14 DAY TRIAL // Yves Guillemot, the leader of publisher Ubisoft, says that his company wants to make sure that all the games launched using the Tom Clancy brand achieve high scores with critics, after the rather weak performance of previous installments.
The executive tells GamesIndustry.biz that, “Our goal is to get back to 85-90 mark. Generally new consoles are a good way to bring back some IPs. Clancy is a big brand for the company and our plan is to bring it back and make it more regular. Right now, though, it's expensive to build and we can't do everything at the same time.”
During October, Ubisoft announced that it was canceling Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Commander, because of concerns over the long-term costs and the decline of player interest.
Guillemot commented on the rise of social games, saying, “We've had more difficulty with Facebook in the past couple of years. It was a good business, but it has shrunk a bit. And it became a more complex and expensive business to run. We had opportunities with other areas, so we said we should concentrate on those that are growing faster.”
It seems that Ubisoft has no plans to bring any of its big franchises to Facebook, but the company has learned a lot of valuable lessons that can be applied in other areas, including how to offer around-the- clock support to players.
The publisher still wants to work on persistent world games, which include options for players to socialize and get constant content updates.
Despite this, Ubisoft does not want to create a traditional MMO as it exists on the PC, but rather a social experience that does not depend on Facebook in any way.
Guillemot has also mentioned Just Dance and Raving Rabbids as the kind of game experiences that have been linked to early Facebook outings and have since become hits on home consoles.