Ubisoft Stock Tanks to 10-Year Low After Lukewarm Star Wars Outlaws Launch

Ubisoft stock tanks to 10 year low!

Zooms out

Yeah it's definitely star wars outlaws guys

Not specifically SW: Outlaws, but they were given something that previously only EA made meh games with, and they decided to also make a meh game. Ubisoft really likes their meh games. See also: Assassin's Creed #25, coming out this year!
- And even EA made some decent games with the IP. I loved Jedi Fallen Order. Haven’t played Jedi survivor yet but from what I’ve gathered, it’s definitely not a total flop and even Battlefront 2-2 was decent enough.
- Never forget what was taken from us.

I feel like lukewarm is the best Ubisoft has managed in about a decade now so seems like it should have been within expectations.

People give Anno 1800 too little credit, other than that I agree.
- Anno sure is great, sadly it's not on a platform I'm willing to play on.
I've been enjoying Far Cry 3 even with the multiplayer servers shut down. Did they ever make another game that isn't also Far Cry 3?
- There's Rayman legends
Phoenix rising was a pretty good ancient Greek BOTW experience. Best game they put out in 2020. Better thrash Valhalla or WD Legion
- I thought it was fine but it could have been great had it understood why people actually liked BOTW. The idea that you can just highlight every object in a 1km radius around you completely kills exploration, you're incentivized to just go from map marker to map marker instead of actually exploring the world.
- It was okay but it never motivated me enough to actually finish it.
- Legion was such a disappointment... I still regularly go back and play WD1 just because it has a great vibe.
Did Child of Light come out within the last decade?
- Yes, I believe all the UbiArt games did. I would defend all three of those and wish they didn't slip into the wind
- July 2024, just barely outside of 10yrs ago.
- This was a beautiful game. I think it was also one of the only games I have ever accidentally 100% completed.
The new Prince of Persia roguelike is pretty good, although I've hit a wall recently and am too stubborn to look up a walkthrough. Lots of fun otherwise, though.
- And only because it's not by them, but by the team behind dead cells.

When I hear "UbiSoft" the first word I think of is "lukewarm". Mediocre, inoffensive junk food gaming that's rarely so bad that it's unplayable but also never meaningful, interesting or memorable.

This has been their m.o. for decades, I don't know what people were expecting?

For real. I played through Far Cry 5 recently, and as much as I enjoyed it it still felt like some exec saw Far Cry 3 and said "make this appeal broader and sell more."
- Having played every single FC game, I think FC5 was the worst in the series. It's so bland and loses everything that made the series fun, including exotic locale.
  I think Blood Dragon is the best overall, and FC4 is the next best for gameplay. FC3 is great, but people overrate it and either didn't play it or don't remember it. Vaas isn't even the main boss. He's a sub-boss and you literally only see him like 3 times. I think Hurk has more development than Vaas.
  FC2 is an underrated gem I wish people would have patience for, cause for all it's frustrations and faults, no other FC is what FC2 was trying to be, and it's such a unique experience.
  The original premise was "you set out to accomplish something and everything keeps going wrong." FC2 does this better than any of the others.
  My biggest consistent gripe with the series is the lack of main boss development. They tease the shit out of the main enemy every time, but it winds up being barely a part of the story. I wish there was more character development and buildup to the end. But ultimately, FC is about the gameplay, kind of like Just Cause. We're hardly there for the story.
  Also FC6 was excellent and a massive improvement in fun over FC5. I don't care what most people say.
  FC1 campaign was not fun, but building and sharing custom maps on Instincts Predator on Xbox 360 back then was so much fun.
- I played through FarbCry 3 and 4 and started getting into 5 recently.
  I just couldn't.
  They got markedly worse reach time. I was able to finish 4, but the "THIS IS AN UBISOFT GAME" vibe became more and more shameless. It felt gross, it was filtered through something ugly. I never felt the love for it that Far Cry 3 earned. I still vividly remember visiting the first shop and seeing "Painted Pachyderms! Spend Uplay points to make all the elephants colorful!" It was on the front page, it was so fucking UbiSoft. It made sure I'd never see the gun stores in FC3's successor as gun stores in any kind of immersive way.
  With FC5, it just got worse.
  I think I want to try Far Cry 2 some time, I think I used to play it a very long time ago but I barely remember it. I remember the malaria shots and the very flammable grass.
Judging by the stock price decline that didn't start last week, but rather has been ongoing for ~~months~~years, you're spot on. This is exactly what the market was expecting.

Not releasing your new game on the largest game market in the world is a bold choice as well.

Damn, it’s down 45% over the last year as well. They seem to have released a few flops recently; and their notable IPs kinda just aren’t exciting anymore.

