UBIsoft in potential financial trouble

[Cappuccino]

As I mentioned earlier, Steam concurrent users isn't representative for this series. Odyssey had 62,000 peak user, 2 days after launch, and sold 10 million. AC:3 had 15,000 peak user and sold 15 million.

So 7 years later and they didn’t really come close to their previous peak? Doesn’t sound good at all. Keep in mind these games are insanely expensive so if I had to guess they’re gonna have to sell more than 10 million to reverse their fortunes here.

Isn't there some native language option? Doesn't that apply to NPCs?

that would apply one language to every character, which is prob fine for this game and Odyssey but for something like Origins wouldn’t work: you can’t have Mark Antony speaking Greek, and in fact I doubt most the Egyptian characters spoke Greek either.

As an example of this working well though: I maintain the only way to play the Metro titles is to play it in Russian.

Ultimately the extreme of your idea is just make a pseudo-language up and have them talk gibberish; I can't imagine that proving very popular either.

What? How is that the extreme of my argument? I’m saying historical titles are best in the language of the day, not that the more unintelligible the dialogue the better.

 

[see colon]

I would caution looking at "woke content detector" as some sort of definitive source when they go overboard with what they label as woke.

What? But it's such a clearly defined term. How could they go so overboard?

 

[techuse]

Valhalla's peak Steam users was 15,700, 12 days after release. Quick Google suggests 1.7 million sales in first week.

Wasn’t Valhalla an Epic exclusive for some time?

 

[Johnny Awesome]

What? But it's such a clearly defined term. How could they go so overboard?

Easy. It's clearly defined, but they ignored the definition.

 

[pcchen]

I believe if a game does not use Steam library, when you run the game directly (instead of from Steam) it won't be recorded on Steam data (e.g. the "played time" won't register). This is especially likely when a game has its own launcher (players are more likely to just run the game from the launcher). There are also other factors, for example, Avowed is also selling on Battle.net (I didn't even know it's available on Steam), so how many players are using Steam to play the game is also a variable.

Ubisoft pushed quite hard on their subscription service (probably because they made more money on microtransactions on some previous AC games), and AFAIK these players won't register on Steam either. Since Ubisoft is a publicly traded company, I think we'll see some actual data (at least some general idea on how the game performs) in the next financial report.

 

[see colon]

Easy. It's clearly defined, but they ignored the definition.

Or it means different things to different people. Or the definition is constantly evolving. Or the definition is selectively applied. Hell, there might be a global conspiracy involving investment accounts, foreign governments, activist consulting firms and the reptilian humanoids who live in the hallow earth to fundamentally change western culture by including an African born player character (who existed in some form in history) in a science fiction video game that uses Trancers rules for simulated time travel. A game series that used to be 100% historically accurate, except for the Minotaur fight, DaVinci being an assassin and weapons dealer, and Thomas Jefferson having Bravestarr-like strength of the bear. But other than that I think all of it happened just like in the games.

Or one definition isn't universally accepted as the only definition.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Your diversions are noted.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What? How is that the extreme of my argument? I’m saying historical titles are best in the language of the day, not that the more unintelligible the dialogue the better.

If you don't understand the language, and it is the not understanding the language that you want so that you don't have to endure pointless rubbish NPC speak, what does it matter what language they use? If the NPCs speak Ancient Greek, and your character understands Ancient Greek, then a translation makes sense so you comprehend them. If you don't care about comprehension then it doesn't really matter what they speak. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Karamazov]

Aren't ass creed games about people from the future entering memories of dead ancestors and being like in the matrix ?
Killing npcs has been a thing in nearly every open world game.
The only cringe detail i really noticed is the non binary japanese character, such concept did not exist in that timeline. The rest is more plausible even if unlikely.

 

[tuna]

I mean why else would the main character in a game set in feudal Japan be black and gay? I’m being told you romance a ‘non-binary’ character? Non-binarism was invented on Tumblr in like 2010, why would this be a concept in feudal Japan?

Non-binarism has been a concept as long as there have been humans and there are several examples in Japanese history and society of it.

 

[Cappuccino]

If you don't understand the language, and it is the not understanding the language that you want so that you don't have to endure pointless rubbish NPC speak, what does it matter what language they use?

That’s only part of it. It’s inauthentic to have a bunch of feudal Japanese speaking English with a bad faux Japanese accent. AC has never been good at this.

Non-binarism has been a concept as long as there have been humans and there are several examples in Japanese history and society of it.

not really, most examples are people in the modern age casting our own gender quirks on what people did back then.

It’s funny, it’s been a concept forever but nobody had heard of it prior to 2015. Crazy how that is!

 

[tuna]

It’s funny, it’s been a concept forever but nobody had heard of it prior to 2015. Crazy how that is!

