Ubisoft Needs A Win: 2024 Was Not A Good Year For Them Financially. It Was Uh, The Year That The Many Of Their Less Than Popular Design Practices When All Those Chickens Finally Uh Came Home To Roost. It Was The Year That Everyone Finally Decided To Collectively Turn On The Company And Honestly Justifiably So. Fans Have Been Complaining About The State Of Ubisoft’s Formula For Years. Will You Continue Down That River Or Choose Another Path? But For Whatever Reason, We’re Now At The Point Where Those Complaints Have Finally Manifested Into Mainstream Disinterest. Ubisoft Games Just Aren’t Selling Like They Used To, Which Is A Big Problem For An Outfit As Big As Ubisoft Is. They Need To Sell Big Numbers To Keep Their International Chain Developers Working At Max Capacity, And Those Sales Did Not Happen In 2024.

It’s One Financial Disappointment After Another: Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora, Skull and Bones, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Star Wars Outlaws. They All Underperformed According To Ubisoft, And It’s Not Necessarily That These Are Bad Games. The Avatar Game Was Surprisingly Good, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown As Well. I Mean, It Was Kind Of Unfair To Expect What They Expected There, But It’s A Great Game. The Less Said About Skull and Bones and Star Wars Outlaws, The Better Right Now Though. The Situation Has Been So Bad That They’re Actually Considering A Buyout Or Selling The Entire Studio To Whoever Is Willing To Pay. A Recent Deal With Tencent Fell Through Because The Founders Wanted To Keep Control Of The Company, And When You’re Owned By Somebody, That’s Not How It Works.

So Honestly, Yeah, You Can Say There Were Some Big Problems With Some Of The Games. Exclude Skull and Bones And All The Games I Mentioned Are Decent Games. Exclude Star Wars Outlaws And Well, They’re Actually Very Good Games. Some Of The Best The Studio Put Out In Years. They’re Finally Starting To Evolve Their Formula, But It’s Kind Of Too Little Too Late. So With All That Said, There’s A Pretty Big Question Mark On Top Of The New Game About The Oath That Murderers Take. Hi Folks, It’s Falcon And Today On Game Ranks, We’re Going To Talk About How Much Is Riding On Assassin’s Creed Shadows. A Lot. I Mean, This Game Needs To Be A Success. Assassin’s Creed Is Their Premier Franchise, And Well, Valhalla May Have Been Responsible For A Lot Of Fans Giving Up On Ubisoft In The First Place, It Was Without A Doubt A Massive Hit. It Sold Over 20 Million Copies And Earned Over A Billion Dollars In Revenue.

That Game’s Success Has Been A Double-Edged Sword. It Made A Lot Of Money But, I Mean, For I Guess Lack Of A Better Way Of Putting It, It Also Just Bludgeons You With Sort Of Endless Content. I’m Using The Word Very Deliberately Here To Convey What People Think Of The Word Content. I Can See Why, For A Lot Of People, Enough Was Enough. It Was A Game Where People Were Finally Getting Fed Up With The Ubisoft Formula, Like Full-Blown. The Funny Thing Is, I Don’t Think Valhalla Is Bad At All. I Think It’s A Good Game. It’s Just Really Long, It’s Really Bloated, And It’s Ultimately Pretty Formulaic. It Wears Out Its Welcome, I Guess, As The Way To Put It. To Really Enjoy Valhalla, You Have To Play It Until You’re Sick Of It, Then Put It Down For Like A Week, And Then Play It Until You’re Sick Of It Again.

The Game Was An Endurance Test. It Did Not Do Enough To Advance Assassin’s Creed As A Series. Shadows, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, The New One, Is Supposed To Be That Evolution. The Game Where Ubisoft Finally Innovates Their Stale Gameplay Systems And Updates All The Tired Clichés. I Don’t Know If It’s Actually Going To Or Not, But From All The Previews Going Around And All The Pre-Release Information, It Does Seem Like Ubisoft Really Wants Us To Think Of This Game As A New Beginning For The Series. It’s Not Just That Assassin’s Creed Shadows Desperately Wants Us Back Either. It Needs Us Back. The Future Of The Entire Company Is Riding On This Game. It Has To Make A Splash Or Else.

And There’s A Certain Desperation Around The Release Of This Game That You Usually Do Not See From Ubisoft. They Pushed It Back To March 20th In Order To Release The Game When There’s No Competition. They’re Offering DLC With Pre-Orders. They’re Finally Releasing Day One On Steam Again. The Things The Old Ubisoft Would Never Do. They Knew They Had Your Money Where They Were 100% Confident In Their Success, So They Released Their Games Whenever They Wanted, Wherever They Wanted, Expensive DLC Passes Banned. In This New, Punished Ubisoft Era, They’re Actually Doing Things People Like, And While It’s Clearly All From A Place Of Desperation, It’s Nice To See Somebody Learning The Lesson.

There’s A 100 Different Things I Could Point To Right Now Of People Who Just Refuse To Learn The Lesson. Just Do What People Want You To Do, And It’ll Work. So, I Mean, To Some Extent, We Do Have To Look At This As An Aberrant Situation, Desperation Or No. I Don’t Really Care Why They’re Doing What We Want Them To Do. Let’s At Least Hear Them Out.