Speaking to MCVUK at gamescom 2019, Ubisoft EMEA Executive Director Alain Corre talked about the importance of investing in new genres and new IPs in this specific time due to all the innovations that are about to enter the games industry.
It’s a challenge because we need a lot of talent to do that, so we are going to continue hiring talent in the studios, we plan to have more in the next five years. We cherish our fans that are following our brands like Assassin’s Creed or Ghost Recon going forward, but we feel that it’s also a good moment now to go onto investing in new IPs. There are lots of new technologies appearing; PC is still developing fast, there are new consoles coming next year, the streaming technology is there, cross-play is also something that will excite players, so we feel it’s the right time to create new genres, and new IPs for us. After all, if the sun can shine on these ones, we’ll have them for a long time to come
On the subject of new IPs, Corre also offered a bit of perspective on last year's launch of Starlink. The game fell below Ubisoft pre-release expectations, but Corre said Ubisoft learned a lot from it anyway.
I think we gained a lot of experience working on this franchise, also for the family. And it helps us shape plans for family games that are coming for us. We always capitalise on everything we have done in the past. We have a lot of fans still playing Starlink and that are happy playing Starlink, and that’s what’s most important for us. We were expecting more out of Starlink but it’s a step in our creation process and, again, all the experience we have garnered out of creating and marketing this game, we are very rich in this experience to market, and well placed to create better products for this type of consumer in the future.
The next big new IP Ubisoft will release is Gods and Monsters, an open world title from the makers of Assassin's Creed Odyssey set to launch on February 25th, 2020.