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Ubisoft's game publisher portfolio has been diversifying across multiple niches and platforms over the last ten years.
The rapid pace at which Ubisoft pushes out games every year is, in fact, its competitive edge over rivals like Take Two, Electronic Arts, or Activision. As a AAA studio, it has multiple franchises which get the AAA treatment - including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and the proprietary branding "Tom Clancy's" (Splinter Cell, The Division, Rainbow Six: Siege).
AAA games are multi-million dollar investments, and investors are risk-averse. As a result, the big open-world games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla or Far Cry 6 tend to be rehashes of tried-and-tested formulae.
On the other hand, Ubisoft is also known for their off-centre endeavours, including beloved titles like Just Dance, Rayman, and Brawlhalla. All of these are far removed from the open-world action-adventure fever of AAA games. This is the same studio known for incorporating fresh and brilliant game design ideas - as found in the cult classic Driver: San Francisco, or the criminally underrated I Am Alive.
Ubisoft therefore represents the promise of innovation that most big-league AAA studios would not dare attempt. This promise, unfortunately, has begun to come up short, now that two of their most anticipated side-projects are indefinitely stuck in development limbo.
How far does the development slump tighten prospects for 'unique' Ubisoft projects?
Ubisoft Milan was behind Beyond Good & Evil, one of the biggest cult classics of PS2 era gaming. The cult classic status, of course, is owing to the fact that it was a commercial failure at launch - which left lead developer Michel Ancel at a strange spot regarding his original vision for a trilogy.
Its critical acclaim did little to nothing to spur Ubisoft into investing further resources into a sequel. Leaked footages in 2009 had confirmed the rumour for a sequel, and Ubisoft only officially confirmed it in E3 2017. Its long-winded progress, as Ancel has stated, was interrupted further when Ubisoft decided to halt development to instead focus on Rayman Legends (2013), another Ubisoft franchise where Ancel held the creative reins.
Beyond Good and Evil 2 will serve as a prequel to its original game, while introducing more role-playing elements to an otherwise old-school action-adventure game modernized to fit today's standard of an open world.
A 2018 update from Ubisoft North America had showcased significant inroads, but the game's development has reportedly been stunted since Ancel quit Ubisoft in 2020. This has resulted in further dereliction from its original creative direction.
A decade-spanning crooked development has all but put it at risk of getting canned.
This can be compared to the journey of Skull & Bones, yet another title stuck in its $120 million development hell. Originally planned as a multiplayer expansion of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag to piggyback its overwhelming success, Skull and Bones has been bogged down by mismanagement and lack of directorial stability. The fundamental course of the game has changed several times as it has switched hands from one manager to the other.
Slated to release sometime after Q1 2022, the reason Skull & Bones is even afloat has to do with Ubisoft Singapore's subsidy deal with the local government, where the game's development virtually stands as one of the clauses of said agreement.
The regrettable state of management in Beyond Good & Evil 2 puts the ultimate point of Ubisoft's recently restructured Paris-based editorial team in jeopardy. This team of a hundred-odd veteran Ubisoft developers, designers, and producers do not actively partake in development. Their task is to bring cohesion of vision across Ubisoft's many projects from its many subisidiaries, studios, and acquired development teams - a vision which Beyond Good & Evil 2 apparently no longer fits.
For the hopeful consumer of Ubisoft products, the development hell should not extend to numerous other future releases that straddle the boundaries of generic AAA games, from Rocksmith+ to the untitled Star Wars game in collaboration with Lucasarts.
