Success stories like Overwatch have proven that games as a service is a viable business model, and you can count Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot as a believer. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Guillemot said that the French publisher will continue to try to reach that market, and isn’t worried about competition. “There’s a good diversity in what people want to play,” said Yves. “It’s not one game against the other. More and more people are playing games and they want different types of experiences.” Guillemot mentioned Ubisoft’s upcoming pirate title Skull & Bones as an example, and said that while Ubisoft will “have to take people from other games” players will eventually “want to try something else” after spending five years on a single game.
While some have speculated that players playing a single game for a long period of time might hurt the industry, Guillemot believes differently. “We think we’ll be able to increase the number of people playing those type of experiences,” said Guillemot. “The market is also going to grow quite a lot: more countries, more people in each country – because the cost to play those games per hour is less than we used to have. If you look at a 15-hour game that costs $60, that’s $4 per hour. Now you can play games for 200 hours, a thousand hours and still for $60, plus some investment in the game. It’s more like 20 to 40 cents per hour. So you can [justify] playing many of those games if you have time.”
There’s a lot more from Yves Guillemot over at the GamesIndustry.biz article, so definitely check that out to learn more about how Ubisoft plans to move forward.
Skull & Bones is currently set to release in the second half of 2018 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
(Source: GamesIndustry.biz)
