Thanks for the info on Infinity, but I disagree on the release schedule on Red, Hexe, the VR game, etc.
The next big one after Valhalla (2020) is going to be Red (2024-2025).
In the middle they'll release Mirage, which is going to be a shorter game, like the old ones made as a bridge because the Infinity project was taking too long. Hexe was announced to mention that Infinity will include multiple games.
They stomped with ACIII, and then decided they were going to have 3 separate teams working each one in a game, to be able to work on 3 main AC games at the same time to allow devs to have more development time.
The VR one (Meta exclusive if nothing changed), like the mobile games, will be ignored by most of the fans, and are developed by other teams.
A quick look at their stock price (sorry, this site doesn't seem to allow me to upload images) shows that they've lost over two thirds of their value over the past five years, going from 17.85 USD down to 4.77.
Yes, the stock price was affected while ago due to some controversies appearing at the same time some people important enough to affect stock prices wanted to acquire big game publishers, just as happened with Activision.
The difference was that Ubisoft didn't want to sell and secured their ass with the help of Tencent. But after that covid happened, caused some delays or cancellations, some game underperformed and made visible that Ubi had to cut some fat because wasn't as productive as others of the same size, so had to cancel more stuff to cut the fat. And well, a handful projects got delayed by themselves and a handful more underperformed.
Now, they made the required adjustments and soon will go back to release big performing games so everything willl go back to normal, and this is why its price has been recovering in the recent months.
Activision went from 64 dollars up to 84. The MS offer really bailed them out but even at their worst they were only down to 41 dollars, having lost one third of their value (compared to Ubi having lost two thirds.)
MS went to buy them in December 2021, just after they had went from 98 to 57 in half a year due to the big controversies.
EA is nearly flat, having increased from 118 to 119 dollars per share. Really impressive how much their overall value hasn't changed, though obviously there were peaks and valleys in between.
Take 2: Up from 94 to 117.
Square Enix: Up from 22 dollars to 23, quite flat, not even the western divestment caused much movement.
Capcom: Up from 4 dollars to 17 dollars. This is the real over-performer, holy shit.
Konami: Restructured themselves 3 or so years ago and thus no easy to use chart for me.
WBG, Bandai Namco, etc.: Not really, true gaming companies and WB merged with Discovery, making charting impossible. FWIW, Bandai's also gone up, though.
None of these ones got the big controversies and related media campaign.
Jobs at those Ubi satellite studios suck, they pay worse than their competitors and lose leads all the time. While other studios do the same thing (set up satellites in tax-friendly locals,) Ubisoft has done it way more than them, and its done it without thought put in to actually churning out games. Ubisoft Singapore, home to one of the multiple development hell projects I mentioned, is the prime example.
Not true at all. Ubisoft has over 40 studios all around the world and specially in the not top tier countries workers have above average working conditions for the industry in their countries, which at the same time has better conditions than the average people there.
Obviously, like in any company some of them are the top studios, then other ones are important and then there are minor support ones. And like any big company, they look for the most attractive tax friendly stuff: this is why most of the biggest western studios are in Canada, because years ago they offered great deals to studios who moved there. Or why many western global corporations are supposedly set in Ireland or similar, and so on.
Regarding people joining or leaving in big companies, it's something that happens frequently. There are thousands of peope working in these projects and every year some people (a small percent) joins or leaves due to a ton of different reasons.
A decade on and they still haven't put out their fucking game. The plug should have been pulled years ago but instead they doubled down with more studio opennings with massive headcounts but zero output.
It was a very difficult project because it was a AAA game, something very difficult that was a new IP, something more difficult, leaded by unexperienced studio, so even more difficult, making a very different and unique game concept, something even more difficult, and was a concept which got outdated due to market shifts twice so had to be restarted twice because didn't convince them.
Obviously, some people got replaced and more people was put there to work on it and to release it properly.
Yeah, and I just posted more accurate numbers, and they're fucked. Tencent went in to stabilize them but its not enough, they're going to need more investment from someone. I mentioned the three most likely sources and, fwiw, if Tencent, a Chinese company, ends up being the savior again then I will end up having been right.
Tencent, the biggest gaming company in the world, invested a shit ton of money on them and gave them full control even protecting themselves from being acquired by Tencent itself, because Tencent knows they aren't fucked at all and that they will recover and go back to normal. Which means that will make Tencent earn a shit ton of money.
The Chinese go for win/win business situations, they are not like westerns who go to invade and ask people to change how they work etc. The Chinese put money on people who they are confident that will generate money and let them work on their own way.
Avatar has flop all over it, Mirage's fate has not yet been written and the absolute fucking state of the Division. Holy shit. Here they have an actual successful GaaS that people legitimately like and keep playing and Ubisoft sticks it with a second rate dev team that can't even release updates without making the thing unplayable. Its embarrassing, disgusting even. Other big studios would kill to have the kind of audience reaction that Ubi has had with Division 1 and 2, and yet they seem determined to throw it away.
Sure, like Valhalla and Far Cry 6. But the reality is that Valhalla is the top grossing, best selling game in the series and last year was the best year ever for Far Cry. Plus many other GaaS, not only Valhalla or FC6, continued making a lot of money even if released many years ago. Games like Rainbow Six, The Crew 2, The Division 2, For Honor and so on.
One of the reasons of why they can afford to can big projects, have some fails or delays is because the game released in previous fiscal years (mostly GaaS) generate them a huge steady revenue from legacy titles.