When a company says "Pre Order our game and get access to a part of the game we made but locked away so that you will pay us before you can play." All I hear is, please pirate our game. Preordering to get the full game experience is crap, has always been crap and always will be. It doesn't matter if I preorder or buy the game 2 years after release, I should get access to the full game, period.
Bro I remember back in the day there were a lot of multiplayer games where you would literally already have map DLCs downloaded. Like they would just be sitting there, unplayable until you bought them 😂
DLC at launch is one of the dumbest things possible, like, Elden Ring and Monster Hunter are good examples where a well made DLC released years after the initial launch can boost sales of the base game + DLC + free hype/adversing/returning players. If you release a game with DLCs that means the additional content could've been added in the base game, you're calling your customers "stupid", Ubisoft does that to boost their Quarter results but in the long term that's not sustainable.
It's very anti consumer. And yet it has its defenders. I always think they just want to be a part of some sort of "exclusive club (money wastrels in this case), but that is not conductive to healthy gaming communities.
Last time I bought a AAA game at anything close to full price was 2016 (Fallout 4; paid $40 for it.) Nearly my entire purchase history in the nine years since has been indie or AA.
they can sell it as muich as they want No need to buy it though, its that simple. Havent been scammed by Ubi for years now :) its not so hard Tbf investors are amateurs. Just look at UBI's stock, its been high a very short time. It is on the level now, it normally was. Nothing wrong with it. Ubi isnt as big as they feel they are, and French at that - what you expect.. Assassins Creed havent been on top for over a decade now, possible more, and that is basicly the only "sure" money income they got.
Who knew squeezing out every single cent out of your customer base would be a detriment to your business, especially when the product is VERY lackluster and not worth its price.
@@hardvegetable1598 It's easier to convince people to pay for a prestigious stuff in a game THEY ALREADY LIKE than convince them to pay 80 bucks for sloppiest slop know to a man.
@@Steir12 They literally teach you this in your first couple weeks of college if you major in business and take Econ 101. It's, like, chapter 2 of the textbook, right after a basic intro to supply and demand.
@@wyTt999 Very true, but this isn't a Miyamoto "a bad game is bad forever" situation so much as a desperation Hail Mary from Ubisoft's own goal line with time expiring. This well's been poisoned. I don't think AC Shadows will do as badly as, say, Concord, but they're still just prolonging the inevitable.
@@SimuLord AC has enough of a zombie fanbase for it not to flop but it won't be the equivalent of Final Fantasy for Square when they were on the verge of losing everything.
@@AxleTrade The trend in 2024 seems to have been the decline of fanbases, zombie or otherwise, for oversaturated or declining franchises. Disney's got a real problem on its hands with Marvel nowadays, for example. I'm genuinely curious to see if this trend continues in 2025 and what it will mean not just for AAA game publishers but for pop culture as a whole. Reminds me a bit of the early 1990s (yes, I'm old) when '80s action movies and glam rock went out of style seemingly overnight and set the stage for a major cultural shift.
"Capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders" sounds like a vampiric spell from a necromancer that sucks life from an opponent to revive skeletons.
They also sunk themselves by pushing us all to that abysmal Uplay launcher. Taking a "CoD Killer" and making sure it never goes to steam was a surefire way to burn some money too.
XDefiant really was so poorly handled. I swear we should be getting paid CE0 salaries XD I really don't get how these people are getting their jobs, they are so incompetent.
Ubisoft honestly is really sad, like they've never been the cream of the crop and are corpo scum but they've always had good IPs that genuinely had really cool concepts behind them
They have had good IP's to work with and yet somehow never been able to capitalize on them to the degree that they could. We saw flashes of greatness with the earlier AC games and Far Cry games but even with those flashes they couldn't keep the fire going as it were and its finally burning out. For me personally I loved their Silent Hunter series of submarine games as a teenager but when Silent Hunter 5 came out and was so buggy that it was unplayable it was the first sign that something was really wrong with the company.
The modern slop that they create in previous and current Gen is not even worth it. I agree its very disappointing. The I.P potential is SO STRONG, but they are so corrupt, crooked, and full of themselves. Both the management, the Devs and the Voice actors. Overall, Ubisoft has a real problem with finishing and supporting games. Too busy creating online service slop constantly.
The only "shareholder" I care about as a gamer is the guy who made a game in his bedroom and it turned out to be awesome-the Eric Barones and Toby Foxes of the world who are their own sole shareholders (or perhaps they've got loved ones who are "shareholders" in their success.)
Ubisoft are cooked. The new release date they've chosen is the 30-year anniversary of the Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack. Couldn't make it up - they are beyond incompetent
@@cavernus26 They're releasing a game about assassins based in Japan on the date of the anniversary of a terrorist attack in Japan perpetrated by a group known to have been responsible for other assassinations. That's about as tone deaf as if a Japanese games company decided to release a airplane simulator with realistic crash physics set in America on 9/11. Sure, neither scenario directly references either real world event but it does display a spectacular lack of tact on Ubisoft's part. It's less about being triggered (I personally do not care either way) and more about Ubisoft just plain not doing it's due diligence which makes them look incompetent. I mean, it's a different culture so some initial ignorance is to be expected when you start the project, but if you're making a game about any culture it's literally your job to research this stuff. Someone at Ubisoft is repeatedly dropping the ball and what makes it worse is that they could have easily avoided this with a simple google search.
@@cavernus26 This is the same company that wants to sell a Johnny Somali simulator. The same company that celebrated Japan being nuked with their half tori gate figurine. Ubisoft's hatred of Japan is legendary at this point. This was not some mere oversight. You dare talk of hate yet you celebrate their hatred.
Ubisoft is basically saying to Tencent "Give us more money so we can continue to run this company the way we have been". I basically envision the eyebrows of every executive at Tencent raising high enough to break through the roof.
Tencent are surprisingly chill, they usually just let the companies they got shares in do their thing. In this case, I don't think Tencent is going to be that chill.
Every big gaming company should have a normal gamer dude standing behind the CEO at all times and telling him how stupid an idea is every time the CEO wants to make something stupid. Kinda like the slaves in ancient Rome who stood behind emperors and famous generals on imperium festivities saying "Remember you're still just a man".
That's the funniest part. They don't make games based on how fun they are, they make games based on how much money they could possibly gain. Triple A isn't about fun anymore, it's about how much money you can suck out of your customer. They don't make games for gamers.
It is crazy how swiftly Ubisoft went from industry juggernaut to barely hanging on. I had felt it was inevitable with how they released games that were so freaking samey as to feel instantly familiar upon release... but I still expected people to buy it anyway. Just look at sportball games. Guess fifa is a separate beast with a separate audience. Ubisofts core audience wasn't as dumb as they thought they were.
It is best to view FIFA and Madden etc not as a series that keeps doping idiots into buying the exact same thing. But as one game that has yearly mega updates to refresh the graphics, mechanics and match the current state of the sport they are representing so the whole thing is as up-to-date as possible. This also allows them to restructure core gameplay elements from the ground up rather than trash an existing product with their experimenting. They then charge money for it akin to a DLC and people have the option to upgrade to it or not. Allowing their players to play the “version” of the game that they like the most. And of course you have very dedicated sports fans who will happily buy every one of them, but they probably don’t play much else so they aren’t exactly spending much more than other gamers each year. Overall, it is a clever business model that is not as sloppy as it seems from the outside.
I think sports games would've been the prime target for Live service. They never change, all that does are the players, the rules are set in stone, so are the venue and the stakes, so by introducing a perpetual game state they could've done what live service games should've been, a community driven long term game project like Fortnite has become. But instead they chose to make other games follow that model, and it killed its opinion widely
The difference is that people who love football don't really have a huge selection of football games they can play instead of Fifa. A friend of mine is like this and even he hates the game, but the other ones that are out there are even worse by comparison. As soon as an enjoyable, well-put together and customer friendly football game is made Fifa will die out.
@ You forget games like FIFA don't succeed because the gamers like them the most, they succeed because they have exclusive rights to the Team Player's likeness, so gamers have to return to the same franchise to play as their favourite player.
@@ronuss Because sometimes franchises overstay their welcome like a show starts to display Season Rot which is never a good thing. Sometimes it is better to let franchises die so that something better can take its place.
@@Kallikukurinn easy solution for that, dont buy it... there still plenty of people who love AC. origins was great, many people love odyssey. many people want more AC even now. why take that awy from them just because u who are already bored of the ip think its better. seems selfish to me
It's Spike Lee's birthday and Tunisian Independence Day, was there something else special about it that matters online or something? I know _April_ 20th is kind of a big deal, but March?
