Among the recent news of The Last of Us: Part 2 and Bloodlines 2 seeing a delay, Watch Dogs Legion will also see a delay from its early 2020 date. While a new date was not announced, it joins a few other Ubisoft titles in having their release dates pushed back.
During a recent financial call, Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot stated the following:
"We have decided to postpone the releases of Gods & Monsters, Rainbow Six Quarantine and Watch Dogs Legion until 2020-21.While each of these games already has a strong identity and high potential, we want our teams to have more development time to ensure that their respective innovations are perfectly implemented so as to deliver optimal experiences for players.”
“This decision will have a very significant impact on our financial results for this fiscal year and goes against our recent successes in building a more stable development model. However, it is in line with our strategy to maximize the future value of our brands for the long-term benefit of our employees, players and shareholders. We expect it to have a positive impact on our financial performance as from 2020-21."
This news also comes from the fact that The Division 2 and the recently released Ghost Recon: Breakpoint haven’t exactly hit the sales numbers the publisher was hoping for. While The Division 2 was largely well-received, the same cannot be said for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, a game I found to be painfully average.
"We have not capitalized on the potential of our latest two AAA releases. For Ghost Recon Breakpoint, while the game’s quality appeared on track – based on E3, Gamescom, previews and our latest internal playtests –, critical reception and sales during the game’s first weeks were very disappointing. As we have done with past titles, we will continue to support the game and listen to the community in order to deliver the necessary improvements.”
"First, it is harder to generate interest for a sequel to a Live multiplayer game, when prior iterations benefited from years of optimization. Consequently, we need to make sure there is more time between each iteration of Live games. Second, our strategy of introducing gameplay innovations in our games has had a very positive impact on our brands. However, to win over players, these innovations need to be perfectly implemented in order to offer an optimal experience."
“This has not yet been sufficiently the case with Ghost Recon Breakpoint. While the change of formula has been very well received by some players, with an average daily playtime per player of over three hours, it also has been strongly rejected by a significant portion of the community. Finally, Ghost Recon Breakpoint did not come in with enough differentiation factors, which prevented the game’s intrinsic qualities from standing out."
Watch Dog Legion has a massive gimmick of making every NPC a playable character, so it’s not surprising that the title is seeing a delay. Hopefully the failure of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint makes Ubisoft question the live service model of certain franchises and looks to be more intuned to what their community wants.