14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Ubisoft still says that it plans to win the battle for next-generation dominance despite the fact that it has recently announced that its flagship launch, Watch Dogs, is now delayed into the spring of 2014.
A statement from the company, quoted by IGN, reads, “Our long-term goal is to win the next generation. The tough decisions we took to fully realize the major potential of our new creations have an impact on our short-term performance but we are convinced that, longer term, they will prove to be the right decisions both in terms of satisfaction for our fans and in terms of value creation for our shareholders.”
Watch Dogs is an important video game because it was the first entirely original intellectual property that Ubisoft was set to launch on the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.
Now the publisher has to rely on the launch of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to carry its flag on the newly launched hardware.
Still, Ubisoft says, “We are building franchises that will become perennial pillars of Ubisoft’s financial performance.”
The Crew, a racing game that was initially set to arrive in the first few months of 2014, has also been pushed back to give its development team time to polish the experience.
The company has seen its shares slide by 25 percent after the two announcements were made and it has lowered its end of the year expectations.
Ubisoft’s move is also a problem for Microsoft and Sony because some gamers are threatening to cancel their console pre-orders, despite the fact that retailers are saying that they will still deliver the consoles with other games attached.
The Xbox One and the PS4 will be launched in November and publishers are trying to make sure that their experiences make the best possible use of the extra power they will introduce.