If it was any other game and any other company, that date wouldn't matter (as several other games come out on the 20th). But for Ubisoft, after all their previous antics, it's kinda tone-deaf.
@@Primarch_Vulkan people just finding an excuses to complain about a game they certainly want to play all this hate is just marketing strategy cuz I come on now like they really knew about what happened 30 years ago you know I mean games that came out on bad days y'all just want something to complain about cuz I promise you if there wasn't no games y'all be complaining about it this country is just full of people who complain
If this game is not about japan then there is no problem. But it's about japan and they want to release it on a day where a terrorism happened several decade ago. Imagine if they releases US themed AC game on November 22nd or worse September 11th
If they wanted to increase sales so badly they'd remove their drm launcher from steam. Alot of people don't buy their crap because of the launcher same goes for EA.
It's just enshitification / product decay, it comes from all companies that put shareholders first like Ubisoft. Charging more for an inferior product over time is not something that could last.
@@Nikolai508 Honestly I’m beginning to suspect that the true end goal of corporations, if not capitalism as a whole, is to get away with as much mediocrity as possible.
@@bergsterama126 that's also what ea is doing but because they're the only ones that put out football games they get away with it. Ubisoft can't keep doing it when you can go to the next vendor and get a better game for the same price.
@bergsterama126 Congratulations. You've officially figured out end state capitalism - get everything for literally nothing. Just wait til you learn about NFTs.
@@custos3249 Oh trust me, I was around during the era of Non-Favorable Trash. Maybe just not as vocal in video comments. I wonder if companies like Square Enix will get prosthetic limbs to replace the ones they got rid of when chasing that trend.
Tencent is very unlikely to be happy at Ubisoft's situation. Check when Tencent bought into Ubisoft and at what share price. Then compare to the share price now. Tencent and the G Bros deal also had Tencent having minimal voting rights, meaning they are the so called silent partners. So we can see that Tencent's idea was to put in money and wait for the dividends to roll in. Which is NOT happening, so they now have a massive loss on paper but that will be locked in and realised if they sell. Tencent having to step up to the plate is NOT what a silent partner does but now they are forced to do so to reduce their losses.
Ubisoft could release the most perfect Assassin's Creed game yet and I still wouldn't budge. Ubisoft has a reputation and a business model that is anathema to player engagement and fun, that's the problem. And it's disturbing we have a "ruling family" in a video game company.
@@bunyaminyilmaz3798 Sure, I have no problem with that. In Ubisoft's case though, it's incompetent and predatory nepotism at its finest. This company has had so many black marks against it that its amazing the Guillimot family isn't in jail.
Steam is also ruled by a dynasty of Newell's (GabeN has a son that will rule after him), but they have mandate of gamers. In case of Guillemot tho, their mandate has expired. And what Chinese history teach us, when mandate of heaven of your dynasty expires shit will be interesting.
It’s such a shame what’s happening to Ubisoft. They dropped so many good games back in the day. Like Assassins creeds 2 and Farcry 3 also let’s not forget splinter cell too. I also forgot to mention Rayman in here as well.
There are some IPs I really like from Ubisoft. I'd rather see them get their ducks in a row and improve their games than failing and dying. I'm sure the people in the company would rather keep their jobs too.
"When someone shows theor true collours believe them". Id rather have them get themselves back on track too but the problem is that it would only be a matter of time untill they derail again. They NEED to go bankrupt and send a message to the gaming industry that behaviour like what ubisoft showed wont be tolerated anymore
Ubisoft deserves this downfall, they've had years to stop this from happening and did nothing to change them going bankrupt would (hopefully) get the IPs into the hands of people that would actually do something with them
Ubisoft needs to cut 50% of positions to have a snowball's chance of survival in the Sahara. Whatever happens with Shadows, most of Ubisoft is going to disappear in 2025.
Don't worry about losing IPs. When (not if) they go bust, they'll sell all of them. And the buyer, of course, won't buy an IP just to leave it sitting idle.
What I hate about Outlaws failing is the gaming industry prolly going "Oh.. Outlaws failed because it had no light sabers!" and therefore dismissing the premise of a han solo like star wars experience outright in the future.
A Japanese-themed game, being released on March 20th, will totally go over well. Considering its the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas Attack.
I say let it burn. Not like I buy AAAs, youtube videos of this sort of thing are 100% more entertainment than I'd get from playing something like AC #97.
You just hit on why I'm here. I don't even play these games. Haven't for years. I just see a nice dumpster fire to roast these marshmallows I've got over.
I've known better than to buy corpo slop games for over a decade now. I'd like to say I'm amazed at the amount of lobotomized drones who still buy into the abysmal dogshit that these dispassionate companies regurgitate out every year, but unfortunately I'm all too aware of the nigh unconscious state maintained by most of these money printers. Still, it has been fun to watch profits finally tanking for these inane, greedy parasites as they get what has been coming. One can only hope it continues to get worse for them.
@@TheeMFGr0uch i doubt it, only take two and EA would do something worse. The difference would be the quality of the products, which for the price of ubisoft games, is really lack luster, leaving the IPs to tensent is to increase the quality value to end customers even if the prices keep the same. If not, well, they can sell the ips to any company that actually cares and hope the best.
@@TheeMFGr0uch I think we've learned everything we need to know about the Guillemots' vampiric corporate tendencies from their business decisions from the word go. Ubisoft and Gameloft just scream "the only thing these people understand is money as a means to an end" rather than "these are people who care about the products of the business they're ostensibly in."
@@TheeMFGr0uch We still won't buy Ubisoft products then. These "shareholders" are going to learn the hard way not to invest in these companies. That's going to be great for the industry in the long run.
...would it suffice to take the black guy out and replace it with a Japanese dude as the other playable protagonist?...I'd say that's enough...wouldn't you agree?...not to "redo" the whole thing, just change that character?...Yasuke can be in the story, I suppose...but just not the main male playable protagonist...I'm Mexican btw, so I got no horse in this race...lol...
There's almost nothing that can be salvaged. The art assets are mostly wrong, the story's junk, the characters would have to be redesigned from the ground up, all while avoiding losing the "feel" of an Assassin's Creed game (to the extent that hasn't been a dead letter since the ending of AC3.) At least if they release it and it flops, they'll salvage a few bucks out of it from the diehards while giving them a nice convenient out ("we're putting the series on indefinite hiatus because it's not resonating with our customer base, we're going to step back and look for new avenues of creative (blah blah blah corpospeak)") to cut their losses afterward.
You can't salvage bad workplace environment. To develop a good game you can't crunch your employee to no end and expect the product that will come out to be good. Even if they scrap it, it won't do any good. They should just release it, flop, and go bankrupt. That's the good ending of this scenario.
Lmao like a poor man’s Ghost of Tsushima. If anything, this game just makes it so Ghost of Tsushima becomes even more popular as a result. Can’t wait for Ghost of Yotei. It looks so beautiful.
I am glad we are finally meeting a lot of trash like Shadows and Outlaws with disdain but also apathy. The best message is not high drama, but just low numbers showing people are tired and don't care. Concord got the same apathy and it was wonderful
It's crazy how the passion and craftmanship of a small team of devs back in the 2000s resulted in an IP that would be stretched beyond all reasonable expectations into a huge series of functionally identical games by parasitic investor groups, before its rotting corpse is picked over by vulture capitalists. So many people made so much money off a small group of creatives, other than the creatives themselves, all while giving customers a progressivley worse experience. I hate the world we live in.
I remember at the peak of Ubi (AC2 - Brotherhood times) I was dreaming about an AC set in Japan.. and now that we have arrived there, they've dragged their company, name, and design through the mud so thoroughly that I have less than zero interest in it.
I've good memories of older Assassin's Creeds, its a shame what the series (and Ubisoft) has come to. Whether they go under over this or not, I have very little hope in them going back to their roots at this point.
I wait for the quality of life updates and patches. It just so happens when the game is finally complete it's been a year and the game is half off! It's led to better experiences in games overall as I used the same strategy for Ghost of Tsushima and Elden Ring. My saves dont get corrupted. My builds don't get nerfed by some update. I have fast travel, mounts, new game plus, extra content, etc.
I've completely lost faith in the Guillimot family's leadership of ubisoft. I would trust tencent over them in the long run. This is not a single game, it is a long term failure in leadership, in my opinion.
Jedi Survivor got some patches, but according to reviews, it is still riddled with performance issues. I'd be hesitant to call it "fixed up". Every once in awhile I'll see it on sale and check reviews to see if it's fixed, and there will be plenty of brand new reviews saying performance is terrible.
If someone is looking at ubisoft, they're not looking to buy the company but rather they're more likely waiting for the bankruptcy. Because then they can swoop in and buy up the various franchises rather than Ubisoft itself. Assassin's Creeed, Rainbow Six and a bunch of the other Tom Clancy games alongside a bunch of frankly abandoned franchises like Rayman, Might and Magic and Settlers... All of these individually are probably worth more money than buying the whole pack to take on Ubisoft's reputation alongside them.
One of the two prongs of the private equity fork. The more famous one is the whole dumping off of debt for the cashout, but the one we often forget is the asset flip that often goes with it if there's anything with actual salvage value.
1:35 Honestly, I think they way overestimated how much people wanted an underworld starwars experience. Unless you sell it alongside a really appealing or well-known character like Han Solo, it's honestly just not that great.
They advertised it as "Red Dead in Space" but you can't harm animals that can hurt you, you can shrug off blaster bolts that melt thru armor normally, you can throw a thermal detonator (one of the biggest handheld explosives in universe) at a crowd of people and watch.. as nothing happens. Outlaws was just dookie, thru and thru.
The first problem with a star wars license is Disney. That's huge nope right there. I smell the Mouse Grease all over the worst decisions in this game.
The only "good home" at this po8nt would be a company that is capitalized enough to do anything interesting/take risks with it, which is Microsoft or Take Two.
honestly, im mostly worried about the devs because it feels like ac shadows is in death march and if an investor buys the company a there will be lay offs, a lot of people will lose their jobs because they are gonna restructure the company.
Those layoffs will happen sooner or later anyway. It's unavoidable. They're in the games industry but they steadfastly refuse to let their devs create compelling games. They're dead. They just don't know it yet. If I were a Ubi employee I'd be looking for exits. Happily, this craptacular industry indicated its direction of travel way back in the late 00s and early 10s, so I ended my game dev career about nine hours after it started.
I agree, I feel bad for the devs but at this point I think it's probably inevitable that a lot of them will lose their current jobs and should be looking for an exit now to take care of themselves. I think there's something like the 1980s US video games crash on the cards, which will be hard for many people in the industry in the near term but will be beneficial for consumers in the long run. In the meantime I say to gamers: don't pre-order, view new AAA products with scepticism and enjoy the indies!
The shareholders needs to replace Yves Guillemot before he suddenly decides to cancel Assassin's Creed Shadows the week before it was supposed to be launched, in order to keep funding Post-Launch content for Skull and Bones... Yves Guillemot must have one hell of a Pirate Fetisch!
Honestly Ubisoft going down in flames would be the best possible win for gaming here. Tencent buying them just delays that a little. And the devs are completely doomed no matter what.
*Theyve already had failures with Avatar. star Wars Outlaws and Skull & Bare Bones, which they literallly made a fraction of the budget back, resulting in huge losses!!* *Ubisoft Quartz, the failed nft grift, they lost 200-300m from that!!* *A lawsuit against them for selling millions of player accounts to facebook!!* *Charging exorbitantly inflated prices for early access, jumping on the same scumbaggery train as other studios!!* *Jumping on the hyper monetisation train, even with paid games!!* *If you still trust them after all that, you deserve to be continually shafted by them.*
@@serina3872 Ubisoft is being sued for allegedly sharing player data with Meta. The lawsuit claims that Ubisoft used Meta's Pixel analytics tool to collect and share user data without the users' consent. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
also i want to applaud you for being the only youtuber that actually showed the REAL price of ubisoft and not the 1/5th value chart that most youtubers like to show since the number is so much lower
You forgot to mention that the delay to march 20th is already a massive fail, because it happens to be 30th anniversary of most deadly terrorist attack in tokyo metro. Game about japans history, released on such date for japanese is just a terrible marketing
Love to play Shadows but not at the $70 price tag. I've played all ACs since Black Flag. Origin the favorite, Nothing like taking down a War Elephant with a legendary Bow. Love hearing there is a new Far Cry in the pipeline.
It WILL be. There's no doubt about it because there's no way in the 4 months they've delayed it have they had the time to remove Yasuke from the game. It will fail on that alone. "You just don't like it because black." Ubisoft only put him in there because black. They probably had a brainstorming session for historical settings and someone said "there's a black dude in feudal Japan." And ubisoft went: 😮
Good! Hope ubisoft goes under. I fealt severely betrayed from AC Unity as well as Watch Dogs 1! It took years for modders to get the game to what we were promised during the E3 showcase! Don't even get me started on the potential they sucked out of Far Cry.
It doesn't matter how much they polish this game, people are still going to be upset with them for how they have handled this reveal and leading up to launch. You look at all of the misses they have had during the reveal. - Making a game based in Japanese and putting a black Samurai (Yes Yasuke was real but he was a servant, not a Samurai) - Putting Rap and "Black Music" when Yasuke enters battle - All of the inaccuracies in the game (Painting a Glyph on a single bit of paper, harvesting rice while the blossom trees bloom, etc) - Having a Black Character destroying Japanese Set (Considering the history between black and Asian Culture) - Figure bouncing off broken Torii Gate - Setting New Release Date to the same day that Tokyo subway sarin attack (20 March 1995) Even after all this, say the game does "well" and sells 5 million copies, is that going to be enough to stop them from hemorrhaging money ?
"say the game does "well" and sells 5 million copies, is that going to be enough to stop them from hemorrhaging money ?" This right here, even if you'd not said another word, is evidence enough to convict the entire industry of nonviability. The hot second the investors figure this out, the whole pyramid will collapse.
"Insiders reported presales were high." Yeah but the rest of the industry reported that Shadows presales were abysmal compared to Outlaws, which was itself abysmal compared to any other AAA game.
I really dont care if triple A studios are taking "risks" or not, the indie market is more than robust enough for all the creative endeavors imaginable.
Star Wars outlaws in theory ticked every mark for a game I would love but it just isn’t fun. It has no soul and its world, gameplay, and characters are dull. It was genuinely my least favorite game I played last year and I feel like I got scammed out of the money I paid for it.
With all the disrespectful things they've done with the game they hobbled it from the start. When they said their releasing in February I knew it was being buried 12 feet deep. At this point I don't think their new release date is going to help them.
Ubisoft going bankrupt would be the greatest boon this industry has had in years. Hopefully when AC shadows fails they sell the AC IP to a more deserving studio that actually employs artists and not activists.
You touched on it in this video, but like you said, if you live on RUclips and Twitter, yeah it seems like everyone wants Ubisoft dead and it's deserved and AC:Shadows will crash and burn because of it. But for a lot of people that's just not true. Like you said, AC is a massive beloved franchise for a reason, and for all Ubisoft's faults, they keep pumping out AC games and people like them. Do I really care about the inner workings of Ubisoft when they make a game I like? I'm literally playing through Origins right now and it's fun, Assassin's Creed is fun. I might not preorder AC:Shadows in case it's a mess on launch, but I'd say there's a pretty big chance I do buy it at some point because I like Assassin's Creed and want to play it. But if you were to ask gamers who live on RUclips they'd say outrage will be the death of Ubisoft. Most people do not care, they're playing games.
if you want to play Shadows, just pirate it instead Ubisoft doesn't deserve your money and you'll legitimately end up probably having a better experience than people who actually pay for it
the first 3 games had a much better story than the current games. also the 4th game had fun ship fights. I think you are wasting your money on origins and shadows.
i think you're right. I think tencent would have signed the check a month ago, but the Ubi "royalty" tried to negotiate cushy management positions in the reshuffle. Tencent flipped the checkbook shut, laughed, and left until they bleed some more. And rightly so.
I dont want Ubisoft to vanish but they clearly showed in the literal last decade that they were willing to sacrifice the creativity and quality they once had to please investors, meet sales targets and profitability, at the cost of the fans. Repetitive design ideas, poor day one experience and in game shops for full price single players...honestly at this point their in-house engine tech (Anvil and Snowdrop) are the best thing about them.
