Frankly, AC Syndicate and Rainbow Six Siege had the same initial reaction (slow sales, hesitant consumers), but months later their sales had picked up hugely and matched expectations.
The pattern I'm seeing is one where users are initially cynical of any new Ubisoft product based on Ubisoft's history of the nightmarish AC2-5 cycle, their rapidly fatiguing open world approach, and having potentially burnt-out developers making more derivative content than usual but strong word of mouth and streamed/share content turns over a lot more new buyers in the span of a few months.
As of the last couple of years, we know for a fact Ubisoft have changed their development strategy (they literally said so in an annual report) and are now focusing on quality over quantity (or rather, slightly less quantity for much higher quality). They want to hook users in for longer and make the content more engaging I think they've identified the importance of streaming and sharable content in game sales.
In chan-style chevron bullets:
> from c. 2006, Ubisoft burn out all their franchises and devs (including ones on the overambitious WD1)
> after several years, customers clock on to it and get tired of Ubisoft's methods
> c. 2014, Ubisoft identify this and give their devs longer dev cycles while focusing on more 'sharable' and engaging gameplay (see: AC Syndicate, Siege and WD2)
> now, on each new game's release, there is a few-week period of 'I'm not buying Ubisoft trash' sentiment from customers
> but the 'sharable' and engaging nature of the new products means that word spreads quickly, and sales pick up in coming months
Like, seriously, IIRC AC Syndicate and Siege had super low uptake in their first month of release, and we had v. similar threads to the 'WD2 UK sales' one, but within 6 months they had gone on to gather millions. That's because their gameplay is actually good and encourages longer playtime and more sharing of content. I think Watch Dogs 2 will see the same pattern.
Plus, we still have Christmas on the way.
IIRC Driver San Fran's writing was collabbed with a writing agency in England. I doubt Ubisoft used them for it, they probably kept it in-house.
I suppose once they decided on that sort of tone, the rest of the writing would just fall into play naturally.
