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Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios

#51

Post by tyleo »

this_user wrote: post #46

The whole AAA video game industry has been struggling in recent years as oversupply, astronomical development costs, and competition from nimbler AA and indie studios have put a serious dent into their profits. And unlike EA or Activision, Ubisoft no longer has any reliable cash cow franchises, which puts them into precarious position. But the fact that their only answer to this is doubling down on the strategy that…

It isn’t just AA and indie. A lot of the play hours are soaked up by mega titles like Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite before AA and indie even kick in. I’d say the low tier is just as impacted by this dynamic.

Everyone else is fighting over a tiny slice of the pie.

Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios

#52

Post by direwolf20 »

ultra_nick wrote: post #37

A lot of game companies are really committed to building products that their customers hate these days. What happened to talking to your customers?

ZIRP happened and there was a whole decade when you didn't have to sell good products to make money and then we forgot how to sell good products to make money.

Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios

#53

Post by direwolf20 »

jeffwask wrote: post #48
jmyeet wrote: post #40

I find almost all modern content producers to be a depressing business, fundamentally incompatible with being a large corporation. This includes movies, TV and video games. The problem is the large corporation wants to remove creativity from the process. They want a repeatable formula that they can scale and infinitely reproduce. The wet dream for the modern AAA studio is a "game" like FIFA that has annual releases a…

There are still a few studios fighting the good fight Rockstar, CDPR (they at least made up for their big mistake), Larian, FromSoft, Naughty Dog, Valve

Does Valve even still make games?

Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios

#55

Post by jeffwask »

ultra_nick wrote: post #37

A lot of game companies are really committed to building products that their customers hate these days. What happened to talking to your customers?

This is why we are seeing a resurgence of Double A with games like Expedition 33 taking the limelight because art does not thrive under corporate control. I'm old enough to have seen this cycle of birth and death of studios a few times already.

They start of making cool things, get acquired, get forced to make profitable things that aren't necessarily good, the talent that built the place fucks off, and you are left with a name and a factory of devs who have no agency, and the studio eventually dies.

Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios

#57

Post by vips7L »

lagniappe wrote: post #22
vips7L wrote: post #9

I discovered last night that my company's stock price is higher than Ubi's and we've lost 75% of our value over the last few years. Doesn't seem good.

Just curious, why do you stick around on a sinking ship?

Finding a job is hard and I'm picky about the technology I work in.

Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios

#58

Post by jeffwask »

miltonlost wrote: post #35
TheJoeMan wrote: post #23

I dislike that an executive is quoted as blaming "rising development costs", essentially blaming the workers/salaries, with no rebuttal. This is especially suspect with the timing of closing an office that just unionized. It might be frequency-bias, but of the companies downsizing/closing in my area I see almost all of the published explanations are blaming wages. And there can't be a really fair counter-view by the…

For every worker asking for more wages, there's the executives and capitalist class (who doesn't work) demanding even larger increases for themselves. Media often don't ask "hey, maybe you don't need such exorbitant profit" because they are themselves then owned by capitalists who don't work and don't need such outsized wealth.

The entire Guillemot family is ridiculously wealthy from Ubisoft and calling their employees greedy.

Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios

#59

Post by tormeh »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #23

I dislike that an executive is quoted as blaming "rising development costs", essentially blaming the workers/salaries, with no rebuttal. This is especially suspect with the timing of closing an office that just unionized. It might be frequency-bias, but of the companies downsizing/closing in my area I see almost all of the published explanations are blaming wages. And there can't be a really fair counter-view by the…

The rising cost has been a problem for a long time now. It's mostly models and textures fit for high-res screens, and cutscenes etc. to accompany them. That said, there is space at the top for a few companies to do this sort of development - maybe Ubisoft just isn't capable of playing in this space beyond AssCreed.

Re: Ubisoft cancels six games including Prince of Persia and closes studios

#60

Post by vips7L »

vpribish wrote: post #47
vips7L wrote: post #9

I discovered last night that my company's stock price is higher than Ubi's and we've lost 75% of our value over the last few years. Doesn't seem good.

that's not how stock prices work. look at the market cap or the multiple of it over revenue / profit / employees / whatever comparable metric

It's anecdotal, I'm not asserting anything about how stock prices work. I merely pointing out something I didn't expect. Jesus I hate this forum sometimes.
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