The fact that they were willing to release the game in the state they had it in before they git a rude awakening from Star wars outlaws just shows how little they care The game has been delayed by a total of 4 months which means it was nowhere near in a good enough state to release. Ridiculous
And? I say good riddance. More than a decade of some of the most egregious anti consumer practices before all the marxist "DEI" crap even started. All those "downgrades" going from the E3 trailers to the release. First Uplay, then Ubisoft Club and now Ubisoft Connect. Nagware forcing you to log in every day for certain legacy games, even if you own them on Steam. (Seriously, you can't play Far Cry 3 from Steam without authenticating with your username and password once a day). The CEO saying some pretty outrageous things like "Gamers need to get comfortable not owning their games". Since about 2012 Ubisoft have not been shy about their disdain for the idea of consumer rights. False advertising alone says it all, they actually think it's ok to lie to the customer to secure a sale. Screw Ubisoft, they deserved to go out of business in 2018.
As a AC fan, honestly i hope this entire situation at least forces them to make Shadows a much better game than it would have been. It does look a hell of a lot better recently.
Because it's a red herring that only matters to the Terminally Online and distracts from the actual reasons consumer products succeed or fail. A media property has to go so far up itself (think Disney's complete poop show that was Snow White with Racial Zegler in the title role) that it's undeniable before the political arguments start to carry weight. Shadows is certainly closer to the line than most video games that stoke the outrage machine, but it's not anywhere near the actual tipping point.
No matter how terribly things are going for that game and Ubisoft they'll refuse to fix the protagonist or their hiring practices. At some point you've got to ask if Ubisoft deserve what's happening to them.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, the reason their failing is more leadership, that focused on appeasing shareholders above all else, cost cutting to increase profit margin, chasing what they thought were trends like NFTs, live service games, pushing anti-consumer practices such as a disregard for game ownership and preservation and general "enshitification" because they'd reached a point where they were struggling to make more profit than the last year without cutting things. Basically, they entered the phase of a publicly traded company wherein their product was increasingly inferior and they were charging more for it. It's something that a lot of companies go through, many of them end up being sold, some simply collapse.
You're not using that term correctly, even though I know what you meant. DEI is specifically used in the makeup of the individuals that work at a business, not fictional characters they shove into their video games.
A new Ghost Recon but as a PROPER milsim with all the lush environments would be real neat.. NO GEAR SCORE SH!TE Proper Ballistics (why were assault rifles able to shoot rounds on a flat trajectory and faster than snipers? who the heck made BP) Proper vehicle physics and damage models Live battlefield that has territory taken and lost with an AI overlord trying to win (HUGE COOP POTENTIAL) Dynamic objectives: Take X Town, Hold X Hill, establish artillery base, spot for artillery, ambush vehicles, hunt down sniper.. the list is easy to populate and could be a unique bit of tactical genius done right
That's good, but I'll pass. I'm D O N E with Ubisoft, especially after their deletion of The Crew from people's Steam accounts. I'll get used to not owning any more Ubisoft games. That's what they wanted, anyways.
Assassin's Creed Shadows now releases the same day as Xenoblade X Definitive. It'll never happen, but a Xenoblade game outselling an Assassin's Creed game would be amazing.
To the Ubisoft employee that watches this. As long as Ubisoft connect is a thing I do not care how good your game is. I won't buy it, I won't even pirate it. I don't care about anything you put out.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
Yves Guillimot should get used to not owning his company.
And until he's out of the picture, he better get used to persistent shorting.
Seeing this comment on every Ubisoft related videos will never get old
Dude, you got comment of the day on RUclips. I Salute You. ha ha
Until he's out I am boycotting ubi games.
OOOOOOOOoooooooooohhh.
When a company says "Pre Order our game and get access to a part of the game we made but locked away so that you will pay us before you can play." All I hear is, please pirate our game.
Preordering to get the full game experience is crap, has always been crap and always will be. It doesn't matter if I preorder or buy the game 2 years after release, I should get access to the full game, period.
Bro I remember back in the day there were a lot of multiplayer games where you would literally already have map DLCs downloaded. Like they would just be sitting there, unplayable until you bought them 😂
@@GamerModz123 Back in the day? Take a look at Ark.
DLC at launch is one of the dumbest things possible, like, Elden Ring and Monster Hunter are good examples where a well made DLC released years after the initial launch can boost sales of the base game + DLC + free hype/adversing/returning players. If you release a game with DLCs that means the additional content could've been added in the base game, you're calling your customers "stupid", Ubisoft does that to boost their Quarter results but in the long term that's not sustainable.
It's very anti consumer.
And yet it has its defenders. I always think they just want to be a part of some sort of "exclusive club (money wastrels in this case), but that is not conductive to healthy gaming communities.
Well, you can’t pirate live action games though… wonder if that’s part of why they make so much of them
No. Just no. I really want people to boycott the big companies to make them stop selling us half completed games
Last time I bought a AAA game at anything close to full price was 2016 (Fallout 4; paid $40 for it.) Nearly my entire purchase history in the nine years since has been indie or AA.
you KNOW people won't do that. Which is why shit companies remain afloat because the customers go "Ooh new shiny thing that I will play for a week"
Don't know if I can call my approach to Ubisoft a "boycott", when I'm not interested in going near their current output to begin with.
Doesn't work like that... You buy what you like. If you don't like it, don't buy it. The rest will work out naturally
they can sell it as muich as they want
No need to buy it though, its that simple. Havent been scammed by Ubi for years now :) its not so hard
Tbf investors are amateurs. Just look at UBI's stock, its been high a very short time. It is on the level now, it normally was. Nothing wrong with it.
Ubi isnt as big as they feel they are, and French at that - what you expect.. Assassins Creed havent been on top for over a decade now, possible more, and that is basicly the only "sure" money income they got.
Ubisoft can't be hurting, they made the first AAAA game...surely that brought in insane sales.
If they add enough A’s do you eventually just screaming when you mention it instead of saying double A, triple A, etc
It really was insane just how badly Skull&Bones flopped, so you're not _wrong_ exactly...
Have you never played Game Dev Tycoon?! You gotta keep the hits coming to survive and thrive. :)
It made morbillion dollars
Ubisoft now can buy Microsoft
Who knew squeezing out every single cent out of your customer base would be a detriment to your business, especially when the product is VERY lackluster and not worth its price.
Imagine producing easily replaceable luxury goods and act like you have monopoly on bread or something.
People cry about the pricr of games yet buy 10 dollar for a change of color on a skin in games
@@hardvegetable1598 It's easier to convince people to pay for a prestigious stuff in a game THEY ALREADY LIKE than convince them to pay 80 bucks for sloppiest slop know to a man.
@@Steir12 They literally teach you this in your first couple weeks of college if you major in business and take Econ 101. It's, like, chapter 2 of the textbook, right after a basic intro to supply and demand.
@@hardvegetable1598 not the same people
They can take their time. Whenever they finish it, we'll be there to not buy it.
@@SimuLord but if they take their time and make a good game and people like it, they get more money and understand that they need to make better games
@@wyTt999 Very true, but this isn't a Miyamoto "a bad game is bad forever" situation so much as a desperation Hail Mary from Ubisoft's own goal line with time expiring.
This well's been poisoned. I don't think AC Shadows will do as badly as, say, Concord, but they're still just prolonging the inevitable.
@@SimuLord good point king
@@SimuLord AC has enough of a zombie fanbase for it not to flop but it won't be the equivalent of Final Fantasy for Square when they were on the verge of losing everything.
@@AxleTrade The trend in 2024 seems to have been the decline of fanbases, zombie or otherwise, for oversaturated or declining franchises. Disney's got a real problem on its hands with Marvel nowadays, for example.
I'm genuinely curious to see if this trend continues in 2025 and what it will mean not just for AAA game publishers but for pop culture as a whole. Reminds me a bit of the early 1990s (yes, I'm old) when '80s action movies and glam rock went out of style seemingly overnight and set the stage for a major cultural shift.
"Capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders" sounds like a vampiric spell from a necromancer that sucks life from an opponent to revive skeletons.
Unhallowed options to extract the best life force for liches
Players weren’t mentioned anywhere, like always.
@@m.guedes It has some serious Orzhov Syndicate energy
Necromancers have more morals that real people
Skeletons... Holding STAKES!!!!!
They also sunk themselves by pushing us all to that abysmal Uplay launcher. Taking a "CoD Killer" and making sure it never goes to steam was a surefire way to burn some money too.
XDefiant really was so poorly handled. I swear we should be getting paid CE0 salaries XD I really don't get how these people are getting their jobs, they are so incompetent.
not to mention the revelation that women employees are treated horribly at the company
@ Women get treated like shit all the time at successful studios/Publishers so thats irrelevant in terms of decline.
@ it just doesn’t help matters
@@sytherwusky ironic to think that they try to spread wokeness trough their games but when it comes to actually apply it in real life they can't.
