.

@Anti-Matter Not entirely related to the article, but it's funny you mention the Imagine series.

I really like otome games and someone recently brought to my attention that some of the Imagine games are kind of like early otomes, where you have to grind stats and can pick a love interest? To me, that seems incredible (and I wanted to track down these games to try, haha)!

But like, where is that Ubisoft that'll just conjure up some random idea and ship it out as a game? Now we're trapped in the bog of Just Dance/Assassin's Creed/Rabbids live service hell.

Hopefully this decision revitalizes them a bit.

I'm scared....I'm really really scared.

“ It lost half of its market value this year alone”
That’s just half of the story. Ubisoft lost 90% of its value since AC Valhalla back in 2020.

gamers want Ubisoft cancelled

@AdolBannings-Laylee I share a somewhat similar sentiment mate, may they overcome this

I read it's the biggest game publisher in the world with over 10,000 employees despite not actually being the richest/most successful. I think the problem with companies that big is that they become to big to manoeuvre or react to the market.

So while Ubisoft's big AAA Open World strategy worked well for a time. As soon as it stopped working the company wasn't actually in a state where they're set-up exclusively to make these kinds of games.

I read they were worth more in 1997 when they only really had 1 hit game, Rayman but were a much smaller company, which meant they could more properly react to changes in the market.

Here's an idea out of the top of my head, just brainstorming, stop sucking.

@jojobar I agree with te formulaic design. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is one of my top favourite Nintendo Switch games which I completed multiple times. Sparks of Hope I am halfway, but completing it is a chore. The game looks great, but it is not an improvement on Kingdom Battle.

Looking forward to play Beyond Good & Evil. Never played it before and thus have no nostalgia. But like you said those games are master pieces without nonsense.

The only worthwhile games they've made since Rayman Legends are the Mario + Rabbids duology.

@ottoecamn - I think one of the biggest flaws using Yasuke was the fact he is a actual figure in history.

AC has had an entire franchise setting the stage that assassins were always the background agents of history. We as those agents would be essentially forgotten. Being a historic character sort of break the idea Assassin's Creed sort of built with decades of lore building.

Then what proceeded actions after that shown it would have been better if Ubi kept to that original formula. So many tone deaf decisions on Ubisoft's part just made the criticism feel more justified. Which is a stark contrast to a lot of the other AC iterations, even including the more disliked releases like Odyssey.

I love the Trials games (especially Fusion) but that series seems to be abandoned.

I love Trackmania but Ubisoft made it some dumb season pass model.

Mario Rabbids Kingdom Battle is one of the best Switch exclusives, but Sparks of Hope ruined the formula.

I am completely in disbelief that Ubisoft never ported Rayman Origins to Switch as that would be an easy hit. I personally like that game much better than Legends.

Never cared about Assassin's Creed, Just Dance, or any other Ubisoft games.

@ShinG67 Not a guy but ok. Not sure what you want.

And yes I am waiting on AC Shadows (as I have it preordered). I literally said that in my comment.

It’s a grave they’ve been digging for years. And unlike EA, who is able to get away with it because of their golden football shaped goose, Ubisoft don’t have than kind of game to keep them afloat when making dumb/greedy decision.

This would never have happened if they just made Red Steel 3!

I'm not sure what the last Ubisoft game that I played. Need to make more interesting games, I guess. Where did the creativity go that developers had back in the N64 days? Lots of creativity then. Now we just get handed the same style of game over and over again.

@World
Yes, otome games.
I have some Imagine & Petz games.
Imagine & Petz series were not really entirely homogenous games as some of the games were localised games Japanese version with completely different title then get labeled with Imagine or Petz series for the English version (The Dog Island, Petz Dogs 2, Imagine Cooking, Imagine Figure Skater, etc),

Some of them were developed by small European developers. Usually those games that made by Western developers have worse gameplay quality than made by Japanese developers.

Ubisoft is no longer continue Imagine & Petz series, but Microids passed the torch from Ubisoft by making My Universe games with similar gameplay in HD graphics.

I have some My Universe games on PS4.
But unfortunately, My Universe games were not as successful as Imagine / Petz games so Microids seems didn't add more My Universe games anymore.

Fun fact, some of the developers for My Universe games were the same developers from Imagine / Petz games before like Pocket Magic.

Ubisoft comes off as the poster example of a tone deaf company. Hostile to fans, hostile to feedback, always doubling down on the same old, it's just not a company that has their priorities straight.

