Ubisoft's Executive Director for EMEA territories Alain Corre was interviewed during E3 2019 by The Telegraph. In the lengthy chat, the Ubisoft executive touched on a variety of subjects. For instance, he talked enthusiastically about the upcoming next-generation consoles by Microsoft and Sony in regards to what they'll enable game developers to do.
I don’t know! I really don’t know. We don’t know what the fans will want, we don’t know how streaming will increase… what we do know is that the next generation of consoles which have been announced are a really major leap from the current generation, and for us creators, it is fantastic because we have always been very excited in trying to capture the cutting edge of what technology can offer.
Developers want to surprise all the time, to innovate - and technology allows us to go into unknown territories and to bring something fresh. Like in Watch Dogs for example. Thanks to the AI that they are mastering now we are able to bring new gameplay. And if the manufactures of this world can go on innovating and pushing the boundaries of technologies, then we will be able to create better games and convince more fans and the industry will go on growing.
The new technologies will provide new ways for fans to exchange data. And there are plenty of other new elements to improve the quality of gaming. Microsoft spoke about SSD and the fact they want to reduce the loading times - which we like very much because we’re players too! It’s a very important topic and it’s a revolution, this thing. On the graphics side, it’s still improving because you will see a difference from 4K to 8K. There are things they are proposing that will make these machines super sexy for the fans to look forward to.
It's interesting to compare this statement to the one recently shared by PlatinumGames, where producer Atsushi Inaba said the upcoming consoles are more of the same and hard to get excited for.
Later in his interview, Corre also made the case that UPlay+, the new subscription service due to launch on September 3rd for PC, is a great offer for customers.
I think it’s a fantastic offer to be honest because we are bringing all our new games, we are bringing all the DLC, and we are bringing a lot of services we haven’t announced yet. So to have more than 100 PC games with all our franchises including the deluxe editions is a really compelling offer, I think.
Indeed, it's worth reminding how Xbox Game Pass does not provide games with their DLCs but only the base editions, which in this day and age means quite a bit fewer content available to subscribers. Then again, we'll see if players agree with Ubisoft that the steep $14.99 monthly subscription fee is adequate for the offering.