INTERVIEW YVES GUILLEMOT, UBISOFT
“We’ve been doing open worlds for a long time – we’ve released nine open-world games to date and we have four currently in the works,” reminds Corre. “An open world brings more
freedom and it gives you tons more possibilities. Our top creators at Ubisoft had a vision a long time ago that the games would have to be seamlessly multiplayer in an open world, and I think their vision was right.”
SOMETHING DIFFERENT Yet Ubisoft is not just making a tonne of open world action titles for core gamers. It’s also experimenting in markets its rivals have long abandoned. Fitness, music and kids markets have declined significantly over the last few years. Ubisoft’s reaction to that – in stark contrast to some of its competitors – was not to give up on these sectors, but to invest in them. At E3, Ubisoft unveiled a new
fitness game in Shape Up. It showed off its Rabbids Invasion interactive TV project. It reacted to waning sales of dance games but announced two Just Dance titles. It seems foolhardy to invest in declining markets. So why do it? “Because we have a lot of good teams that want to make those kinds of games,” insists Corre. “If you take Just Dance, we have been going from strength to strength with product’s quality. We have a team that is completely passionate about Just Dance, about the choreography and the music and how it can allow more people to play together. “On the other side with Shape
Up we have been doing these kinds of products for 10 years now and we have another passionate team, so we decided to take a different angle and to make it more fun, because fitness and fun is the right combination in those products. “We carry on doing these
products because we have the talent that wants to express themselves through those kinds of games. When we find projects have good potential then we green-light them.”
July 11th 2014
Far Cry 4 is coming to stores worldwide on November 18th
PRO NINTENDO To run through everything Ubisoft is up to would require more than the space we’ve allocated here. There’s its motion pictures division. Its improvements to its oft-criticised UPlay PC service. There’s its growing merchandise department (Guillemot says that the firm is selling upwards of 100,000 units on certain pieces of merchandise) and its investment in free-to-play and mobile. There’s also Just Dance Now, Ubisoft’s foray into smart TV gaming where fans can use a smartphone as a Wii Remote to play. “In order to expand and to please more people, the idea was to have a compelling experience on tablets and mobile, which everybody owns,” explains Corre. The other thing Ubisoft is doing is supporting Nintendo. Poor sales of Wii U has resulted in a disappointing lack of thirty party. Ubisoft continues to release games on the platform, but even this has reduced. Guillemot even told MCV last month that Ubisoft
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has a finished Wii U game that it won’t launch unless sales improve. Yet the publisher is bullish about Nintendo’s plans. “If Wii U’s sales continue to
I was happy to see Nintendo doing well with its E3 conference and unveil the new
open-world Zelda. Alain Corre, Ubisoft
multiply, it will quickly come to a mass market,” says Guillemot. “We need the sales to increase so it becomes more mass market, and then we will have the volume we need to justify big marketing campaigns and TV marketing. “Smash Bros has always been a big, big property for Nintendo and for gamers. We all know that there are lots of Nintendo fans that are waiting for these big games. When I speak to the fans that come to E3, 90 per cent of them are crazy Nintendo fans. They really love Nintendo and the games they do. If they can quickly come and buy a Wii U, it would be good.” Corre adds: “I was very happy to see Nintendo doing well with their E3 conference and unveil the new open-world Zelda. Miyamoto is back creating things, and that’s excellent for the industry. Smash Bros and Mario Maker –
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