Stock Market is a scam anyway!
It's nothing BUT insider trading by bigwigs nowadays!
Anytime "normal" people try and enter there's a huge price barrier.
And, perish forbid, those normal people, when they do start to get ahead, the stock gets shut down!

@demacho
I personally prefer Dance Evolution by Konami back on XBOX 360 as the song list were from entire DDR and Para Para Paradise games.

I'm sure they'll blame Nintendo some how, some way, and refrain from putting their games on the Switch successor for "reasons". M+R:KB and PoP:TLC were nice bolts of lightning, which is a shame considering the circumstances. Who knows the fate of Ubi...

Ubisoft could evaporate tomorrow and game industry would be fine. Outlaws was a disaster and Japan is ripping up the AC game based in Japan for good reason lol.

Tone deaf companies should go under and not be bailed out.

A take-private would probably be a good thing in terms of creativity and freedom - being beholden to shareholders is rarely really healthy (even if it’s good for our pensions) - and regardless, this does not mean Ubisoft is folding. That’s not what this is.

Ubisoft gets too much hate. Prince of Persia, Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Beyond Good and Evil, Rayman, Mario vs Rabbids and the charming sideshows like Child of Light and Valiant Hearts - there’s some outstanding stuff there. And remember, for every one of us burnt out on the Ubi open world format, there’s another wave of players every year who are getting the most refined version of a game you or I probably once liked. If AC was released on something more like a GTA schedule, we’d all be raving about Origins. Let alone Odyssey or Valhalla.

Edit: I’ve not really followed the missteps on Shadows, because the fuss over Yasuke is such a turn-off. But complaints about realism in AC are hilarious. I’m sorry that something has ruined your immersion in the game where you go back into the past - with agency - through your DNA and a machine. Somehow. Never mind. But the cherry blossoms!!!

I love all Ubisoft games I've played since childhood. The Far Cry series, Red Steel 1 & 2, Rayman 2 & 3, Hype - the Time Quest, and so many others.

I see a lot of hate towards Ubisoft these days but they've given me so many amazing games I can't see them as anything except legends.

Good.

@LXP8 I guess you're not up to date, then, on why many hate them nowadays. It's not necessarily undeserved.

@Ganner uughhhhh yes please. I used to love terrorist hunt mode too. I’d go for even rainbox six 3…
But rainbox six Vegas and ghost recon…. future soldier was it? The ones in Mexico City? Both great games but preferring rainbox six Vegas if I had to pick.

I don’t hate Ubisoft and I won’t be jumping on the hate bandwagon but I will say that their open world games are all very copy pastey maps and icons and waypoints. Like I get it, if it’s not broken don’t fix it but how many freaking assassin creeds do we need.

@Anti-Matter Ooh, thanks for the information! That is so cool!

I looked up Imagine: Figure Skater and Imagine: Ice Champions as I'm on a figure skating kick right now, and I was shocked that they had such a cool anime style that seemed very unlike Ubisoft, and not what I would have thought from the box art. I guess the games were localized versions of other games as you say! Huh! That is really neat!

@jojobar agree with you in that, and I'd dare to say that the current political climate in the world has an impact in such toxicity, since being hateful on the internet has become the trend, even before games or movies are released, and the product is actually consumed. There is an overflown of extreme opinions, and a lack of reasonable debates.

It is even more noticeable in the gamer community, many hard users are people that aren't too fond of social interactions, and find the opportunity to feel seen expressing (often times conservative) opinions, that even politically would be seen as a stretch.

@ShinG67

"this is a wake up call the companies who think forcing wokeness on video games will be accepted. "

you can't be serious with this 😂 but just in case:

I'll have you know, my total disinterest in Ubisoft has nothing to do with "wokeness." whatever that means (you don't know either.)

peace ✌️

Fewer games, better quality. Easy.

@SilentBluntman
They have been putting out significantly fewer games but the few they have made are eating up bucket loads of money as they assume quality is measured in graphical fidelity and scope which has been their path since the 360 days but it’s become unsustainable. The PS6 era will be a bloodbath for this industry.

@Arawn93 Wasn’t the general consensus for AC Shadows in Japan about 50-50 for those looking forward to it and those not interested/not happy about it?

Down with Prince of Persia!
Down with Mario + Rabbids! And the sequel!
Down with Rayman Legends!
Down with Child of Light!
Down with The Stick of Truth! And the sequel!
Down with Assassin's Creed!
Down with Scott Pilgrim!
Down with Beyond Good & Evil!

To hell with Ubisoft and all their great games!

