Ubisoft recently announced during their earnings meeting that the delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows late last year had been a successful release, alongside positive responses earlier this year to the game!
Even though our friendly neighborhood, Ubisoft, hasn’t spoken about which games have been delayed, statements imply that they are titles within some of their biggest franchises, such as Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six. Upon speaking, it was said “After a thorough review of its pipeline that took place from October to December, the group decided to provide additional development time to some of its biggest productions in order to create the best conditions for success”. This indicates to us that Ubisoft are drawing on plans to make room for improvement following the successful release of AC Shadows.
Ubisoft has confirmed, however, in the earnings release, that the long-delayed Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake will release during its concurrent financial year, which ends March 2026! With the game’s trailer, which was released last summer announced a 2026 release, which also further implies the game will come to us early next year (further footing the end of the financial year).
Upon this news, Ubisoft has also said that it has a plan to form a new subsidiary which will heavily focus on three IPs and be partly owned by Tencent. The IPs in the subsidiary will be based on the Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six brands and will be backed by greater investment in an attempt to push each of these series’ forward for the future. On this note, the subsidiary is valued at $4.4 billion dollars and Tencent will be investing $1.29 billion to gain a minority stake of roughly 25%.
Ubisoft has also stated that the new subsidiary intends to improve the overall quality of “narrative-driven, solo experiences”, which I can heavily get behind as a solo journey usually has the best story backing without any of the live service jumbo. Along with this, Ubisoft does want to venture into underutilized markets such as mobile and China, which means we could be seeing games aimed at a more special audience. Mobile games, in my opinion, have yet to grab a foothold in attention as they are usually pushed by a live service or a pay-to-win margin.
We have hit the end of our article once more, but I would love to hear your thoughts! Do you think that the focus on the three big IPs will work out? Or do you think that Ubisoft’s focusing on the smaller markets could be the downfall?