It doesn't help that they have said a lot of just straight up anti-consumer stuff in the last year.
- They shut off the Crew 2 and even planned on deleting the game from people's libraries. They've added micro transactions to (I think) every single Ubisoft game in the last decade. They were pro NFTs and wanted it rolled out to games. Their Ubisoft launcher. Toxic and sexist environment.
  Every few years, they make a better Assassins Creed or Far Cry that moves the open-world genre forward. But that's the only positive thing I can say.
- Pivoting into NFTs didn't help.
Great. EA should be next but sports games fans won't let it happen.
Wait till Assassin's Creed Shadows flops miserably. Ubisoft is a couple of € billions in debt.
I only hope they release Anno 117 and new HoM&M before they fail completely.
- Shadows is them getting desperate. That game had been requested and expected since the ezio storyline when they came for him. Instead they released a side scroller and didn't think twice about it. Now they're struggling immensely and are trying to recover. I really want it to flop to hopefully drive a nail in the coffin.
- I want a m&m mmo.
It's all been downhill since AC Origins
Turns out you can only recycle the same garbage full of bugs so many times before people get bored of it

Maybe don't charge $145 for a digital product. Maybe charge $50, and sell it to 5x the people. It quite literally costs nothing (okay, pedantically, the tiniest fraction) to sell more units.

I'd play an okay Star Wars game for $50 day 1. Wouldn't you?

And then when it goes on sale, loads of people would pay $20 on a 60% sale price next year. Whose paying $60 at a 60% off sale for a year old okay Star Wars game? No one. Not one soul.

Oh, you can get it cheaper for subscribing to Ubisoft+. Fuck off with that bullshit, do you even hear yourself?

....the base game is $69.99 like all other recent AAA games.
- Yup, and I'll wait for it be 20 bucks or less on steam, unless it's like the last one which could have been a dlc for the one before it. If that's the case, I'll pass since I didn't make it half way through the last one because it was boring.
Ok, I'll prob get roasted for this but hear me out.
I think Ubisoft+ is great. I can get the whatever $500 mega platinum edition for like $15 if I can beat it that month. Or even if I take 2 months to beat it, I've only spent $30 which is less then a base game. Then you unsub and wait for the next game you're interested in.
- Not gonna roast you or downvote you, as that does seem to be a use case. Just not one that would work for me, since I replay games frequently.
  Honestly the last Ubisoft title I think I played was AC: Black Flag, and that was cause, pirates.
“Want to automatically purchase more mediocrity on a regular basis? Subscribe and save!”

Luke lived on a desert planet, of course he's warm!

Icey, what you did there...
(Edit: speeeeeeling)

I think that's kind of a shame.

I don't care for Ubisofts bland and lazy open world design formula, but SW:O appears to not do a lot of the usual open world BS that they're known for.

I only get this from Skillup's review and he had a host of problems with gameplay, but I also got the sense that this is a game that will be remembered fondly by a subset of the star wars fandom.

Hopefully the lesson that Ubi learns isn't "see, we should stick with what works. Another generic open world Assassins Creed RPG-Lite".

I think you and I both know that's exactly what they're going to do.
I hurts me how bad SW:O did for that very reason. There's no XP, there's no tower in each zone to unlock or whatever. It's a really good game IMO with a few issues.
- It's just a shame that some of the biggest of those issues appear to be fundamental game mechanics.

Who even invests in ubisoft? If you know anything about games you would know ubisoft is crap company and if you dont know, why would you risk your money to something you have no idea about.

At least they actually make games. If the only 2 gaming companies you know are EA and Ubisoft, I see how Ubisoft can look good.
They put a cash shop even on their single player games, must be a good return on investment.
Investors don't invest based on the quality of games they put out, they invest on how much profit they make.
Have you heard of GME?

I mean it's the first time in a long time someone other than EA got the star wars licence, and they make a bland, unexciting game. I can't imagine Disney is very happy.

If it's bland and unexciting then it fits very well into Disney Star Wars and Disney should be very happy about it being so on brand.
- Yeah, my understanding is Disney is partially at fault for a lot of these flops. I don't think they'd make a KOTOR or Jedi Knight game.
I dunno, I've played about 8 hours of SW:O and it's genuinely fun. It's not a crazy advancement of the genre, but not every game has to be. IMO it's a very solid open world RPG without all the usual Ubisoft BS.
No. They haven't. It's a solid ARPG with a few neat new mechanics. It's not groundbreaking, but it's really well made and fun.

Get fucked ubisoft

You can block tainted production companies on steam, this removes all their slop from the store page and vastly improves the marketplace.

Ubisoft was the first shit-hole prod company I ever blocked and it was glorious.

Do you really buy stuff based off of steam recommendations to begin with?
- Ive found some weird but fun games through them ATOM RPG, Bomber Crew, and Dawn of Man come to mind.
This game isn't even listed on steam anyway, no wonder it's not selling.
Ooo I wonder if I can find a full list somewhere

Wow, if I ignored everything that was posted outside of Lemmy, I would have thought this was a great game that everyone should be buying.

Good thing I knew this would flop. Its especially funny considering Outlaws' marketing campaign was Ubisoft most expensive marketing campaign ever.

