Assassin’s Creed Publisher Ubisoft Says ‘Many New Games Are Struggling’ As Players Turn Away From Traditional Releases In Favor of Subscriptions, Live-Service and Free-To-Play Games

Ubisoft has warned of falling company revenues and said it’s seen that “many new games are struggling to stand out” as players turn away from traditional full-price releases.

Projects that would previously have stood out are now finding it tough to “achieve the sales they may once had had,” Ubisoft wrote in a new UK financial filing (thanks, CityAM), which blames a wider change in taste among players.

Explaining that the “traditional ‘full game model’ of selling a single £50-60 [$65-$80] game to a consumer as a one-time purchase” was continuing to “become less ubiquitous”, Ubisoft said players were now opting to spend their time and money in other ways, such as “subscription services, long-running Games As A Service titles, Free to Play Games and cloud streaming.”

In a nutshell, Ubisoft continued, “consumers are playing fewer games.” And while some one-off, full-price titles were continuing to be successful, these had become “a few notable exceptions” to the wider trend, it continued.

The remarks come amid a continued period of uncertainty for Ubisoft, which has suffered layoffs and a sizable corporate restructure in the past year. The Paris-headquartered company — whose biggest franchises are now operated by an independent subsidiary backed by Tencent — has struggled to find its next big hit after disappointing sales for Star Wars Outlaws and continued attempts to crack the increasingly-saturated live-service game market, such as with doomed shooter XDefiant, and the pre-emptively cancelled The Division: Heartland.

As for Assassin’s Creed, the company has gone all-in on its biggest brand — though was forced to slow its production line of upcoming games and remakes to give this year’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows more time. Still, a slew of upcoming other titles in the franchise are expected over the next few years (including the witchcraft-focused Hexe, a multiplayer spin-off, and a long-awaited Black Flag remake).

Last week, Ubisoft dramatically halted trading of its company shares and postponed the wider firm’s latest financial report mere minutes before a scheduled shareholder call was due to go live. Days later, Ubisoft is yet to provide more context for the move, as fans of its games — and the vast majority of its staff — wait to hear more.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social