People were not labeled as we do today back then. In some sense that is much freer than what we have today.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That’s only part of it. It’s inauthentic to have a bunch of feudal Japanese speaking English with a bad faux Japanese accent. AC has never been good at this.

not really, most examples are people in the modern age casting our own gender quirks on what people did back then.

It’s funny, it’s been a concept forever but nobody had heard of it prior to 2015. Crazy how that is!

You had cross-gender personalities before it was given a name, but it did exist. You also had genetic anomalies like XXY and XO genotypes as these are an inevitable product of reproductive biochemistry. You also had the issue of people being that way not being free to express themselves without being victimised, so you can't look back and see an absence of outward presentation of a certain character as evidence of that character not existing; all you can say is it wasn't visible.

It's a very complicated area of nature vs. nurture, with no simple black/white answers.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

What Cappucino was 99% true though. It's not really representative of the era.

 

[see colon]

What Cappucino was 99% true though. It's not really representative of the era.

But it's not a game out that era. It's a game about an interactive projection from a future timeline. So anachronisms should certainly exist in this simulation, because the simulation is based on the ancestral memories as they are interpreted by a modern simulation. Also you fight a minotaur in one of the games and Thomas Jefferson has the strength of a bear (but lacks the speed of a puma).

 

[cheapchips]

People were not labeled as we do today back then. In some sense that is much freer than what we have today.

The horniness of being able to shag anyone you chatted up in Odyssey was one of it's great features. Seems like they've continued this fine tradition.

 

[ZebMacahan]

How did you come to this conclusion? I like the AC formula for a few reasons but a ninja power fantasy isn’t one of them. What if people like exploring the worlds that Ubisoft builds or the presentation values or the paint by numbers gameplay?



Is the implication here that Ubisoft doesn’t understand its target audience? Or is it that the people who don’t like Ubisoft games are not in their target? In all this we have to assume Ubisoft is trying to make money.

Based on interactions with other people. I like the exploration of historical places too. Thats one of the reasons I didnt like odyssey, the cartoony/gamey artstyle made greece not look like a real place.

But still, a huge part of the gameplay is sneaking and stealth killing enemies, in this case as a literal ninja. I would guess the people who like the whole stealth mass murder simulator aspect of the game are like 95% guys.

Yes, I think a couple companies have trouble understanding their audience. Disney with star wars, bioware with veilguard for example. I think its pretty obvious that companies, even though they want to make money, still make misstakes.

 

[Cappuccino]

People were not labeled as we do today back then. In some sense that is much freer than what we have today.

This sounds a-historical and nonsensical.

You had cross-gender personalities before it was given a name, but it did exist. You also had genetic anomalies like XXY and XO genotypes as these are an inevitable product of reproductive biochemistry. You also had the issue of people being that way not being free to express themselves without being victimised, so you can't look back and see an absence of outward presentation of a certain character as evidence of that character not existing; all you can say is it wasn't visible.

All I am saying is we basically don't see this in history until very very recently. Most 'historical' examples of this were actually modern people casting their own thoughts onto ancient people. This happened with Native Americans and 'two spirit', which is not actually an ancient phenomenon but something invented in the 1970s. But I digress.

But it's not a game out that era. It's a game about an interactive projection from a future timeline. So anachronisms should certainly exist in this simulation, because the simulation is based on the ancestral memories as they are interpreted by a modern simulation. Also you fight a minotaur in one of the games and Thomas Jefferson has the strength of a bear (but lacks the speed of a puma).

You are reliving memories, it's not an 'interpretation'. The game has supernatural elements that obviously aren't real but for the most part the series was grounded in some sort of reality besides the supernatural elements.

In the end nobody really cares about realism in AC, they care if the inserted parts are cool or lame. Meeting up with Leonardo Da Vinci and flying in his flying machine is cool, bedding 'non binaries' is lame. From what I've heard so far the soundtrack is also not very good. It's kinda baffling that GoT already wrote the book on how to make a cool ninja/samurai game and they just ignored it lol.

 

[trinibwoy]

Isn’t GoT basically a ripoff of the Ubisoft open world formula? Guess they beat Ubi at their own game.

 

[see colon]

You are reliving memories, it's not an 'interpretation'. The game has supernatural elements that obviously aren't real but for the most part the series was grounded in some sort of reality besides the supernatural elements.

Besides the fact that the reality contains both science fiction and fantasy elements, it is 100% an interpretation. Memories are at their core, an interpretation of reality. If the technology existed that could simulate out memories, those memories would have to be further interpreted by the machine, and would be played back and reinterpreted by the user re-experiencing those memories. Perception is limited by our ability to interpret the stimulation.

An easy way to think of it is 2 people with different spice tolerances eating a medium spice dish. One might hardly feel the spice, while the other might find it unbearable. The ground truth is that it's medium, but the individual interpretations would be mild and spicy.