Ubisoft has announced plans to shift away from its existing model of multiple open world AAA games per year into a free to play focused market - but what does this mean?
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Ubisoft has announced plans to shift away from its existing model of multiple open world AAA games into a free to play focused market – but what does this mean?
Ubisoft has cemented its position in the industry as "that Open World Single Player Action Adventure Game" producer. We only need look at titles such as Assassin's Creed and Far Cry to understand what I mean – even games such as The Division draw some obvious parallels despite being an MMO, albeit with some differences in tone and theme. That isn't to say there aren't notable exceptions, games like Just Dance and South Park, but Ubisoft's most iconic games and therefore their "niche" fall within this category. That isn't to say this is a bad thing by any means, the games industry certainly has a place for these "O.W.S.P.A.A.G"s (what an ugly anacronym) and Ubisoft do it quite well.
However, if I were to approach you to discuss the best games following a free to play model, I would wager that the majority of gamers would respond with games such as "Fortnite", "Path of Exile" and "Dota 2" – all of which can hardly be said to fall within Ubisoft's standard field of expertise.
So what does a free to play Ubisoft game look like? The most recent example of a free to play Ubisoft Game would be Brawlhalla and The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot, A remake of an older game from 2012, now re-released on mobile. Whilst it is a distinct possibility that Ubisoft may begin to delve deeper into the mobile market and create similar games (and as we all know, there's a lot of money in mobile gaming) – if we were to consider Ubisoft's strengths and their current niche within the industry it would seem a more obvious option to consider that they will be adapting many of their existing powerhouse franchises to free to play models.
Microtransactions
Let's address the elephant in the room.
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(get it?)
Every gamer should understand, of course, that businesses are intending to make money from their games. We need only look at the existing examples mentioned above such as Fortnite, PoE, DoTA etc. to understand that microtransactions make up a big part of the free to play economy. And of course, nobody wants to see a repeat of the infamous fiasco concerning Battlefront II (a game which actually redeemed itself and is fantastic to play today incidentally) and the extremes to which microtransactions were implemented in that game in its first iteration. So, how does one put microtransactions into action adventure and RPG styled titles in a way that doesn't detract from the experience?
