Ubisoft used to have a fairly bad reputation in the prime Nintendo Wii era when it released its annual ‘shovelware’ titles like ‘Petz Crazy Monkeys’, ‘Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party’ or bad movie games like ‘James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game’ and other badly received titles.
The old Ubisoft has slowly been vanishing and its new side has shown us what the future will bring for the publisher.
After Ubisoft brought us the original Assassin’s Creed and its many sequels we may have gotten some franchise fatigue but the company kept pushing forward and the proof is in the pudding. Ubisoft will be releasing Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Frag which promises to be the biggest and most ambitious title in the series yet.
Black Flag will be coming fresh of the heels of the great Splinter Cell Blacklist and will be followed by Watch Dogs and eventually open world racing game The Crew while The Division isn’t too far out.
Ubisoft has traded the cheapo game publisher image for a forward looking and fresh new take on video games in the modern era of connectivity and second screen implementation.
Watch Dogs was the most raved over new IP at E3 last year and the game is one of the most anticipated titles due to its open world gameplay and unique take the genre as the environments can be used against police, enemies and more via cell phone hacking.
The Crew is something many of us have thought Need for Speed could become, an open world racer filled with customization that bleeds between single and multiplayer modes – all of which taking place in a scaled, yet massive map that is the United States.
The game furthest on the horizon is the third person shooter Tom Clancy’s The Division where players team up against AI enemies as well as other groups of real life players in the world which is separated by zones within the city.
Undoubtedly Ubisoft has changed its image and showed us what it has planned for the next generation of consoles. Is there another publisher this heavily invested in bringing us new and exciting IP with a different take on gaming? While EA and Activision will bring their A game with Call of Duty, Battlefield, FIFA and other big titles, I just don’t see the same level of inovation we are getting from the french publisher Ubisoft.
What do you think? Share your comments below.
