Ubisoft Shares Dive 25% After Games Are Delayed

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It looks like delaying Watch Dogs has hit Ubisoft pretty damn hard. I'm not sure what they thought was going to happen but missing the next-gen holiday launch is huge. Disappointing customers that pre-ordered the game and / or consoles with bundled games just adds insult to injury. :( Thanks to Yakk for the link.

Shares of French videogames publisher Ubisoft slumped more than 25 percent to an eight-month low on Wednesday after delaying the release of two titles until next year, missing the holiday season in the hotly competitive industry. Ubisoft blamed the delay on pressure to meet consumer expectations in the $66 billion hit-driven videogames industry and said the decision would cause it to swing to an operating loss for its 2013 to 2014 fiscal year.
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I'm not buying the "time to polish" the game story either, something is wrong with these games at this point. NO ONE takes a huge hit like this financially, misses a multiple console launch, a holiday season and bombs out on tons of pre-orders / console preorders to "polish" a game.
 
Steve said:
I'm not buying the "time to polish" the game story either, something is wrong with these games at this point. NO ONE takes a huge hit like this financially, misses a multiple console launch, a holiday season and bombs out on tons of pre-orders / console preorders to "polish" a game.
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GTAV likely would have cannibalized a lot of their sales.
 
When you see things like this, it's not hard to see why publishers so often force games out before they're really ready. Can't develop a game if no one is giving you money to do so.
 
I'd have to agree with Steve. There is something more amiss than what Ubisoft is revealing.
 
A six-month delay of one of a major title because what...GTA V broke a bunch of records? Bullshit.
 
Sounds like some of their project managers need pink slips.
 
pcjunkie said:
What does "consumer expectations" mean anyway? can they be more vague....
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The consumers actually expect the game to work, look at least reasonably eye catching, and last longer than a few hours ... DAMN those consumers and their excessively high standards :p
 
pcjunkie said:
What does "consumer expectations" mean anyway? can they be more vague....
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When I read that line all I could think of was "Did they just say they were forced to delay them because consumers demand to not pay $60 for a half finished pile of bug riddled shit?"
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
When I read that line all I could think of was "Did they just say they were forced to delay them because consumers demand to not pay $60 for a half finished pile of bug riddled shit?"
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That's exactly what I thought as well...

This isn't just another release either...wasn't this a flagship game for the upcoming Sony PS4? Man they must be pissed as well...
 
every game publishers will push game developers to try and and get gta5 like success for the next 2 years. Look forward to watch dog being a bit more gta5 like! 100% more unlikeable protagonist.
 
It's probably to give Nvidia more time to get Physx into the game. They gotta get their 5 million dollar's worth.
 
I wonder how much $$$$$ companies like UBISoft waste DRMing up their content.....which could otherwise be re-invested into firming up their software development workflows...
 
I did a double take when I read this, I can't believe Ubi$oft's situation is so bad that losing 25% of your market value would be better than releasing these 2 (messed up?) Games?! What!? :eek: blaming customer expectations, what?! :eek::eek:

Crazy, completely crazy... lack of words to describe all the amount of wrong in this!
 
kbrickley said:
The consumers actually expect the game to work, look at least reasonably eye catching, and last longer than a few hours ... DAMN those consumers and their excessively high standards :p
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Which is why I stopped playing and buying Ubisoft and EA games.
You forgot "couldn't find draconian enough DRM that would screw over legit paying customers pirates would bypass in less then an hour and actully have a better working copy of the game that didn't crash the customer's computer and corrupt their OS" as a reason to that list.
 
Couldn't care less about the game. I'm pumped for Watch Dogs: The Movie, directed by Uwe Boll and starring Til Schweiger.
 
You guys are looking at it all wrong.

What happened is that they made too good of a game, with no "dlc" ripped content, no day zero bugs. So now they have to go back and find the easiest to remove content to yank and turn into DLC packages, as well as break something so that pirates who get the game first won't be able to properly enjoy it without first logging in to the ubisoft servers and patching it.
 
You'd think shareholders would be happy, waiting til march will mean they don't have to compete with the gta 5 and "sequel season" (cod, bf4, etc)
 
Probably a good idea since the game looked boring as hell and now maybe they'll add some substance to it.
 
Master_Pain said:
Fucking piracy man, it's why they delayed.
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Is that so? Please do explain in detail what you mean. Being serious here.
I find it funny how everyone seems to be an expert on making video games all of a sudden when something like this happens. Some of us could be correct but still, most state their opinions as fact...
Maybe they really did need time to polish it, in the sense that if they don't get a "Metascore" of 90 or higher the devs, that is the people who made the game will not get a bonus & the studio will get shit on. That being a trend the industry is moving towards.
I'm an expert too ;)
 
maboblivion said:
every game publishers will push game developers to try and and get gta5 like success for the next 2 years. Look forward to watch dog being a bit more gta5 like! 100% more unlikeable protagonist.
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Yea but I see people getting sick of GTA by then. The whole reason to play GTAV is for the fact you can run around and do whatever you want in a giant world. The game itself just lacks substance as a game. It's like Minecraft where the games open nature is a better game then the games actual content. The only people interested in another GTA clone are guys like these.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
GTAV likely would have cannibalized a lot of their sales.
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GTA5 has already made its impact. It's not going to eat future sales.

What I find interesting is that Ubisoft originally scheduled Assassin's Creed 4 and Watch Dogs to release within a couple of weeks of each other. Most likely they wanted to balance out their release calendar by moving Watch Dogs.

At this point in development the game should have been done or nearly done with final QA testing in crunch mode. Delaying 6 months when you're so close to release is purely marketing, IMO.
 
Hmm...right about now is the time reviewers likely got the near final copies of the game; I'm guessing what the devs heard was NOT good. Like "we're giving it 6's" not good.
 
kbrickley said:
The consumers actually expect the game to work, look at least reasonably eye catching, and last longer than a few hours ... DAMN those consumers and their excessively high standards :p
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what a bunch of entitled assholes those consumers are

don't they know the first 6 months of a new game release are REALLY just force-paid beta testers? :p
 
gamerk2 said:
Hmm...right about now is the time reviewers likely got the near final copies of the game; I'm guessing what the devs heard was NOT good. Like "we're giving it 6's" not good.
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I doubt reviewers got their hands on the game a month early. I think it would be more plausible that the game failed certification and/or has too many issues than there is time to fix by the time it would need to start going into pressing.

Ubi already has Assassins Creed to get them through the holiday, and we all know that is going to sell huge. Watch Dogs's sales probably won't be hurt to much by this. I don't recall seeing many games slated for early 2014. People are going to blow through all the launch games in a few months and then be looking for something new to play and Watch Dog's can fill that something new spot.
 
This is exactly what happens when you let marketing drive release date and the developers just aren't there yet. It's not the developers fault, things happen, but it is marketing's fault for forcing unrealistic release dates. So I see that truly as Ubisoft marketing cost Ubisoft 25% of their stock price.

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gamerk2 said:
Hmm...right about now is the time reviewers likely got the near final copies of the game; I'm guessing what the devs heard was NOT good. Like "we're giving it 6's" not good.
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6 should be above average if we're being honest with the 1-10 scale.
 
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