I say f*** them for charging upfront for "extra" content. That they´ll sell in a year to anyone anyway.
STOP. PREORDERING. GAMES. PERIOD.
Sage advice. I think the worm is turning.
the only two times i preordered a game, i regretted it.
Ubisoft honestly is really sad, like they've never been the cream of the crop and are corpo scum but they've always had good IPs that genuinely had really cool concepts behind them
Also the game does look really pretty
They have had good IP's to work with and yet somehow never been able to capitalize on them to the degree that they could. We saw flashes of greatness with the earlier AC games and Far Cry games but even with those flashes they couldn't keep the fire going as it were and its finally burning out. For me personally I loved their Silent Hunter series of submarine games as a teenager but when Silent Hunter 5 came out and was so buggy that it was unplayable it was the first sign that something was really wrong with the company.
@@thelogicmatrix "Pretty but toxic" is a bad way to find both girlfriends and video games.
The modern slop that they create in previous and current Gen is not even worth it. I agree its very disappointing. The I.P potential is SO STRONG, but they are so corrupt, crooked, and full of themselves.
Both the management, the Devs and the Voice actors. Overall, Ubisoft has a real problem with finishing and supporting games. Too busy creating online service slop constantly.
@@thelogicmatrix Once upon a time, in a bygone age, this was the company that released Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.
As a Gaming Customer, shareholders mean nothing to me.Good Games Do.
The only "shareholder" I care about as a gamer is the guy who made a game in his bedroom and it turned out to be awesome-the Eric Barones and Toby Foxes of the world who are their own sole shareholders (or perhaps they've got loved ones who are "shareholders" in their success.)
@@SimuLord That's exactly why solo devs are the only people you can fully trust. The larger the dev studio, the shadier things get.
I swear they're like cockroaches in every damn industry.
Ubisoft should get used to not owning their company. FAFO.
Ubisoft are cooked.
The new release date they've chosen is the 30-year anniversary of the Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack.
Couldn't make it up - they are beyond incompetent
Oh my gosh, lol. I was wondering why other comments were warning about the 20th.
and that's only the latest in the bizarrely-racist saga of Shadows
They’re making every possible mistake with this one, it’s incredible to watch. Almost unbelievable.
@@cavernus26 They're releasing a game about assassins based in Japan on the date of the anniversary of a terrorist attack in Japan perpetrated by a group known to have been responsible for other assassinations. That's about as tone deaf as if a Japanese games company decided to release a airplane simulator with realistic crash physics set in America on 9/11. Sure, neither scenario directly references either real world event but it does display a spectacular lack of tact on Ubisoft's part.
It's less about being triggered (I personally do not care either way) and more about Ubisoft just plain not doing it's due diligence which makes them look incompetent. I mean, it's a different culture so some initial ignorance is to be expected when you start the project, but if you're making a game about any culture it's literally your job to research this stuff. Someone at Ubisoft is repeatedly dropping the ball and what makes it worse is that they could have easily avoided this with a simple google search.
@@cavernus26 This is the same company that wants to sell a Johnny Somali simulator.
The same company that celebrated Japan being nuked with their half tori gate figurine.
Ubisoft's hatred of Japan is legendary at this point.
This was not some mere oversight.
You dare talk of hate yet you celebrate their hatred.
Ubisoft is basically saying to Tencent "Give us more money so we can continue to run this company the way we have been". I basically envision the eyebrows of every executive at Tencent raising high enough to break through the roof.
Tencent are surprisingly chill, they usually just let the companies they got shares in do their thing.
In this case, I don't think Tencent is going to be that chill.
Every big gaming company should have a normal gamer dude standing behind the CEO at all times and telling him how stupid an idea is every time the CEO wants to make something stupid. Kinda like the slaves in ancient Rome who stood behind emperors and famous generals on imperium festivities saying "Remember you're still just a man".
That's the funniest part. They don't make games based on how fun they are, they make games based on how much money they could possibly gain. Triple A isn't about fun anymore, it's about how much money you can suck out of your customer.
They don't make games for gamers.
@falco5148 Seems like they stop making money once they piss people off enough
Well that what happened when your company goes public. You basically become slave to shareholders
@ that’s why Valve is so good
@falco5148 It was always about making green line go up lol. That's why whole point of aaa.
It is crazy how swiftly Ubisoft went from industry juggernaut to barely hanging on.
I had felt it was inevitable with how they released games that were so freaking samey as to feel instantly familiar upon release... but I still expected people to buy it anyway. Just look at sportball games.
Guess fifa is a separate beast with a separate audience. Ubisofts core audience wasn't as dumb as they thought they were.
It is best to view FIFA and Madden etc not as a series that keeps doping idiots into buying the exact same thing. But as one game that has yearly mega updates to refresh the graphics, mechanics and match the current state of the sport they are representing so the whole thing is as up-to-date as possible. This also allows them to restructure core gameplay elements from the ground up rather than trash an existing product with their experimenting.
They then charge money for it akin to a DLC and people have the option to upgrade to it or not. Allowing their players to play the “version” of the game that they like the most. And of course you have very dedicated sports fans who will happily buy every one of them, but they probably don’t play much else so they aren’t exactly spending much more than other gamers each year. Overall, it is a clever business model that is not as sloppy as it seems from the outside.
Sportsball gamers are a different breed. It's always amazed me.
I think sports games would've been the prime target for Live service. They never change, all that does are the players, the rules are set in stone, so are the venue and the stakes, so by introducing a perpetual game state they could've done what live service games should've been, a community driven long term game project like Fortnite has become. But instead they chose to make other games follow that model, and it killed its opinion widely
The difference is that people who love football don't really have a huge selection of football games they can play instead of Fifa.
A friend of mine is like this and even he hates the game, but the other ones that are out there are even worse by comparison.
As soon as an enjoyable, well-put together and customer friendly football game is made Fifa will die out.
@ You forget games like FIFA don't succeed because the gamers like them the most, they succeed because they have exclusive rights to the Team Player's likeness, so gamers have to return to the same franchise to play as their favourite player.
"Assassin's Creed Shadows Could Be The End" I sure hope so.
why would you want a franchise to die that people love, just wondering..
@@ronussIs it the same franchise that people love? Or is it a corporate zombie wearing the skin of a franchise that people love?
i don't (but secretly do)
@@ronuss Because sometimes franchises overstay their welcome like a show starts to display Season Rot which is never a good thing. Sometimes it is better to let franchises die so that something better can take its place.
@@Kallikukurinn easy solution for that, dont buy it... there still plenty of people who love AC. origins was great, many people love odyssey. many people want more AC even now. why take that awy from them just because u who are already bored of the ip think its better. seems selfish to me
Odd how vampires are called "stakeholders".
Well where else are supposed to store our stakes?
underappreciated joke
If the vampires have all the stakes, there are no more stakes left for other people to use against them! It's genius!
@@SchrödingersGorilla I am sharing this on discord lol, it's genius
@empoleonmaster6709 Share away!
They'll delay it again when they realise what 20th March is.
It's Spike Lee's birthday and Tunisian Independence Day, was there something else special about it that matters online or something? I know _April_ 20th is kind of a big deal, but March?
@@SimuLord 1995, 20th of March, Japan, Tokyo.
If it was any other game and any other company, that date wouldn't matter (as several other games come out on the 20th). But for Ubisoft, after all their previous antics, it's kinda tone-deaf.
@@Primarch_Vulkan people just finding an excuses to complain about a game they certainly want to play all this hate is just marketing strategy cuz I come on now like they really knew about what happened 30 years ago you know I mean games that came out on bad days y'all just want something to complain about cuz I promise you if there wasn't no games y'all be complaining about it this country is just full of people who complain
If this game is not about japan then there is no problem. But it's about japan and they want to release it on a day where a terrorism happened several decade ago.
Imagine if they releases US themed AC game on November 22nd or worse September 11th
If they wanted to increase sales so badly they'd remove their drm launcher from steam. Alot of people don't buy their crap because of the launcher same goes for EA.
@tek_lynx4225 yep why I avoid any and all ubisoft and ea games on steam
What launcher? *Laughs with eye patch and sword in hand*
@@ZeroTheHunter I think they meant to say pistol
@@ZeroTheHunter laughs in multiplayer
@@ZeroTheHunter yarr harr matey
As far as I'm concerned, the Ubisoft that everyone loved died YEARS ago, so whatever happens to the company at this point is just whatever.
It's just enshitification / product decay, it comes from all companies that put shareholders first like Ubisoft.