@Tobiaku What is the audience that Star Wars: Outlaws game pandered too? I've played through it and I didn't see any pandering. If they pandered to anyone it was Original Trilogy Star Wars fans, like me. And Han Solo and Chewbacca fans.

@AdolBannings-Laylee They have a lot of worthy talent

@Krull Also jump 9 stories off a building into haystack, like it’s nothing

@Paraka Odyssey is the best Assassins Creed: fight me

I often think back to all those years where we got a new AC, a new FIFA and a new COD. Over and over again. And people just lapped it all up! There were some great AC and COD games, no doubt, but there was also some really average ones.

Do you think Mario and Zelda would be as hit and miss if Nintendo strived to release new entries every year?

It's one of those scearios where you question is it a blessing or is it a shame? I mean... we all get older don't we? How many more Zelda games will we all see?!

@Rainz All of them will sweep in to try to get Ubisoft

@MontyCircus all of those games you have listed have two things in common...

1. They are all great Ubisoft games*
2. They all had limited sales success**

*I caveat the 1st point as some of those games are certainly not for "everyone" and may therefore be discredited as "not great" by some.

**I caveat the 2nd point to mean sales revenue, NOT simply units sold. Ubisoft's product lifecycle is plain silly. They reach first and second price drops faster than any other publisher in the industry.

You know, i almost bought the new Prince of Persia on Release Day, but right before that, someone at Ubisoft told me, how i should get comfterable with not owning my Games.

I'm just one of the many Sales they've lost at that Moment.

@CazSonOfCaz The mythical modern non-existent audiene AC Shadows seems to pander to too. It had the success it deserved.
——————-
Another thing Ubisoft could to do to improve would be not to discriminare people for being male
https://thatparkplace.com/ubisoft-mentorship-program-develop-at-ubisoft-discriminates-against-males-based-on-their-sex/

Not even gonna say to as to WHY this is happening huh?

Go woke, go broke is in full effect for all to see. Then these companies have the nerve to blame us, the gamers, for their failure to understand the simple concept that people who play video games are NOT the target audience for the agenda push and we will spread the awareness and vote with our dollars. Even with games that aren't out yet. Those abysmal pre orders for AC worried them big time.

Ignoring the Japanese outcry with the whole black samurai thing with AC, promoting a collectable with a Hiroshima relic on it..they're just messing up left and right.

Plus the Star Wars AI is worse than what we had 20 years ago. Its horribly dumbed down and just bad... yet they blame us for expecting too much. Unbelievable.

@LXP8 Ubisoft will always stay in my good books because of Hype the Time Quest. Lovely little gem 😊

@Samalik
Haha you mean like Assassins who jump from roof tops of towers into a little wagon with straw ? or historically correct like leonardo da vinci or in general Assassins and all that stuff?
Assassins Creed was always fiction even though it had some real historical elements in it.

@Yosti
Kingdom Battle was great and yes the second one was just not enough of an improvement and again very formulaic

@MirrorFate2 Yeah, I guess not. I'm sure they can bounce back from whatever trouble they're having though.

@Tobiaku Have you actually played Outlaws? Can you give me an actual example of this pandering? So far, it seems like that this so-called "pandering" is the real "mythical" element.

If they go with Tencent that doesn't sound good.

I think its a combination of many things: To many copy-paste open-worlds, to many sequels, to many (bad) Marvel-esque humor, to many versions of a game with pre-order dlc a and b, to many bad glitches, to many early discounts, Prince of Persia remake never gonna finish, Beyond good and evil 2 never gonna finish too, etc, etc.

Just go back to the basics, making strong games without nonsense. Prince of Persia: the lost crown was such a great game!

@CazSonOfCaz I have not played it. One example of the pandering would be uglifying the lead actress.
https://x.com/EndymionYT/status/1842258827288387786
https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/1fw6jfw/leak_of_original_kay_vess_of_star_wars_outlaws_3d/

If companies want to go ahead and be as successful as for example the last Saints row or Concord, they can go ahead and do so.

Honestly not surprised they're in trouble. From covering up the amount of abuse in the company and shuffling around the culprits to expecting infinite money growth in the form of live services to be forever, they've made no end of stupid decisions over the decades. With crunch worsening, meddling from higher ups who refuse to listen/completely out of touch with the market and a genuine fear of doing something different this was bound to happen sooner or later and will for a lot of the industry too. When they let go of the leash a bit we get the latest Prince of Persia (If still with the dreaded road map attached), when they don't you use a WW2 memorial and a re-enactment flag which you then have to go back and fix. Course gamers don't particularly help when they start throwing death threats around because a protagonist isn't Straight White Dudetm.

