Ubisoft demands new consoles so it can make new IP

Risks come with new systems, claims CEO

Ubisoft CEO Vyes Guillemot has supported claims made by Electronic Arts in the past, claiming it needs new consoles so it can start making new intellectual property. 

“I think that what has happened is the transition has been very long,” he told Polygon. “You know, in the industry, we were used to changing machines every five years. This time we are in the seventh year of the 360. We need new consoles and at the end of the cycle generally the market goes down because there are less new IPs, new properties, so that damaged the industry a little bit.

“I hope next time they will come more often.”

Guillemot claimed that console launches make people more open to risk, while new ideas “don’t sell as well” on a system that’s been out for a while. 

“Everybody who is taking risks and innovating is welcome because there are lots of hardcore gamers and those guys want new things, where the mass market will be more interested in having the same experience and doesn’t want to take as much risks because it’s not aware as much of what is going to change its experience.”

Given that this is coming from Ubisoft, a publisher with a history of using new system launches to shovel a load of cheap ported crap at consumers, I find the claims highly amusing. This is the company that brought Dungeon Hunter to the PS Vita, after all. Granted, ZombiU was a good game, but even that wasn’t exactly a new IP — given that it was painfully appropriated from a Rabbids spin-off and then made to be a successor to Zombi. 

A new console launch may actually be capable of encouraging new, riskier ideas, but I don’t know if companies like EA or Ubisoft can let go of the abject fear they’ve entrenched themselves in over the past few years. Games are expensive as hell to make, shareholders are antsy, and big publishers live in a state of perpetual terror, worried about greenlighting a single commercial failure. They treat their customers like automatic thieves and their developers like cattle — something tells me a new Xbox won’t magically alter this behavior. 

I hope I’m wrong, if only for the poor studios forced to slap together rushed Rabbids launch titles.