Charging more for an inferior product over time is not something that could last.
@@Nikolai508 Honestly I’m beginning to suspect that the true end goal of corporations, if not capitalism as a whole, is to get away with as much mediocrity as possible.
@@bergsterama126 that's also what ea is doing but because they're the only ones that put out football games they get away with it. Ubisoft can't keep doing it when you can go to the next vendor and get a better game for the same price.
@bergsterama126 Congratulations. You've officially figured out end state capitalism - get everything for literally nothing. Just wait til you learn about NFTs.
@@custos3249 Oh trust me, I was around during the era of Non-Favorable Trash. Maybe just not as vocal in video comments.
I wonder if companies like Square Enix will get prosthetic limbs to replace the ones they got rid of when chasing that trend.
@@custos3249 everyone except idiots laughed at NFTs
Tencent is very unlikely to be happy at Ubisoft's situation. Check when Tencent bought into Ubisoft and at what share price. Then compare to the share price now. Tencent and the G Bros deal also had Tencent having minimal voting rights, meaning they are the so called silent partners.
So we can see that Tencent's idea was to put in money and wait for the dividends to roll in. Which is NOT happening, so they now have a massive loss on paper but that will be locked in and realised if they sell. Tencent having to step up to the plate is NOT what a silent partner does but now they are forced to do so to reduce their losses.
Ubisoft could release the most perfect Assassin's Creed game yet and I still wouldn't budge. Ubisoft has a reputation and a business model that is anathema to player engagement and fun, that's the problem.
And it's disturbing we have a "ruling family" in a video game company.
You mean a family what founded it?
@@bunyaminyilmaz3798 Sure, I have no problem with that. In Ubisoft's case though, it's incompetent and predatory nepotism at its finest. This company has had so many black marks against it that its amazing the Guillimot family isn't in jail.
Steam is also ruled by a dynasty of Newell's (GabeN has a son that will rule after him), but they have mandate of gamers. In case of Guillemot tho, their mandate has expired. And what Chinese history teach us, when mandate of heaven of your dynasty expires shit will be interesting.
"had" a ruling family. Not only does the emperor have no clothes, he also now has no throne.
Nothing Ubisoft can do to win me back at this point, I refuse to rebuild a bridge they burned..
It’s such a shame what’s happening to Ubisoft. They dropped so many good games back in the day. Like Assassins creeds 2 and Farcry 3 also let’s not forget splinter cell too. I also forgot to mention Rayman in here as well.
@@Whydoesthishappen rayman 1 and 2 were epic too back in the day
There are some IPs I really like from Ubisoft. I'd rather see them get their ducks in a row and improve their games than failing and dying. I'm sure the people in the company would rather keep their jobs too.
"When someone shows theor true collours believe them". Id rather have them get themselves back on track too but the problem is that it would only be a matter of time untill they derail again. They NEED to go bankrupt and send a message to the gaming industry that behaviour like what ubisoft showed wont be tolerated anymore
Ubisoft deserves this downfall, they've had years to stop this from happening and did nothing to change
them going bankrupt would (hopefully) get the IPs into the hands of people that would actually do something with them
Ubisoft needs to cut 50% of positions to have a snowball's chance of survival in the Sahara. Whatever happens with Shadows, most of Ubisoft is going to disappear in 2025.
Don't worry about losing IPs. When (not if) they go bust, they'll sell all of them. And the buyer, of course, won't buy an IP just to leave it sitting idle.
"Assassin's Creed Shadows Could Be The End of Ubisoft"
Good.
What I hate about Outlaws failing is the gaming industry prolly going "Oh.. Outlaws failed because it had no light sabers!" and therefore dismissing the premise of a han solo like star wars experience outright in the future.
At least they're consistent with always learning the wrong lesson
To be fair not having light sabers is a pretty good way to lose mass market appeal for a Star wars property.
I just hope the Anno series can survive whatever happens to Ubisoft.
Aww mate that's such an oddly reasonable thing to want to save.
Pray they crash quickly and the good IPs go to good hands.
A Japanese-themed game, being released on March 20th, will totally go over well. Considering its the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas Attack.
I guess we know which coincedince ppl found to get outraged over this time. I will just assume they are bots payed of by the hostile takeover group.
I say let it burn. Not like I buy AAAs, youtube videos of this sort of thing are 100% more entertainment than I'd get from playing something like AC #97.
Never have I seen my own opinions on a topic posed so perfectly by another person.
You just hit on why I'm here. I don't even play these games. Haven't for years. I just see a nice dumpster fire to roast these marshmallows I've got over.
I've known better than to buy corpo slop games for over a decade now. I'd like to say I'm amazed at the amount of lobotomized drones who still buy into the abysmal dogshit that these dispassionate companies regurgitate out every year, but unfortunately I'm all too aware of the nigh unconscious state maintained by most of these money printers. Still, it has been fun to watch profits finally tanking for these inane, greedy parasites as they get what has been coming. One can only hope it continues to get worse for them.
@@KnightofLondor My last AC game was Revelations on PS3. It was boring, I didn't complete. I've never even been tempted to buy an AC since then.
They can delay it how much the want 😂 never buying a ubisoft game again until that ceo and his whole Clan is out of business
These guys may suck, I guarantee you that the next blood sucking corpos are going to be worse.
@TheeMFGr0uch damn you may be right. Like they say "the devil you know is better than the one you don't know"
@@TheeMFGr0uch i doubt it, only take two and EA would do something worse. The difference would be the quality of the products, which for the price of ubisoft games, is really lack luster, leaving the IPs to tensent is to increase the quality value to end customers even if the prices keep the same. If not, well, they can sell the ips to any company that actually cares and hope the best.
@@TheeMFGr0uch I think we've learned everything we need to know about the Guillemots' vampiric corporate tendencies from their business decisions from the word go. Ubisoft and Gameloft just scream "the only thing these people understand is money as a means to an end" rather than "these are people who care about the products of the business they're ostensibly in."
@@TheeMFGr0uch We still won't buy Ubisoft products then. These "shareholders" are going to learn the hard way not to invest in these companies. That's going to be great for the industry in the long run.
The only way they can salvage Shadows is to redo it from scrap. Change my mind
...would it suffice to take the black guy out and replace it with a Japanese dude as the other playable protagonist?...I'd say that's enough...wouldn't you agree?...not to "redo" the whole thing, just change that character?...Yasuke can be in the story, I suppose...but just not the main male playable protagonist...I'm Mexican btw, so I got no horse in this race...lol...
@@quicoboy there's a lot of issues besides just Yasuke
There's almost nothing that can be salvaged. The art assets are mostly wrong, the story's junk, the characters would have to be redesigned from the ground up, all while avoiding losing the "feel" of an Assassin's Creed game (to the extent that hasn't been a dead letter since the ending of AC3.)
At least if they release it and it flops, they'll salvage a few bucks out of it from the diehards while giving them a nice convenient out ("we're putting the series on indefinite hiatus because it's not resonating with our customer base, we're going to step back and look for new avenues of creative (blah blah blah corpospeak)") to cut their losses afterward.
Lmao you honestly expect Ubisoft to bother in doing what you say let alone what any of us say?
They don’t care about you, me or anyone else.
You can't salvage bad workplace environment. To develop a good game you can't crunch your employee to no end and expect the product that will come out to be good. Even if they scrap it, it won't do any good. They should just release it, flop, and go bankrupt. That's the good ending of this scenario.
This gameplay looks like ghost of Tsushima pre pre alpha footage
Lmao like a poor man’s Ghost of Tsushima.
If anything, this game just makes it so Ghost of Tsushima becomes even more popular as a result.
Can’t wait for Ghost of Yotei.
It looks so beautiful.
God willing it will be the end of Ubisoft and nothing of value will be lost if it is.
Amen.
I am glad we are finally meeting a lot of trash like Shadows and Outlaws with disdain but also apathy. The best message is not high drama, but just low numbers showing people are tired and don't care. Concord got the same apathy and it was wonderful
It's crazy how the passion and craftmanship of a small team of devs back in the 2000s resulted in an IP that would be stretched beyond all reasonable expectations into a huge series of functionally identical games by parasitic investor groups, before its rotting corpse is picked over by vulture capitalists. So many people made so much money off a small group of creatives, other than the creatives themselves, all while giving customers a progressivley worse experience. I hate the world we live in.
this is why your studio should be small and self published. Never sell your product's rights to a publisher or an investor.
