The head of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, has now explained the 3 reasons why Ghost Recon Breakpoint was such a flop. Some of the points also apply to The Division 2 , albeit to a much lesser extent.
This is the announcement from Ubisoft: Yesterday, Ubisoft lowered its revenue forecast for the current year. Additionally, games have been postponed that were originally supposed to be released in early 2020: this includes Watch Dogs Legion and Rainbow Six Quarantine. We probably won’t see them until later in 2020, not on the originally scheduled release dates.
The reason for the bad news is two games:
- Ghost Recon Breakpoint has completely flopped – they speak of a “significant downward trend”
- The Division 2 has fallen short of expectations – also a flop, although to a lesser extent than Ghost Recon Breakpoint
Breakpoint came too early, offered too little new
These were the 3 mistakes with Breakpoint: The CEO of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, explains the problems. He believes that the potential of the last two AAA titles could not be fully utilized.
Guillemot sees Ghost Recon Breakpoint (2019) primarily in relation to its predecessor, Ghost Recon Wildlands (2017), which was much more successful.
He sees 3 reasons for the failure of Ghost Recon Breakpoint:
- It’s difficult to generate interest in the continuation of a live-service game when the previous game has been improved over years – more time must pass before a sequel is released
- On the other hand, while new gameplay elements need to be introduced, they must be perfectly integrated into the game. This was not the case with Ghost Recon Breakpoint. The changes were rejected by the player base – he likely refers to the focus on “loot” and “grinding”.
- And thirdly, there were not enough differences in Ghost Recon Breakpoint compared to its predecessor
Guillemot says that all of this only became apparent at release. At E3, Gamescom, and during internal game tests, they did not notice the flaws.
Now, Ubisoft wants to adjust and improve the production process, just as it has done in the past.
The Division 2 also came “quickly” after The Division 1
What about The Division 2? Guillemot does not elaborate on The Division 2. However, he states that it has also fallen short of expectations.
Here, the first point of criticism regarding Ghost Recon Breakpoint could be especially important. Because The Division 2 also released “relatively soon” after a predecessor that had been expanded and improved over many years.
In the second part, players had to forgo some improvements that were added to the first part over the years:
- The Division 2, for example, does not offer the “DLC” modes from the first part like Survival or Underground
- the balance was not right in many parts, although there had been a long effort to improve it in The Division 1
- with the “Incursions,” a clear endgame activity was missing
- PvP in The Division 2 has so far flopped – in the first part, the “Dark Zone” was an important unique selling point
Many players therefore felt that after the strong initial period with The Division 2, they were experiencing a “downgrade” and now had to go through the growth process again.
Ubisoft must rethink its beloved model
This is what it’s about: Ubisoft has touted for years that their new model with service titles has been running exceptionally well. However, those were all the “first games” of their respective series.
Ubisoft has let these successful service games run their course and wanted to refresh the “Ghost Recon” and “The Division” franchises with new titles in 2019. Ubisoft planned to exploit the advantages of both funding models for its benefit:
- They wanted service games that would bring in money for a long time through microtransactions and DLCs
- but they also wanted the big buzz of a release and retail sales with a new game every 2-3 years
This model has not yet worked properly.
These are the big questions for Ubisoft
Now Ubisoft must consider how they can solve these fundamental problems. The core questions are:
- How can a new game in a series be just as good or better than the “old” game that has been developed over the years?
- How can a new game excite the fans of the old game and attract new fans?
- How can a game bring enough new content to feel like a new game, but retain enough old content so that it does not feel alien and not do justice to the series?
