Ubisoft Wants to Make More Free-to-Play Games From Their Major Franchises
Ubisoft intends to change its development strategy. The publisher wants its biggest brands to get free-to-play installments.
While discussing the latest financial report, Ubisoft executives talked about changes in development strategy. The publisher no longer wants to rely only on 3-4 high-budget AAA releases each year. There are plans to invest in large free-to-play productions belonging to the company's most important brands.
It should be emphasized here that this does not mean that Ubisoft will abandon traditional paid premium games. Free items with microtransactions are to complement the publisher's offer and enable the company to reach new players.
This strategy is not surprising. Popular free-to-play games provide stable revenue over a long period of time and most publishers want them in their offerings. Ubisoft has so far fared rather poorly in this category. Last year's Hyper Scape was a major financial disappointment, but the company says it has learned its lesson. Brawlhalla, on the other hand, is doing surprisingly well and continues to acquire many new players.
The success of Call of Duty: Warzone has shown how profitable it can be to expand premium brands with free-to-play spin-offs. What's more, it didn't come at the expense of the more traditional Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War. This seems to be the model Ubisoft has in mind.
A manifestation of the changed strategy is Tom Clancy's The Division Heartland, announced a few days ago, which is a free-to-play game with microtransactions, coming to PC and consoles. Work is also underway on a mobile installment of the brand, which will almost certainly also use the free-to-play model. In parallel, however, Ubisoft will continue to develop the premium branch of the series and another expansion for Tom Clancy's The Division 2 is in development.