Still, I hope employees can get basic work conditions and safety they deserve before it implodes or the ability to get out. They'll always be the ones to suffer instead of the ones who caused the problems in the first place.

It serves them right for what they done to Rayman. Without Rayman there would be no Ubisoft but Ubisoft got too big for its own boots and turned its back on the character that made them famous and their long term fans that have been wanting a new Rayman game. Nintendo said last year they are constantly getting mail from fans asking when they are going to make a new Rayman game and they have had to tell them they would love to make a new Rayman game but they don't own the rights to make one.

If they are not going to make a new Rayman they should sell Rayman to Nintendo who wants to do it and will give Rayman the respect it deserves. Same with Rare with Banjo Kazooie which would have gotten multiple sequels like Kirby if it had been under Nintendo.

@ChromaticDracula I loved 'Immortals Fenyx Rising' and find it to be more like 'Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild' and 'Tears of the Kingdom' than their other games.

@Paraka it was definetly a factor. And of the Endymion report is to be believed, they actually DID have a fictional japanese male protagonist to go along the female one and allegedly, he was even modeled already, But the idea to replace him with Yasuke came about in 2020 after the BLM protests. And trying to change your project in order to ride a sociopolitical trend is typically not a very good idea.

Specially when you consider that, in this effort to make their game mode diverse, now we have a big foreigner going around killing Japanese people, which only served to add to how short sighted and tone deaf their decision making was.

@SalvorHardin they’ve released 4 console games so far this year, not counting mobile games, and Just Dance will be their fifth. They also released Avatar in December 2023, and let’s not forget how much of a disaster Skull and Bones was.
The PS6 era won’t be about increased visual fidelity but improved resolutions (likely using PSSR) and ray tracing. We’re already at the point where it takes most devs 4-5 years to make games, yet Ubisoft keeps churning them out, which really proves my original point.

I'm not a huge Ubisoft fan, but I play their games on occasion. Ill echo a few others, they make solid titles that largely don't interest me, personally. With that said, PoP: Last Crown was excellent.

I hope they figure things out. The industry would be a lot worse off without them.

I actually don't mind a lot of their games, i think they can bounce back but the thing that seriously hurt them was telling gamers they need to get use to not owning games, then have the audacity to charge 70+ dollars for those games.

It doesn't help that AC Shadows is shaping up to be an offensive mess of a game.

They needed a little kicking to remind them who pays their bills.

Unsurprising news. What’s genuinely baffling however is how people still defend the choice of Yasuke in Shadows. Let’s set the game in feudal Japan and ignore the thousands of Japanese characters we could base our protagonist on in favour of the ONE black guy who may or may not have even been a samurai. This is what pandering is. Is being preachy while blatantly ignoring the rules of your own game. What about cultural appropriation? What about erasing local culture? What about NOT favouring people based on the colour of their skin? Would you be ok if the next instalment of the series was set among the tribes in Namibia and had a white protagonist? Of course not…

And furthermore I’m curious to know how all those do gooders would explain to the japanese why THEY shouldn’t be offended.

@jojobar Well the assassins are suppose to be ghosting through history, are they not? and even the way Ezio falls into hay was inspired by old scientific myths that were believed at the time.

Besides that, the games seem to have slowly abandoned the "history is our playground" mentality they had during Black Flag and further back. Like I said, they kind of became digital museums.

@Nico85 Thats because people are hypocrites. The type of people also defended turning Norse mythology character black in God of War Ragnarok, and later was sour about Genshin Impact daring to represent characters from African mythology pale skinned.

@Antraxx777
I do believe Ubisoft does hold Nintendo in the highest regard if Nintendo were to make a bid they might have the advantage just out of sheer respect. Not a typical Nintendo move to spend $ on developer acquisitions but there are some great assets at Ubisoft to be had. Ubisoft as a 2nd party partner would be interesting, lots of Rabbids exclusives but they’d cook up some new stuff together. I think Big N could do a franchise such as Beyond Good and Evil some good. Splinter Cell, Assasins Creed etc..on Nintendo consoles are welcome!

Didn't they do two big games with "Woke" elements? I believe I remember seeing youtube videos about both the new AC and the new Star Wars having a touch of that. And they get "Get Woke, Go Broke". Was this a case of that? Just asking because I don't actually keep up with UBI any more. I mostly only play first party Nintendo Titles.

This is the same company that says gamers should get use to not owning their games. Ha now it look like karma is coming to say hi. If they really need a buyout so bad they could sell Rayman to Toys For Bob and the rest to Take Two.

@SoIDecidedTo basically, yes.
Star Wars Outlaws was a massive failure, taking an entire month to reach 1 million copies sold (which is great for an indie or small budget game, not so much for a AAA licensed title that costed around $200 - $300 million to make), and that failure was the final nail in the coffin for Ubisoft's stock to plummet, and its investors start the talk about the company going private. they are terrified of what AC Shadow's failing would cause. hence why they're delaying it to try to make some last minute adjustments.

@Serpenterror Don't you dare let take two have P.o.P.

their games lost their appeal to me at the start of the x360 era so Im not wasting a tear over this, lol. told myself Im never gonna buy any ubisoft game - but they had to make mario rabbids, lol, and i caved in.
I hope other game companies will take note and not make the same mistakes as ubisoft, sony and other companies who thought going woke was a good idea.

@Tobiaku They didn't "uglify" the actress due to pandering, but due to logical art direction. Just give it a modicum of thought. The character from Outlaws, Kay Vess, is a scoundrel, a thief living on the underbelly of society. She's living a hand-to-mouth existence on the fringes of the galaxy. Realistically, such a person would not look like a supermodel.

I don't consider this pandering. I consider it logical art direction and logical storytelling. I challenge you to actually play the game. I've put 50 hours into it and I've seen nothing that resembles pandering. I'll give you the new AC game, sure. That does seem like pandering. But Outlaws? No.

@Arawn93 what's the "good reason"?

Back when they made Petz games, Imagine games, game show games, and board games, they were one of the most profitable game companies in the world. They stop making those and then they practically go bankrupt. Coincidence? Absolutely not.

@Samalik I mean they did have black people walking around Ancient Greece. And before anyone chimes in that it was maybe accurate I’ve read Herodotus’ the histories there were literally only myths about the people along the southern Nile (that they were 10 foot giants among other things) so no there were not sub Saharan Africans roaming the Greek aisles. And when that’s the case you’re not enriching the story, you’re breaking the allusion (and common sense) to make a political point

@Reptilio I.... wasn't talking about greece.

@Samalik Would you rather they get sold to them Chinese. A majority of their IPs are western IPs, in Chinese dev hands most of those would probably be ruin anyways. At least under a western dev they may had the potential to get proper reboot especially with games like Far Cry, Tom Clancy, Prince of Persia, and Assassin's Creed and since UbiSoft had more violent games anyways it make sense for Take Two to buy em.

@Serpenterror You're talking like the typical cynical devils of the western industry are any better.
You do know how much the likes of EA, Activision, WB interactive, Take Two/2K, ect. all seemingly share the same one braincell when it comes to business decisions, right? And that is "milk money to the point of killing a brand and all of it's trust"

I don't see how that's any better.

@demacho

• Inaccurate as hell depiction of Yasuke. Not gonna even waste time explaining why when researching who Yasuke actually was tells the story. Hint: For starters he wasn’t a sword singing samurai that killed scores of Japanese in feudal Japan. He wasn’t even a samurai btw. Actual Japanese historians also debunked Ubisofts depiction of the person despite Ubisofts “Japanese consultant” (who was another can of worms of controversy) insisting the accuracy. He was more accurately a Sodomy partner for Nobu like his other retainers if anything.
• Inaccurate as hell architecture for the location and time period. It’s literally more Chinese than Japanese that is how bad their “research” was. Not me making this up. Ubisoft even admits this during their delay notes about the inaccurate setting.
• Scenes like Japanese peasants bowing down to Yasuke is also hilariously inaccurate (Ubisoft invention) to the feudal Japanese caste system. For one Yasuke was one of many retainers of Nobu and Nobu of all people wouldn’t have him go around town making farmers bow down to him let alone the other retainers. Btw racism was still very much alive back then.
• Just to put a cherry on top their merchandising was hilariously tone deaf when they were selling toys depicting WWII Japanese memorials for profit. They since pulled that crap out.

This wasn’t the first fiction or game that showed off Yasuke btw. There was no controversy for any of those. This is the first one where a Western group messed up the depiction that badly.

If they didn’t care about historical accuracy and made the black samurai playable character (again something that has been done before with no controversy) an OC then that alone would get rid of like 25% of the controversy.

That's what they get for creating slop