I had never heard of this game until about three days ago
I bought it on PS5 and I’m having fun playing it. Sure, it doesn’t do anything new, the gameplay is very familiar and the enemy AI is dumb as rocks, but you get to play in the Star Wars universe, the locations look great and the story so far seems decent enough (although I’m not that far into the game yet).
Not every meal needs to be a 3 Michelin star gourmet affair, sometimes having a Big Mac with fries is perfectly fine.
- Not every meal meeds to be a 3 Michelin star gourmet affair, sometimes having a Big Mac with fries is perfectly fine.
  I don't think you really understand what you're saying because this is an even bigger insult to Outlaws than anything I have ever said about the game.
  Imagine a food served by a restaurant claiming to have 4 Michelin stars (Outlaws is a AAAA game -made up thing just like 4 Michelin stars- afterall) being compared to a Big Mac. That's hilarious.
- This is a $70 game with a 'season pass' and the ultimate edition is $130. That's hardly big mac price.
- Well said!
Opposite experience for me. Outside of lemmy, it seems people actually like it. I was destroyed by downvotes for simply suggesting that it’s a nuanced topic to flame a game on its day one release.
The sad part is that it's a fun game. The company rep and horrible pricing structure set them up for failure. Release this on steam for $60 and I think it would do great. It doesn't have all the Ubisoft BS like tons of micro transactions or a million map icons. It was a really good direction shift that they just wouldn't let succeed.

In an alternate universe I just got a 10 kill streak with Ahsoka on the Siege of Mandalore map in Battlefront III. Star Wars Eclipse is coming out in a few months, and gameplay demos show that it looks every bit as good as the trailer.

Do be fair, I think that Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor are some of the best Star Wars games ever made, maybe a tier behind the icons like BF2, Kotor, and Tie Fighter, but not that far and in hindsight I wouldn't be surprised if it's up there with them.
Respawn are really great devs that know how to nail fluidly, difficulty, and just all the little details that make all their games a blast.
- I really liked Fallen Order. I kind of forgot about Survivor. Need to make a note to watch for it to be on sale.
Playing the SW 1313 remake too.
What gameplay demos??
- I'd link them for you, but I'm too busy playing the new 501st spinoff of Republic Commando. It's pretty badass; you customize a squad of troopers and follow them through training on Kamino, through the Clone Wars, and even Order 66 and the Bad Batch era. It's not just action; there are meaningful story choices you have to make as you struggle with your loyalty to the Republic and General Skywalker, vs the growing realization that something is wrong with the clones. It's really well-written and voice acted with a mature story.

Ubisoft doesn't often make bad games but they never make great games either, they are always 4/10, 5/10, 6/10. The only thing that I can give a better score to is Child of Light. Took long enough for this shit to start losing money.

Child of Light was a successful attempt at making a good indie-like game. I liked it. It was different and creative. They had something great. I wonder what became of the announced sequel...
Plourde expressed that he was unsure if it was still in development but said that he was not involved and that it was unlikely, with most of the core team responsible for the original game having departed the company.
With a focus on games as a service, Plourde expressed doubt over the prequel, believing games such as Child of Light to be no longer something that Ubisoft would want to make.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_of_Light#Sequel
Fuck Ubisoft.
Rayman Origins and Legends were great. But that was over a decade ago.
Zombiu, AC: Black Flag. Both great games. Rare for Ubisoft though
- AC: Black Flag could be great if was not an AC, just Black Flag and the game didn't age quite well to me, tried to replay recently and is boring to me.

Most everyone I’ve seen that actually played it seems to like it.

They're using a trusted formula that has worked since Far Cry 3 from 12 years ago. It's fun but it's not going to turn a lot of heads. Many just wish they would try something different.
The Venn Diagram of "people still spending that much money on a game" and "people that are easy to please" seems to be a circle. Maybe something to do with a sunk-cost-fallacy coupled with the "social proof" stuff?
But I don't know the game. Maybe it's okay.
Yeah I don't really get all the hate. Is it the greatest game ever? No not even a little. Is it good though? Yeah I think so. The combat isn't all that deep but I'm mostly enjoying it for the writing and world building. It also helps that it's a gorgeous game.
That being said I can't see paying full price for it. I subscribed to ubisoft + for it and plan on canceling once I'm done with it. Playing it that way makes it cheaper than a ticket to the movies but for way more hours of pretty star wars locales.
I'm really glad I got it. No regrets at all. Solid gameplay and Fantastic atmosphere. Yesterday I played a mini mission which was sharing a meal with your little companion. Awesome.
- Yeah. I’m really looking forward to it.
There seems to be a TikTok campaign where certain people desperately want players to hate this game. I keep seeing this same skinny wispy-bearded dude over & over shitting on the game.
I keep seeing the videos, and what I watch just makes me say "It honestly doesn't look bad to me."
- Same.
They were dumb enough to buy a AAA title on launch so...
- Yeah… fuck them for enjoying a game, right? The nerve of some people. Why didn’t they take your feelings into account?

Really good looking game graphically, though.

And fun IMO. It seems like a lot of people who actually played it looked it.

Fucking finally die, ubishit. Release those toiling within your guts and let them make tasty roguelite twinsticks or metroidvanias on UE for 10$ a pop

starm war

Wait, it's already out?

Ubisoft! What a joke!

Well, I'm having a really good time with it. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it is really tight and enjoyable. It's a lot like an Uncharted in Space RPG. In both that regard, and it's gameplay.

I don't get why? It's a great game

Doesn't seem to be available on Steam and they're already pushing a season pass.