During their E3 2017 press conference, Ubisoft unveiled Starlink: Battle for Atlas, which is a new entry into the toys-to-life genre. In a recent interview with Games Industry, company CEO Yves Guillemot admitted that it’s a risk to enter a dying market, but they think there’s an audience out there:
We thought that bringing 2.0 of that model was potentially very interesting. We’ll see. It’s a risk, but we feel that there are lots of people who want this type of game. Maybe they don’t want to say it, but they do want to buy it.
Something Guillemot doesn’t see as much of a risk is Beyond Good & Evil 2, despite the lack of sales for the first game. As he explained, things have changed since Beyond Good & Evil launched:
I don’t think there’s a risk there. Well, there’s always a risk when we create games, but I don’t think there’s as much risk because [Director Michel Ancel] has been through so many projects. The first Beyond Good & Evil was very good, Michel did what he wanted and what we thought would be the best for the players. But there’s one thing we didn’t look at: exactly how many players were interested at the time by female characters, science fiction world, and so on.
It seems bizarre to say, but at the time we had lots of men playing games and they wanted specific types of games. All the women that saw Beyond Good & Evil loved it, and it was a huge surprise. And lots of people wanted something different, and they loved it. It was a big surprise because normally market analysis would have told you not to do it. It didn’t sell as many [copies] because it didn’t respond to the majority, but the minority loved it so much it created something different.
Now, because we’ve been doing more games, Michel will continue to take risk – as you could see – but he has more information and is automatically responding a lot more to the majority of the players. And the market has evolved. It’s a lot more open than it was at the time.
Guillemot finished his thought by saying the company was proud of Beyond Good & Evil, because “it helped the company bring Peter Jackson on board for King Kong, it helped to change the company image and to recruit lots of talent… so it’s not about the short-term profitability, you also have to look at what in general a creation will bring to the company.”
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, Guillemot addressed Vivendi’s potential takeover of Ubisoft, saying he doesn’t feel like it’s a losing battle.
As of June, Vivendi owned 27% of Ubisoft’s shares (the Guillemot family held 13.6%) and must make an offer to buy the company once it reaches 30%.
You can read the full interview by following the link below.
Do you see Beyond Good & Evil 2 as a risk?
[Source: Games Industry]