Perhaps remaking the same game over and over with predatory monitization models wasn't the best tactic
I remember at the peak of Ubi (AC2 - Brotherhood times) I was dreaming about an AC set in Japan.. and now that we have arrived there, they've dragged their company, name, and design through the mud so thoroughly that I have less than zero interest in it.
For me, peak Ubisoft was early 2000s when I saw Splinter Cell running on a PC I could never have afforded. It was a glimpse into the future.
I've good memories of older Assassin's Creeds, its a shame what the series (and Ubisoft) has come to. Whether they go under over this or not, I have very little hope in them going back to their roots at this point.
Outlaws only had a 35% off sale. I wait for a >= 50% off sale for any Ubisoft game. I think I’m not alone…
Just sail the seas for it. You’re likely to have more fun doing that than being a fake space pirate.
I wait for the quality of life updates and patches. It just so happens when the game is finally complete it's been a year and the game is half off!
It's led to better experiences in games overall as I used the same strategy for Ghost of Tsushima and Elden Ring. My saves dont get corrupted. My builds don't get nerfed by some update. I have fast travel, mounts, new game plus, extra content, etc.
@@Sypitz i think outlaws has denuvo tho
@@ininfo4174 and no one has cracked it yet. if it was already cracked i would be trying it out for the memes.
It can be free, still not playing that garbage. 😅😅
I've completely lost faith in the Guillimot family's leadership of ubisoft. I would trust tencent over them in the long run. This is not a single game, it is a long term failure in leadership, in my opinion.
So uh you gonna cover the fact that AC Shodows is releasing on the anniversary of the Sarin Gas Subway Attack
Dear god where is Ubisofts PR team
well they got the nagazaki/hiroshima reference in the collector already, now they add an other insult to the injury that is AC Shadows
Every day of the year you will find an anniversary for good and ill.
@@crispycade4444 dang, who cares
Every day is the anniversary of some crap. Who cares.
Jedi Survivor got some patches, but according to reviews, it is still riddled with performance issues. I'd be hesitant to call it "fixed up". Every once in awhile I'll see it on sale and check reviews to see if it's fixed, and there will be plenty of brand new reviews saying performance is terrible.
If someone is looking at ubisoft, they're not looking to buy the company but rather they're more likely waiting for the bankruptcy.
Because then they can swoop in and buy up the various franchises rather than Ubisoft itself. Assassin's Creeed, Rainbow Six and a bunch of the other Tom Clancy games alongside a bunch of frankly abandoned franchises like Rayman, Might and Magic and Settlers... All of these individually are probably worth more money than buying the whole pack to take on Ubisoft's reputation alongside them.
One of the two prongs of the private equity fork. The more famous one is the whole dumping off of debt for the cashout, but the one we often forget is the asset flip that often goes with it if there's anything with actual salvage value.
1:35 Honestly, I think they way overestimated how much people wanted an underworld starwars experience. Unless you sell it alongside a really appealing or well-known character like Han Solo, it's honestly just not that great.
wouldn't have been a big deal if Outlaws didn't suck
They advertised it as "Red Dead in Space" but you can't harm animals that can hurt you, you can shrug off blaster bolts that melt thru armor normally, you can throw a thermal detonator (one of the biggest handheld explosives in universe) at a crowd of people and watch.. as nothing happens.
Outlaws was just dookie, thru and thru.
The first problem with a star wars license is Disney. That's huge nope right there. I smell the Mouse Grease all over the worst decisions in this game.
God I just want the Tom Clancy license to go to a good home.
This
The only "good home" at this po8nt would be a company that is capitalized enough to do anything interesting/take risks with it, which is Microsoft or Take Two.
@@BasePuma4007 Take Two it is then, Microsoft are too risk averse.
I hope Ubisoft goes under, after everything they've done with Shadows and really the last decade or so they deserve it.
Oh, they will eventually.
But I don’t think Shadows will have Ubisoft go under, at least not yet.
I will cheer while they lose everything they have and their money burns.
I sincerely hope that the leaders/decisionmakers will all consider other careers outside of videogames cause they are not needed anymore.
honestly, im mostly worried about the devs because it feels like ac shadows is in death march and if an investor buys the company a there will be lay offs, a lot of people will lose their jobs because they are gonna restructure the company.
Those layoffs will happen sooner or later anyway. It's unavoidable. They're in the games industry but they steadfastly refuse to let their devs create compelling games. They're dead. They just don't know it yet.
If I were a Ubi employee I'd be looking for exits. Happily, this craptacular industry indicated its direction of travel way back in the late 00s and early 10s, so I ended my game dev career about nine hours after it started.
at this point they're probably realizing that their jobs are in danger and starting to look into what their options are
Don't worry, all the good devs will find a better job in a better company, only the DEI hires will struggle as they should
@@wallybeats9648 the good devs could form their own indie studio
I agree, I feel bad for the devs but at this point I think it's probably inevitable that a lot of them will lose their current jobs and should be looking for an exit now to take care of themselves.
I think there's something like the 1980s US video games crash on the cards, which will be hard for many people in the industry in the near term but will be beneficial for consumers in the long run.
In the meantime I say to gamers: don't pre-order, view new AAA products with scepticism and enjoy the indies!
The shareholders needs to replace Yves Guillemot before he suddenly decides to cancel Assassin's Creed Shadows the week before it was supposed to be launched, in order to keep funding Post-Launch content for Skull and Bones... Yves Guillemot must have one hell of a Pirate Fetisch!
Preordering a game should be cheaper than buying it when it comes out.
Honestly Ubisoft going down in flames would be the best possible win for gaming here. Tencent buying them just delays that a little. And the devs are completely doomed no matter what.
*Theyve already had failures with Avatar. star Wars Outlaws and Skull & Bare Bones, which they literallly made a fraction of the budget back, resulting in huge losses!!*
*Ubisoft Quartz, the failed nft grift, they lost 200-300m from that!!*
*A lawsuit against them for selling millions of player accounts to facebook!!*
*Charging exorbitantly inflated prices for early access, jumping on the same scumbaggery train as other studios!!*
*Jumping on the hyper monetisation train, even with paid games!!*
*If you still trust them after all that, you deserve to be continually shafted by them.*
The lawsuit is a new one to me
@@serina3872
Ubisoft is being sued for allegedly sharing player data with Meta. The lawsuit claims that Ubisoft used Meta's Pixel analytics tool to collect and share user data without the users' consent. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
@@serina3872 also lawsuit from two people involving the Crew. Forgot about that one
also i want to applaud you for being the only youtuber that actually showed the REAL price of ubisoft and not the 1/5th value chart that most youtubers like to show since the number is so much lower
Love your work. On par with insider gaming
We need the Ubisoft from the PS2 and Xbox 360 generations to come back. They were really cooking back in those days.
Well, screw Ubisoft. There are enough indie devs out there making great games. No one needs their watered-down icon hunt open world slop.
You forgot to mention that the delay to march 20th is already a massive fail, because it happens to be 30th anniversary of most deadly terrorist attack in tokyo metro. Game about japans history, released on such date for japanese is just a terrible marketing
Love to play Shadows but not at the $70 price tag. I've played all ACs since Black Flag. Origin the favorite, Nothing like taking down a War Elephant with a legendary Bow. Love hearing there is a new Far Cry in the pipeline.
It WILL be. There's no doubt about it because there's no way in the 4 months they've delayed it have they had the time to remove Yasuke from the game. It will fail on that alone.
"You just don't like it because black."
Ubisoft only put him in there because black. They probably had a brainstorming session for historical settings and someone said "there's a black dude in feudal Japan." And ubisoft went: 😮
Good! Hope ubisoft goes under.
I fealt severely betrayed from AC Unity as well as Watch Dogs 1! It took years for modders to get the game to what we were promised during the E3 showcase! Don't even get me started on the potential they sucked out of Far Cry.
It doesn't matter how much they polish this game, people are still going to be upset with them for how they have handled this reveal and leading up to launch. You look at all of the misses they have had during the reveal.
- Making a game based in Japanese and putting a black Samurai (Yes Yasuke was real but he was a servant, not a Samurai)
- Putting Rap and "Black Music" when Yasuke enters battle
- All of the inaccuracies in the game (Painting a Glyph on a single bit of paper, harvesting rice while the blossom trees bloom, etc)
- Having a Black Character destroying Japanese Set (Considering the history between black and Asian Culture)
- Figure bouncing off broken Torii Gate
- Setting New Release Date to the same day that Tokyo subway sarin attack (20 March 1995)
Even after all this, say the game does "well" and sells 5 million copies, is that going to be enough to stop them from hemorrhaging money ?
