Ubisoft CEO Blamed The 'Outlaws' Issues On The “Choppy” 'Star Wars' Universe
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What do you call it when you sell much less of something than you had hoped? Sales are "softer than expected."
These are the words that Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot used when he was asked about the performance of Star Wars: Outlaws at a recent shareholder Q&A meeting.
The game in which the player takes the role of Kay Vess, a young woman trying to make her living in the criminal underworld of the galaxy far, far away, was released last August. It ultimately failed to meet its high expectations, leading to a massive drop in Ubisoft's share value.
When one shareholder asked Guillemot, “What have you learned from the failure in terms of sales? Have you learned anything in terms of pricing, in terms of marketing?” the CEO was quick to come up with the main reason for the lackluster performance:
“We didn’t reach our sales targets. The game suffered from a number of items.” The first was that, “...the brand that it belonged to was in a bit of choppy waters.”
He did not elaborate on what he meant by his remark, but it is possible that he referenced the Disney+ show The Acolyte, which had premiered shortly before the release of Outlaws and was met with a lot of criticism and negativity.
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Still, blaming the overall state of Star Wars as the main reason for Outlaws’ disappointing sales is an odd choice, as the game suffered from a variety of shortcomings. It was buggy upon its release, had limited stealth and space-based action, and the gameplay followed a structure that Ubisoft seemingly had used one too many times. All this led to a bad word-of-mouth soon after the game was released. Add to this a very loud online minority that immediately condemns everything that has a female lead and/or a person of color as the main character - something that Outlaws has both, and you are in even bigger trouble.
Guillemot at least admitted that part of the blame falls on his company: “The game still had a few items that needed to be polished,” adding that these items were resolved within the first weeks and that the upcoming Switch 2 port of Outlaws will be “a new version of the game.”
Star Wars' prior big game release, Jedi: Survivor, obviously didn't suffer from the "choppy waters" that the franchise is in, as EA's CEO, Andrew Wilson, described the game's sales as "strongly" above expectations and that the company was "overjoyed" with its performance.
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Source: Kotaku
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