[Insider Trading] Ubisoft CEO Thinks Star Wars Outlaws Failed Because ‘The Brand’ Was Less Popular

Topher

Topher

Identifies as young
During a recent shareholder meeting, Ubisoft's CEO, Yves Guillemot, was asked several questions about the development and eventual release of Star Wars Outlaws. It's no big secret that the game didn't perform as well as expected, and in September, Insider Gaming exclusively revealed that the title had sold just one million copies in a month on the market.

Talking about the issues that plagued Outlaws, Guillemot made a suggestion about the Star Wars brand that hasn't sat well with some fans.

'We Didn't Reach Our Sales Targets'

At the recent shareholder meeting, Yves Guillemot fielded questions about Star Wars Outlaws and how it hadn't turned around the results expected of it. The sales targets weren't made clear, but whatever they were, Ubisoft fell far short of hitting them.

To explain the downfall of Star Wars Outlaws, Guillemot first criticized the brand before talking about the game's technical performance:

For Star Wars Outlaws, we didn't reach our sales targets. The game suffered from a number of items. First, it suffered from the fact that it was released at a time when the brand, the brand that it belonged to was in a bit of choppy waters. And the game had a few items that still needed to be polished, and they were polished and debugged in the early weeks, but it did affect sales volumes.

We did heavily improve the game by troubleshooting and debugging, and when it will be released on upcoming consoles, such as the Switch 2, it will be the new version of the game.
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Star Wars Outlaws was released in August 2024 and failed to gain much traction, even with the assumption that it would sell 'just because it's Star Wars'.

It's tough to say that the brand is in choppy waters, as one of the biggest talking points this year is that Star Wars Battlefront II has skyrocketed in popularity several years after being released, and most of that comes from a renewed interest in the series because of the continued expansion of the multimedia universe.

 
They just refuse to admit their shortcomings. Next time the stock breaks even I'm selling all of it. First and foremost potential customers were not interested in the protagonist they created.
 
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Tell that to Jedi Survivor and Battlefront 2. The only brand brand dragging the game down was Ubisoft, ironically enough.

I honestly ask myself what mental illnesses this piece of shit suffers from, honestly. Love seeing his company lose all its value. Sure his son will fix it though.
 
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Mothers Day Lol GIF by reactionseditor
 
At the very least they should have let you pick between a male or female protagonist. You know like how they did for Odyssey, Valhalla, the last Farcry 6, and recently Avatar. I don't think most people even knew you had that choice with Avatar given the advertising for it.
 
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I used to be a fan of Star Wars, but alongside Marvel, it's one of the most oversaturated franchises out there. That as well as the game being a very average is probably why it failed.
 
Is it possible it's a cocktail of both shortcomings? Disney HAS tarnished Star Wars, after all. Small world.
 
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Mister Wolf said:
They just refuse to admit their shortcomings. Next time the stock breaks even I'm selling all of it. First and foremost potential customers were not interested in the protagonist they created.
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Agree. At some point, game devs need to figure out that the people who star in movies and TV are largely in those roles because they have charisma and the audiences enjoy watching their performances. Outlaws is an example of a still popular franchise let down by a poorly designed lead character. It really is that simple, imo.
 
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Star Wars has been mediocre for a long time. Especially after the Disney buy out. So it is true that the brand no longer has the same selling power.
But that is just one part of the reasons for the failure of this game. Ubisoft as a company has alienated their own consumers so much, that a lot of people avoids buying their games.
And finally, the game was mediocre. Not only with a ton of bugs, but a lot of failings in gameplay.
Ubisoft needs to take a good look at itself if it wants to change the tide. But it seems they would rather blame everyone else, rather than their own mistakes.
 
Definitely part of the problem.

When I was a kid I was the dipshit who would buy every Star Wars movie and game, no matter how good it actually was (I'm looking at you: Shadows of the Empire). I even told myself the Phantom Menace was "fine, better than fine".

Now Disney has driven it so far into the ground I couldn't give a single shit anymore. However bad it could sometimes be back in those days, its a 10 times worse now.

But once you couple that with Ubisoft's particular game designs "habits" there's no way I'd ever play this. Can't imagine I'm the only one who thinks this.
 
While the Star Wars brand isn't as popular as it was a couple of decades ago it's not completely gone. It was Ubisoft's job to make a good game that would have been liked by the gaming community and not to rely solely on the series selling power.
 
Mister Wolf said:
At the very least they should have let you pick between a male or female protagonist. You know like how they did for Odyssey, Valhalla, the last Farcry 6, and recently Avatar. I don't think most people even knew you had that choice with Avatar given the advertising for it.
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Hard to understand that most SW fans are men. And that most men favor male protagonist. Let them put a Boba Fett helmet on the protag and it would've worked without changing anything but the gender with this game.
 
Star Wars is in the toilet, agreed, and while that might explain some of the poor sales, they need to accept they didn't make a particularly good game.

It just wasn't all that interesting, frankly. The premise, the characters, the gameplay, the story; it's a 6/10 if I ever saw one, draped in Ubisoft's patented bland open world formula. They did exactly the same thing with Avatar - the setting is just window dressing for their formula, which hasn't changed in two console generations, and they have zero concept of how to innovate on.
 
Mister Wolf said:
At the very least they should have let you pick between a male or female protagonist. You know like how they did for Odyssey, Valhalla, the last Farcry 6, and recently Avatar. I don't think most people even knew you had that choice with Avatar given the advertising for it.
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Which wouldn't have changed much anyway. This game sold poorly simply because: Ubisoft. If you read the negative reviews on Steam, most of the complaints are about performance issues, bugs, repetitive gameplay, and an uninteresting story. It wouldn't have made much difference who the protagonist was. Not to mention it launched at a $70 price tag.

Ubisoft is a company stuck in the past and doesn't listen to the community. They just keep repeating the same old formulas, and it seems like they'll never change.
 
RCX said:
Definitely part of the problem.

When I was a kid I was the dipshit who would buy every Star Wars movie and game, no matter how good it actually was (I'm looking at you: Shadows of the Empire). I even told myself the Phantom Menace was "fine, better than fine".

Now Disney has driven it so far into the ground I couldn't give a single shit anymore. However bad it could sometimes be back in those days, its a 10 times worse now.

But once you couple that with Ubisoft's particular game designs "habits" there's no way I'd ever play this. Can't imagine I'm the only one who thinks this.
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But the Respawn games are doing really well. Same brand.
 
MonkD said:
But the Respawn games are doing really well. Same brand.
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Because they pretty much give you what you want out of a Jedi-focused action-narrative title. They could use some improvements like some Jedi or Sith choices and powers etc sure, but overall still high quality fun to play titles with a decent main character.

Outlaws told a crap story, gave you barely any options for gunplay. It was called Outlaws but you couldnt actually do anything Outlaw-ish. And the main character fell out the ugly tree smacking every branch on the way down which didnt help.
 
MonkD said:
But the Respawn games are doing really well. Same brand.
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Yep I get that but gotta say from my POV the first one didn't do a whole lot for me and I've no plans to play the sequel. Not that I don't think they're good enough games, but my general boredom around Star Wars puts me off. Which is what the Ubi exec is talking about. It's not that it didn't sell at all, its that there are enough people like me to make it not sell enough. The IP is obviously an expensive one and profits have to be shared with Disney. IMO Star Wars is a very risky bet for a lot of devs these days
 
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The way they talk about video games at this stage is always the obvious answer to their own question to me. The actual game is treated as a chassis for "The Brand". Some generic foundation to propel the brand towards its sales goal. So of course it can't possibly be the actual game, that seems barely relevant.

Giga Corpo.
 
Franchise in the toilet + unfinished game = flop

Plus, redditors and their ilk have a Ubisoft hate reflex. Avatar is not a stereotypical Ubigame, it's open world Crysis, but the Ubigame narrative is strong.

Audiophile said:
Videogames + Star Wars is like an ultimate cheat card, if you fail at that you're incompetent.
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Ensemble at their height borked an Age of Empires 2 Star Wars clone. Republic Commando flopped. It happens.
 
I can't believe they think that's the Star Wars we wanted

Regardless of Disney being shit with the franchise, if the game below released today it would have insane sales





What we got ( I know AI voice it's for the meme)

 
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roosnam1980 said:
eZXlHzf.png

need i give you another reason
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Kay looks better in most situations in game than she does here, but she never looks better than the actress playing her.

And yeah, culture war is big reason why the game failed. It just immediately turned away potential 50% of the audience.

For my money though, Outlaws is the best AAA release of Ubisoft since Watch Dogs 1 and Splinter Cell Blacklist. The world they built is gorgeous and it mostly avoids feeling like repetitive Ubisoft: The Game.
 
Star Wars is a mediocre brand thanks to Disney now days. But that's not why Outlaws tanked.

Mediocre gameplay, poorly designed open world, bugs, level design wanting for better days, terrible enemy encounter design, completely idiotic approach to weapon variety, and all that capped by an unlikable character.

Hmm… 🤔 … yes 🙌 it's the Star Wars brand that is at fault.

b0b4da6ef203d0ea1c2d24a9a8356c967e77f541.gif
 
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Regardless of what you feel about the statement, the brand has taken a hit. I have always thought of it as America's Mario/Pokemon but unlike Nintendo/Japan, American execs will always choose money over being protectionist over the brand. They were kind of lucky that Lucas had the brand tied up, it built star wars into this 'godly' thing for Americans until the prequels released. Still its bound to go down when you're releasing content at the quantity Disney has been since they bought it, and I suppose why shouldn't they milk it after paying billions.

I wonder how David Cage is feeling after spending a decade not releasing a game and working on star wars.
 
RCX said:
Yep I get that but gotta say from my POV the first one didn't do a whole lot for me and I've no plans to play the sequel. Not that I don't think they're good enough games, but my general boredom around Star Wars puts me off. Which is what the Ubi exec is talking about. It's not that it didn't sell at all, its that there are enough people like me to make it not sell enough. The IP is obviously an expensive one and profits have to be shared with Disney. IMO Star Wars is a very risky bet for a lot of devs these days
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I don't really agree with the premise that the brand is that diminished. It's still one of the strongest franchises in human history. TLJ did some damage to its sequel and Solo, but it bounced back with Mandalorian and Andor.

But I suspect that the licensing fee has gotten out of hand. And the same thing seems to have happened with Marvel. A lot of mediocre output for adult audiences, and production costs that don't match the quality. But the brand is still very strong. But people have higher standards for games(and movies) with the increased pricing model.

The game is bellow average. And was made to appeal to people who are not the core audience for games or the brand itself. I'm glad it tanked. But I'd say that the Ubisoft brand is the one that has lost value. Not Star Wars.
 
Disney have driven the star wars IP into the ground. The movies have sucked, all the star wars tv shows blow ass, and they've shit on the lore and history of star wars by creating a million garbage products. Star wars is at its lowest point in history right now thanks to Disney being morons who love to destroy IP's.
 
In this case he's right about the Star Wars brand. Lucas and his prequels put it in the vicinity of the edge of the cliff, and Disney confidently pushed it over.

But also; Outlaws is a shoddy product.
 
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