Ubisoft Internal News

>Ubisoft was disappointed by the reception of Watch Dogs at E3. They expected it to be a much bigger deal than it ended up being. The series is in no way in danger, but the company is keeping an eye on sales of the title

>Michael Ancel has received flak for his constant internal delays of Beyond Good and Evil 2. It’s even more behind schedule than has been hinted at in public, and in great danger of overreaching budget. Ancel has suggested it may not ship until 2021 at least, perhaps even 2022, and some in corporate positions are growing tired of the wait

>There were talks earlier this year of a Rayman 2 remake or even the trilogy for the 25th anniversary next year. However, due to various reasons, this project was abandoned before it really began.

>Much of the Ubisoft Montpellier has grown silently frustrated with Ancel for his long break from the Rayman series. It was the branch’s major claim to fame, and they spent a great deal of time and effort on Origins and Legends to revive it. They feel like Rayman’s no better off than he was before Origins and all their work was wasted.

>Mario+Rabbids has been considered internally a one hit wonder

>The DLC for Mario+Rabbids as well as Starlink itself has fallen extremely far short of company expectations. For this reason, the Nintendo partnership has been largely abandoned. Games will be ported when possible, but Switch will not see the level of support it enjoyed from the company in 2017 and 2018

>Before this, there had been internal work done on preparing a Mario+Rabbids 2, but this never left pre-production and no demos and very little artwork exists of this title. I don’t believe Nintendo was even officially approached on a sequel

>In addition, there had been talks of reviving Prince of Persia in some way as a Nintendo exclusive alternative to Assassin’s Creed since it seemed unlikely any titles moving forward would be capable of running on Switch. This was also abandoned.

>Although this has never been a stated company goal, a key purpose of the Nintendo partnership was to gain key promotions and potentially a Smash fighter, as a way to enter into the eastern market more, which Ubisoft is usually small in. The failure of the Star Fox crossover and the DK DLC for Mario+Rabbids, as well as no Smash fighter to a lesser extent, has been what caused Ubisoft to abandon the partnership

>Many in Ubisoft blame the lack of Assassin’s Creed for the “failure” at E3. There has been renewed talk of returning the series to a yearly franchise with just more people hired on. There will at least be more spin offs going forward most likely.

>Ubisoft has decided to put the ice on the Tom Clancy games after fan and critic backlash at E3 for the overwhelming presence of the franchise to the exclusion of practically everyone else. The games currently announced will still ship on time, but there won’t be so much coming from the series moving forward

>There has been talk of pushing Brawlhalla more towards a crossover fighter and less of its own thing after the surprisingly strong reception to Adventure Time in Brawlhalla. Ubisoft sees this as a way to make money off other people’s IP’s with minimal effort and maximum reward

>Skull and Bones is also behind schedule more than people suggest. It may not ship until 2021, though this has been met internally with suggestions of reducing scope to make sure it ships in 2020. Either way, the game appears that it will either have to release later with a larger scope or sooner with less scope. There is a vocal minority, mostly among the “grunt” workers to push off the game another year or two and release the game instead as an early title for the incoming generation of consoles.