Earlier this week, Ubisoft unveiled Assassin's Creed Shadows, the franchise's next big open-world game, which will take place during the period of feudal Japan. While the title already seems very ambitious, the firm clearly displayed its future priorities during its last financial report.
Read also: Assassin's Creed Shadows: map, characters, weather, combat… here's EVERYTHING we know!
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Ubisoft wants to “become the leader again” in open world games…
Yves Guillemot stated that the firm's priorities were open world games as well as service games:
Pursuing a pragmatic and selective organic investment approach, and in line with the strategic pillars announced last year, our strategic objective is to once again become a leader in the open world adventure segment and expand our footprint in experiences game-service.
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This focus not only provides prospects for profitable growth and recurrence, but it also allows us to leverage and better cross-reference Ubisoft's established brands, as well as ongoing targeted investments in proprietary technologies, to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage.
In order to “return to leadership in the open world adventure segment”, the company intends to rely on its strong licenses, and notably mentions Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and Ghost Recon:
The open world adventure market currently represents 25 billion euros and is expected to grow in the years to come.
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Ubisoft can rely on major franchises like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, The Division, Ghost Recon and Star Wars to address this market.
…and “expand its footprint” in the service game
Regarding the game service, the company wishes to expand its footprint “in this dynamic market”, thanks to the growth of its existing experiences such as Rainbow Six Siege, as well as the upcoming releases of several games:
The second goal is to expand our footprint on native Game as a Service experiences. Historically one of the main segments of the video game industry, it is currently worth €120 billion, is a growing market and has the largest total accessible market in terms of number of players.
In this segment, Ubisoft notably successfully installed Rainbow Six Siege, which has become one of our largest and most profitable games. The goal is to expand our footprint in this dynamic market, notably through the growth of existing experiences and the upcoming releases of XDefiant, Rainbow Six Mobile and The Division Resurgence.
We won't have to wait too long before seeing if the publisher's strategy will pay off, since the highly anticipated XDefiant will be available on May 21.
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Assassin's Creed Shadows will be released on November 15, 2024, without forgetting Star Wars Outlaws which will be launched on August 30. The year therefore promises to be very good for Ubisoft, which will also reveal new details on these games during the Ubisoft Forward conference which will be broadcast on June 10.