"say the game does "well" and sells 5 million copies, is that going to be enough to stop them from hemorrhaging money ?"
This right here, even if you'd not said another word, is evidence enough to convict the entire industry of nonviability. The hot second the investors figure this out, the whole pyramid will collapse.
"Insiders reported presales were high."
Yeah but the rest of the industry reported that Shadows presales were abysmal compared to Outlaws, which was itself abysmal compared to any other AAA game.
How improved can their parkour be when it's the same animation on repeat? She mantled the exact same way on repeat
They're adding the animations and tweaks that the oldest games had that have been practically unused for more than a decade.
This all started in AC2 with the extra flying levels that were blocked off by a paywall. How far we've fallen :(
Well, prepare to be gutted because AC is going to tank hard. Stevie Wonder told me so.
I really dont care if triple A studios are taking "risks" or not, the indie market is more than robust enough for all the creative endeavors imaginable.
the ubisoft drama never stops
And Ubisoft keeps on turning em. 🤣
Star Wars outlaws in theory ticked every mark for a game I would love but it just isn’t fun. It has no soul and its world, gameplay, and characters are dull. It was genuinely my least favorite game I played last year and I feel like I got scammed out of the money I paid for it.
There’s no “could be” here. This is going to drop the stock price even more and expose them to buy outs.
Rayman Legends was the last Ubisoft game that I cared about.. they have been a soulless corporation for a long time
The best thing Ubisoft could do to increase sales would be to drop the requirement for their stupid launcher...
There is only one game launcher on my pc, and there will only be one launcher on my pc. And that's one too many, btw.
With all the disrespectful things they've done with the game they hobbled it from the start. When they said their releasing in February I knew it was being buried 12 feet deep. At this point I don't think their new release date is going to help them.
Ubisoft going bankrupt would be the greatest boon this industry has had in years.
Hopefully when AC shadows fails they sell the AC IP to a more deserving studio that actually employs artists and not activists.
Its the fact that Ubisoft has so many insanely good IPs and are just wasting them
You touched on it in this video, but like you said, if you live on RUclips and Twitter, yeah it seems like everyone wants Ubisoft dead and it's deserved and AC:Shadows will crash and burn because of it. But for a lot of people that's just not true. Like you said, AC is a massive beloved franchise for a reason, and for all Ubisoft's faults, they keep pumping out AC games and people like them.
Do I really care about the inner workings of Ubisoft when they make a game I like? I'm literally playing through Origins right now and it's fun, Assassin's Creed is fun. I might not preorder AC:Shadows in case it's a mess on launch, but I'd say there's a pretty big chance I do buy it at some point because I like Assassin's Creed and want to play it.
But if you were to ask gamers who live on RUclips they'd say outrage will be the death of Ubisoft. Most people do not care, they're playing games.
if you want to play Shadows, just pirate it instead
Ubisoft doesn't deserve your money and you'll legitimately end up probably having a better experience than people who actually pay for it
the first 3 games had a much better story than the current games. also the 4th game had fun ship fights. I think you are wasting your money on origins and shadows.
If most people do not care, and they're buying and playing the games Ubisoft is making, then how come Ubisoft is in so much financial trouble?
Good. Let Ubisoft be gutted in the worst way possible. You will not be missed, Ubisoft.
I hope Tencent is kicking Yves Guillemot out if the rumors are true that Ubisoft being sold to Tencent is coming.
i think you're right. I think tencent would have signed the check a month ago, but the Ubi "royalty" tried to negotiate cushy management positions in the reshuffle. Tencent flipped the checkbook shut, laughed, and left until they bleed some more. And rightly so.
I dont want Ubisoft to vanish but they clearly showed in the literal last decade that they were willing to sacrifice the creativity and quality they once had to please investors, meet sales targets and profitability, at the cost of the fans. Repetitive design ideas, poor day one experience and in game shops for full price single players...honestly at this point their in-house engine tech (Anvil and Snowdrop) are the best thing about them.
Tbh, this delay has me actually interested in this AC weirdly enough
In the “I’m not buying the game I’m just here for the drama” type interest, right?
Remember, no preorders.
I would not care if Shadows is the last Assassin’s Creed game I just want to play Shadows so much
New sub here, I appreciate your good summaries of the gaming news.... Delivering factual and non inflammatory commentary on the industry is rare!
🤞 here is hoping it'll end Ubisoft
The fact that they were willing to release the game in the state they had it in before they git a rude awakening from Star wars outlaws just shows how little they care
The game has been delayed by a total of 4 months which means it was nowhere near in a good enough state to release.
Ridiculous
And? I say good riddance. More than a decade of some of the most egregious anti consumer practices before all the marxist "DEI" crap even started. All those "downgrades" going from the E3 trailers to the release. First Uplay, then Ubisoft Club and now Ubisoft Connect. Nagware forcing you to log in every day for certain legacy games, even if you own them on Steam. (Seriously, you can't play Far Cry 3 from Steam without authenticating with your username and password once a day). The CEO saying some pretty outrageous things like "Gamers need to get comfortable not owning their games". Since about 2012 Ubisoft have not been shy about their disdain for the idea of consumer rights. False advertising alone says it all, they actually think it's ok to lie to the customer to secure a sale. Screw Ubisoft, they deserved to go out of business in 2018.
POC in games = Marxism 😂 hope you enjoyed spending your holidays alone
As a AC fan, honestly i hope this entire situation at least forces them to make Shadows a much better game than it would have been. It does look a hell of a lot better recently.
Bellular is so fing afraid of talking about "political" side of "im not buying that game".
Because it's a red herring that only matters to the Terminally Online and distracts from the actual reasons consumer products succeed or fail. A media property has to go so far up itself (think Disney's complete poop show that was Snow White with Racial Zegler in the title role) that it's undeniable before the political arguments start to carry weight. Shadows is certainly closer to the line than most video games that stoke the outrage machine, but it's not anywhere near the actual tipping point.
"If Shadows Misses, Ubisoft WILL be Gutted."
Twas not a matter of "IF"... only when. 😉
No matter how terribly things are going for that game and Ubisoft they'll refuse to fix the protagonist or their hiring practices. At some point you've got to ask if Ubisoft deserve what's happening to them.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, the reason their failing is more leadership, that focused on appeasing shareholders above all else, cost cutting to increase profit margin, chasing what they thought were trends like NFTs, live service games, pushing anti-consumer practices such as a disregard for game ownership and preservation and general "enshitification" because they'd reached a point where they were struggling to make more profit than the last year without cutting things.
Basically, they entered the phase of a publicly traded company wherein their product was increasingly inferior and they were charging more for it. It's something that a lot of companies go through, many of them end up being sold, some simply collapse.
@Nikolai508 By no means are my complaints Ubisoft's only failings, just recent and public ones that could be easily rectified.
Please. Let it. Let these greedy, mindless companies realize they are not invincible.
AC:Shadows reeks of DEI. That will be the final nail in Ubi's coffin.
Can’t mention that here- has this dude ever even covered that, or won’t mention that elephant?
You're not using that term correctly, even though I know what you meant. DEI is specifically used in the makeup of the individuals that work at a business, not fictional characters they shove into their video games.
@@Label07 boooo get better material.
A new Ghost Recon but as a PROPER milsim with all the lush environments would be real neat..
NO GEAR SCORE SH!TE
Proper Ballistics (why were assault rifles able to shoot rounds on a flat trajectory and faster than snipers? who the heck made BP)
Proper vehicle physics and damage models
Live battlefield that has territory taken and lost with an AI overlord trying to win (HUGE COOP POTENTIAL)
Dynamic objectives: Take X Town, Hold X Hill, establish artillery base, spot for artillery, ambush vehicles, hunt down sniper.. the list is easy to populate and could be a unique bit of tactical genius done right
That's good, but I'll pass. I'm D O N E with Ubisoft, especially after their deletion of The Crew from people's Steam accounts. I'll get used to not owning any more Ubisoft games. That's what they wanted, anyways.
Incentives aligning in that way is exactly how the entire economy is meant to function
AAA games are not even worth the memory and hard drive space they take up at this point.
Assassin's Creed Shadows now releases the same day as Xenoblade X Definitive.
It'll never happen, but a Xenoblade game outselling an Assassin's Creed game would be amazing.
To the Ubisoft employee that watches this. As long as Ubisoft connect is a thing I do not care how good your game is. I won't buy it, I won't even pirate it. I don't care about anything you put out.