Re: Ubisoft runs itself into the ground

On Thu, 03 Oct 2024 12:09:42 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

On Wed, 02 Oct 2024 11:45:07 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>

On Tue, 01 Oct 2024 15:36:14 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>

It's not like we all didn't see this coming.
>
https://www.techspot.com/news/104950-ubisoft-investors-push-sale-shares-hit-decade-low.html

>
It should be noted that stock-price only occasionally corresponds with
actual performance of a company anymore, and in this case we should
definitely look at things with that in mind. Despite the under
performance of "Outlaws" (which honestly shouldn't have been a
surprise; Ubisoft was a poor fit for the franchise and many people
were wary of the game even before it came out) the company is still
well in the black. It just isn't making AS MUCH money as it hoped.
>

[snip]
>
I disagree. It's the difference between a correction and an historical
low. This is the latter, and Ubi's answer is _another_ Assassin's Creed
game? That's delayed? It's emblematic of the problems there.
>
What was their last novel IP? Watch Dogs? Didn't they just pull The Crew
for no benefit other than a few pennies? Their leadership just told the
community that "...it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your
game." Was that a good idea?
>
Their corporate vision is seemingly to piss off their customers.
>
Companies have gone from "in the black" to "out of business" in a wink
for these kinds of big ticket mistakes. If they don't right the ship, if
they can't even properly launch a novel IP (even a tried-and-true license
like Star Wars FFS), they're a candidate for sudden, catastrophic
illness. The patient may be stable for now, as you say "in the black,"
but it's still ill and flirting with a trip to the ICU.
>
Outlaws was a proper moon shot. If they're complaining about it
underperforming, it is probably because it's a big deal.
>
I agree that the Guillemots need to go, for all the reasons above and
then some. They have recklessly and arrogantly sown bad will, they have
retread franchises to the wheel rim, and they have demonstrated that they
can't generate new ones.
>
This will (has?) lead to a leadership crisis, which you have described,
and will lead to the eventual sell-off of underperforming units when new
leadership tries to right the ship. We've seen this movie before.
>
The weather report is the weather report. I accept it might be somewhat
wrong, but historical lows are not a good sign. The forecast is ugly. The
only question is _how_ ugly.

I disagree, only because history has shown that video-game companies
can get along very well releasing the same ol' shit over and over
again. Think of "Call of Duty" or "World or Warcraft" or "FIFA XXXC"
(or whatever its up to now); these are tent-pole games that are
released on an almost annual basis, where each iteration is pretty
much the same as the previous. And yet, people keep flocking back for
more. Innovation and novelty are, sadly, not necessary to maintain
steady revenue in this business.

Of course, this monofocus does make a company vulnerable; if all of a
sudden players decide, as they sometimes do, that one of these tenpole
games isn't 'in' anymore (as sometimes happens; see "Everquest"), the
publisher is left with a gaping hole in their finances. But in many
ways, Ubisoft is better off than many; it has multiple tentpoles
("FarCry", "Assassins Creed", "Ghost Recon", "Rainbow Six", amongst
others) that will help keep it afloat while it spins up something new.

Is the long-term health of Ubisoft good? I'd argue no, it probably
isn't _because_ its too dependent on annually-released franchises,
many of which were started _decades_ ago. It hasn't produced anything
really _new_ since "Watch_Dogs" (itself ten years old), and even that
was pretty much a reskin of its other open-world games. It has a
definite vulnerability that needs fixing.

But the company itself at the moment -and for the foreseeable future-
remains strong. "FarCry 7" or "Assassins Creed 32" might not sell as
well as earlier games, but they're still pulling it sizable profits.
The company isn't bleeding money. As much as people like me may lament
the repetitiveness of their games, people still buy them in the
millions.  The core business remains very solid.

The Guillemot leadership is troubling. It's chased after a lot of
strategies that gamers dislike: from NFTs in games, to tying nominally
single-person experiences to live-services, to selling so many
different variations of a game that you literally need a spreadsheet
to keep them all in order. These are an attempt to diversify the
company's revenue; a way to shore up that vulnerability I mentioned
above. I don't think it's a good strategy but it has been quite
profitable for Ubisoft (they're only backing down on it now because
-while these tactics bring in more cash- it takes longer than the
sudden influx of new-game sales). But I believe it hurts the company,
the customers and the industry in the longer-term.

Ubisoft's stock price reached an unprecedented high in the early 2020s
for a variety of reasons. They'd finally managed to get a few of their
IPs made into movies; that helped. The pandemic created a huge surge
too (as it did with all video-game publishers). But there was also an
attempt to wrest control from the Guillemots (I think around 2019?)
that resulted in a stock grab that inflated the price dramatically.
All these things pushed the price of the stock to more than $70USD
even though none of them had much to do with the actual performance of
the company.

But since then, the pandemic has ended (well, not really but we all
pretend it has), the movies weren't a success, and -for a while- the
Guillemots (with the aid of Tencent) had a firm grip on the company.
So the stock reduced in price to its more-or-less usual price (the
numbers where it usually rests when there ISN'T a challenge to the
Guillemots). It's "historic low" is just a small fluctuation below
that price; it's within the realm of normalcy for the company.

The company remains strong. It could continue pumping out Assassins
Creeds and Farcrys for years and not worry about not making a profit.
Even "Outlaws" was profitable for them... just not as profitable as
they'd like, or -given the IP- expected.

I reaffirm: TL;DR: the bruhaha about the stock has more to do with
investor challenges than the company itself.