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Well UbiSoft hasn't officially said they will be ditching PC across the board, recent comments indicate that UbiSoft is distancing itself from porting titles to PC. Starting with I Am Alive and then Ghost Recon Future Soldier it would appear the days of UbiSoft porting titles to PC might be coming to an end. So why is UbiSoft ditching PC ports?

Ghost Recon producer Sébastien Arnoult "When we started Ghost Recon Online we were thinking about Ghost Recon: Future Solider; having something ported in the classical way without any deep development, because we know that 95% of our consumers will pirate the game," he claimed. "So we said okay, we have to change our mind." In essence UbiSoft is not ditching PC but they are going to change how they bring products to PC, no longer is it likely they will simply bring ports of their console games.

“We are giving away most of the content for free because there’s no barrier to entry. To the users that are traditionally playing the game by getting it through Pirate Bay, we said, ‘Okay, go ahead guys. This is what you’re asking for. We’ve listened to you – we’re giving you this experience. It’s easy to download, there’s no DRM that will pollute your experience.’”

He continued to justify UbiSoft's actions saying “We’re adapting the offer to the PC market. I don’t like to compare PC and Xbox boxed products because they have a model on that platform that is clearly meant to be €60’s worth of super-Hollywood content. On PC, we’re adapting our model to the demand.”

Stanislas Mettra, Creative Director on console-exclusive Ubisoft title I Am Alive said “Perhaps it will only take twelve guys three months to port the game to PC, it’s not a massive cost but it’s still a cost. If only 50,000 people buy the game then it’s not worth it.”

So it would appear starting now UbiSoft is moving away from super-Hollywood content to free to play exclusive content found only on PC, made specifically to target the PC's market. Recently EA and Activision (In China) have also been embracing F2P games on PC, but both companies have continued to port titles. UbiSoft might be taking the lead by dropping ports altogether and instead giving PC gamers the free to play DRM free games that they obviously want.

Some analysts suspect that this latest move by UbiSoft indicates their whole DRM thing and all their controls to try and stop piracy have failed. Rather then continuing to fight the pirates , UbiSoft is actually giving them what they want, free to play games anyone can download and free of DRM.

The question is, is this a bright idea? Could this be marking the end of huge hollywood esq software in exchange for a mountain of F2P games? I mean AOE went that way, BattleField has a F2P it seems everyone is moving in that direction, is it the right direction? Do you think this is just a two time occurrence, is UbiSoft going to continue porting or is this the start of a complete change of how UbiSoft works in the PC industry?

Source (Please note what I said is not my opinion, this topic was not entirely based on the single source provided rather multiple sources, the source I provided contains the main interview referenced but not all of the material I used to create this topic. If you want more info on it, try Googeling and such as I cannot provide every source I used in reporting the UbiSoft opinions in this thread)




-JC7

"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer