Beyond Good, Evil, Sales, As UbiSoft Ponders Popularity 73
Thanks to GameSpot for reprinting news of UbiSoft's improved financials, but disappointing specifics, as the company noted in particular: "In a very competitive year-end market, sales of new brands such as Beyond Good and Evil and XIII, products which had been heavily marketed, were lower than the early-December forecasts... this had an impact of 10 million euros ($12.5 million)." Coincidentally, GameSpy has an editorial discussing the allegedly disappointing sales of UbiSoft titles, and notes: "Many of my peers felt that BG&E's style was too eccentric and didn't convey what type of game it was." Although Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has "sold 2 million units worldwide", UbiSoft's welcome announcement of a Prince Of Persia sequel with reference to "improved marketing positioning" implies some dissatisfaction with the initial sales, and GameSpy argue "the [U.S.] advertisements for both [BG&E and PoP] were horrendous", but overall, this didn't stop UbiSoft becoming "the second largest publisher in France, the third largest in Germany, and the sixth largest in the UK" over the holiday period.
Less than 10 hours of gameplay (Score:1, Informative)
(personally I'd rather have great short games than ones I get sick of playing halfway though...)
Ubi shooting themselves in the foot in Europe (Score:4, Informative)
Now, granted, the PS2 has a much larger install base than the XBox and Gamecube in Europe, with about 20 million units compared to almost 4 million units each for Xbox and Gamecube. However, that's nearly 30% of their potential audience they're cutting out there, and as both the Xbox and Cube have smaller catalogues, there's less internal competition.
Dunno how much Sony paid them to hold those games back, but I'm not convinced it was worth it...
The Problem of Investors (Score:5, Informative)
Moreover, when the mom comes in to buy the kid a Christmas game, or even the wife for the gameplaying husband, all she knows is that she's looking for that game that's like GTA that's been on TV, or the new Mario game (even for the PS2). When I bought them at Toys R' Us during their Buy 2 Get 1 Free, the guy behind the counter knew Prince of Persia was good but couldn't find it, and it took him a good 3 or 4 minutes to track down Beyond Good & Evil.
What Ubisoft was trying to do, at least with PoP, was create another Splinter Cell. The difference though is that last Christmas, when Splinter Cell was released for Xbox, you really didn't have much in the way of strong titles. Maybe MechAssault, and that's pushing it. In Christmas of 2003, the "new" Splinter Cell (PoP) had stuff like KOTOR and Rainbow Six (ironically, another Ubisoft title) and that was only on the Xbox. The other platforms were probably even stronger (Mario Kart, SOCOM II). The problem is that investors create such an expectation for Christmas that if Ubisoft didn't get closer to EA's numbers during Christmas, what good is the Ubisoft stock? Consider this an insder retail proverb : A dollar in profit during Christmas is worth two during third quarter.
It's a shame, because it's investors that are indirectly responsible for half-shipped games and marketing mistakes like this. If you haven't already noticed, there are these mini-huge release days (like the one before Thanksgiving) on the Wednesday at the end of every financial quarter (next one is at the end of March I think). The releases will all clump and crowd on that one day. Another proverb: a dollar made at the end of the quarter for a half-finished game is worth two dollars made for a complete game released in the middle of a quarter.
Ubi Fubared XIII Mod / Map Development (Score:2, Informative)
So what did Ubisoft do?
Well, they released the US version of XIII with a flaw that disabled the use of custom maps thanks to the CD checking software. Yup. It came with an editor, you just couldn't really play with them.
Mods? They stripped out the source of the scripts required to get a full compile. Epic told me that it might be possible to get a compile if you had UT2003 handy, which has similar core classes, but you probably wouldn't get very far.
Community? For some reason, Ubi added a Map/Mod community to their XIII forums. It's a joke. Developers don't go there, heck moderators rarely go there.
Not to mention that they reworked the basic gametype framework so that even once you get past any of the above, it's still annoying to get custom material running in the game.
Result? XIII is probably a better buy as a console title than PC. At least that way you can easily sell it to EB when you're done. Because when you finish the game, that's it. You have a coaster.
For those who have not gotten PoP or Splinter Cell (Score:3, Informative)
I've been slow picking up PoP (it has been on my list because of my love for the old games back when I was in middle school), but the two-pack is what sold me.
And, dammit, it shouldn't have needed to be packaged with SC (not that my wallet is complaining)! This game is easily the best I've played in years. I've already spent six or seven hours playing the game, and it is a massive step forward for gamers who have been following the Legacy of Kain series or who love good platformers or who thought Enter the Matrix could have been so much more than it was (if only Ubisoft and this development team had worked on that game as opposed to Atari and Shiny..). I cannot sing PoP's praises more! BUY THIS GAME.
As for Splinter Cell: I'll play it at some point. :)
BG&E, Prince & Splinter Cell for $70!?! (Score:1, Informative)
This has to be one of the best deals on games right now. If you don't already have Prince of Persia, you've got to get the 2 for 1 deal now! And BG&E for $20 is a steal!
The deal's at ubisoft's store and I'm sure you can find it elsewhere too.
Ubisoft's Store [ubi.com]