GI: If you want to increase your portfolio, how do you avoid reaching the scenario which saw EA and Activision having to reduce their catalogues to focus on their most profitable IP?

Yves: There's a difference between those two guys at the top, which are doing $4bn a year, and us as a challenger doing $1.5 bn. We have to grow; to grow you have to take risks. That's what we're doing with this diversity - creating more brands to reach more people, establish the company in more fields to reach that $4-5bn level.

GI: So is the diversity a stepping stone to that level, after which you'll close down to the successful IP, or is it an inherent part of the business?

Yves: It depends. The goal is to have more diversity, more brands. We want the brands that we create, like Child of Light or Rayman, to continue. They're profitable, they're of big interest to the creators - things that don't take two or three years to create. You'll continue to see that. On the big brands, we won't be creating too many more. We'll still have teams with new things on the way, but we'll probably be doing less new things if the ones that we've created are successful. When a brand is successful you need more people taking care of it. Either you expand, or you focus. But, you never know. Those teams can be interested in new opportunities.

Over the last few years we've reduced the number of products we have on the way. We stopped five or six developments that had a chance to succeed, but were risky. That happens, but that's more than usual.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-06-09-guillemot-we-knew-watch-dogs-would-really-polarise-people

Sounds like they plan on milking the same franchises again for this generation

That makes sense. If a new franchise is successful, you can grow that new franchise, instead of trying to find a newer franchise.

With all the money pumped into it, so you can't blaim them that much. When one of these fail, Ubi might be serious damaged.

Ubi had locked itself in a AAA cycle it cannot escape anymore :(.

I think it would take more than one failure to affect Ubisoft.

And while I agree that it is expected, if the biggest studios in the world are not going to develop many new AAA IPs, who will?

Sounds to me like they'll be milking the Assassin's Creed type games while still making plenty of the Child of Light type games. I'm totally fine with that. Those mid-tier games are what I like about Ubisoft.

They already created 2 new ones for this generation, one of which will be very successful.

Given the number of teams they had to pull onto Assassins Creed. Is it any wonder?

Unfortunate to hear, but rather expected. Good that UbiArt framework will get some work.

i'm sure it is a lot cheaper and "safer" to milk a franchise than to try and create and launch a new IP. but that is also a great way to kill your business. if that IP every starts to feel stale (and a frequent stream of releases will tend to do that) things can collapse quick quickly.

guitar hero. never forget. never forgive.