I had to slap myself at least a few times before I was able to digest this bit of news, seriously, it's that ridiculous. According to Ubisoft's senior vice president of sales and marketing, Tony Key, Ubisoft is unwilling to give a project the go ahead unless they see the possibility of the game being turned into a franchise...yawp.
"That's what all our games are about; we won't even start if we don't think we can build a franchise out of it. There's no more fire and forget – it's too expensive," said key, while speaking with [a]list daily. We feel like we're in a really good place with Watch_Dogs, but until we're the biggest game of the year we're not going to be satisfied. Last year we cleaned up at E3 because we were pretty much the only next-gen game around."
When questioned about the close proximity of the game's themes of cyber-identity and breach of privacy, and the recent scandal surrounding the NSA and PRISM initiative, Key said:
"Absolutely. At one point in Watch Dogs, Aidan taps into the surveillance system of an apartment building and he's looking at what everyone is doing. We had a screen shot of this guy sitting in his apartment with a department store female mannequin sitting with him and he's talking to it. When the PRISM story broke on Wednesday, we had that screen shot out on Friday on social media and said 'You never know who's watching.' We were able to react very quickly, and that's what social media brings."
While the NSA and PRISM correlation was pretty much a given, I just cannot seem to wrap my head around Ubisoft's ridiculously ludicrous stance on game development approval. Just imagine if movie studios, publishers or even music labels started adopting a similar attitude to making films/books/albums. Hrrm... [Strokes chin]...
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"EUPHORIA AFTERNOON"?!?!
Posted 17-07-2013, 10:18
Oh I do. It's not something you easily forget...even a decade after.
Posted 17-07-2013, 02:27
Dude! You dp know how the first game ends right?
Posted 17-07-2013, 01:50
Hrrm, I did not know that.
Posted 16-07-2013, 23:37
Beyond Good and Evil was also planned as a trilogy though, don't forget that
Posted 16-07-2013, 21:47
Financially, it makes a tonne of sense. But remember the Ubisoft from about a decade ago? The one that revitalized the Prince of Persia with a bold new vision while leaving scope for a game as esoteric as Beyond Good & Evil? Yeah, this is not the Ubisoft I remember rooting for in my teens.
Posted 16-07-2013, 20:58
It makes sense to some degree, but honestly, sometimes 1 hit wonders are better than some of the well known franchises out there.
Posted 16-07-2013, 18:09
Must be something in the baguettes.
Posted 16-07-2013, 17:09
Eh, they're French
Posted 16-07-2013, 16:45
It doesn't surprise me, but it damn well does offend me. I'm not against sequels or prequels or whatever, but I distinctly remember a Ubisoft representative lamenting about how there are no more middle tier games coming out anymore, which is highly hypocritical when you're adopting policies that stifle creativity to a certain degree.
Posted 16-07-2013, 16:29
Honestly, it doesn't surprise me. Nor should it. If you're going to build an engine, you're going to re-use it. And if you're going to re-use, why go to the expense of creating a new setting?