Ubisoft announced today that Far Cry 5, The Crew 2, and an unannounced franchise game planned for release in fiscal 2018-19 have all been delayed to give their development teams more time. Far Cry 5, originally scheduled for February 27, will now release on March 27. The Crew 2 was set to release March 16, but has now been delayed to the first half of fiscal 2018-19. And that unannounced game, which is said to be one of three unannounced franchise titles, has been pushed to fiscal 2019-20.
Christine Burgess-Quémard, Ubisoft’s Worldwide Studios Executive Director commented on the delays of these titles,”This decision is in line with our strategic vision of developing even more engaging and higher quality experiences for gamers. Taking more time with Assassin’s Creed Origins enabled our talented development team to fully express their creative vision. As expected, this had a very positive impact on the game’s quality and largely participated to its commercial success. Taking a similar approach, we have decided to invest additional development time in three upcoming games.”
Along with this announcement, Ubisoft revised their profitability target upward for 2017-18, based on positive sales trends of both new releases and Ubisoft’s back catalog. Alain Martinez, Chief Financial Officer, talked about the upward trajectory, “Our back-catalog performance throughout November followed the same excellent trends as in the first half of the year and sales for Assassin’s Creed Origins continued their positive launch trajectory. As a result, we are now in a position to both update our financial 2017-18 targets, notably by revising our profitability upward, as well as invest additional development time in our future releases. These positive evolutions, which also give us higher visibility for 2018-19, demonstrate we are successfully transforming our model to make our business more recurring and profitable.”
These delays come after some major push back against developers regarding microtransactions and loot boxes in games, as well as governments getting involved. Assassin’s Creed’s positive reception was due largely to the extra time that developers were given, but it’s not too crazy to think that the company might be working to adjust some things that could have upset gamers in the current volatile environment. At any rate, delays often mean a better game once it is finally released, as Ubisoft has clearly proven with how they’ve rebuilt trust in the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
