Guillemot (Ubi): "Very important that next gen arrives"
Interview by Yukishiro - Thursday, 21/02/2013 at 13h 10
Kingmaker in the world of consoles for 5 years, Parisian publisher Ubisoft has naturally bonded with Sony around the PlayStation 4 as it did with Nintendo's Wii U
First, what are your impressions on the PlayStation 4?
We are extremely pleased that Sony took everything they could from social gaming, such as a connected machine that can receive data passively, and which includes all the elements the game has on PC or on the phone. In addition, the processor and the capabilities of the machine, which will allow us to make powerful and immersive games.
You never missed an opportunity in the past two years, to emphasize the need for Sony and Microsoft to change generations. Your wish is granted, why was it so important to you?
It is very important that the new machines arrive. We live in a rapidly changing world, technology is changing, and consoles have to keep up the pace. And instead of having a five-year cycle, as before, they now have seven or eight years of exploitation. And inevitably, the consumer ends up getting tired and believes that there is less creativity than before. I think these new consoles give creators creativity and consumers the opportunity to go to these new games.
Sony claims to have developed its PS4 closely with developers. Has Ubisoft been consulted? What was your relationship with the manufacturer?
We've been here for 26 years and Ubisoft has seen a number of cycles. So, we came to understand what manufacturers expected from the evolution. We went to them with all our wishes, and we held regular discussions around specs. Sony has incorporated elements they had not taken into account in the first place. It is a dialogue that leads to the best possible of what was invented before.
Does a multiplatform publisher such as Ubisoft want for consoles to differ in terms of specs? Has uniformity between the PS4 and the future Xbox, in terms of architecture and power, been at the heart of your discussions?
Yes, but this is a request that we have all the time. After, the manufacturer chooses to listen or not, because they want, of course, to be different. It is a natural demand. After that, if Sony thinks it can make a real difference and stay afloat financially, they'll do it.
A word also on the PlayStation Vita. You have been particularly visible in 2012, with Assassin's Creed Liberation distributed to 600,000 pieces. What conclusions do you draw from this experience? Can the convergence logic with the PS4/PSV revive interest for Sony's handheld, in your opinion?
What I liked about the presentation is that they use the power of the Vita to use it as a PS4 controller. If they could get enough PS Vita in the hands of consumers, we could use this double screen feature. It would be fabulous. Now we need to be able to do it, because the Vita has a fairly high cost. I'm waiting to see more on the subject.
You mention dual screen. Could this mean that you could, for instance, only develop one Assassin's Creed game PS4 and Vita would show the same game, instead of creating a game specifically for the handheld?
What is needed is for more Vitas to sell. The greater the install base, the more publishers will want to utilize it.
Is cloud gaming the future?
I compare cloud gaming to the Internet from a few years ago, where you could not make action games because it was not fast enough, etc. And developers have tended to favor the kinds of games that could afford to have a high latency. Cloud gaming has the same kind of situation: it addresses many issues, but it still does not work as well as what we want. Meanwhile, it should only be used for certain types of games, more analytical...
Sony was able to rely on the copious presentation of Watch_Dogs, a Ubisoft game, during the conference. The game is also scheduled on PS3 and Xbox 360, for which generation was the game originally designed? PS4 to PS3, or the opposite?
Today Watch_Dogs is a game created on next-gen consoles. It's then ported on other machines. We will seek the power of the new generation, then ask other teams to try to incorporate those elements in the current consoles.
It is viable, financially, to work on two generations at once for a single game? It is known that PS3/Xbox 360 development require significant resources. Not to mention the PS4...
These are indeed challenges for all companies who create. But we noticed that when you arrive early enough, with innovation, the games you launch sell for a long period of time. This is the challenge that we did with Watch_Dogs, with interesting sales the first year, which go on for two or three years.
You will then continue to feed two generations of consoles at the same time with the same games?
We won't be able to do it on the long term. The more you push the next generation towards its limits, the more you will have difficulty in adapting to the "old gen". So we are going, little by little, to migrate to the new generation of consoles. I think that by 2015 we will have completed this transition.
Ubisoft has recently distinguished itself with its strong support for the Wii U, for which you gave several exclusives. Can you imagine such an exclusivity policy for the PS4, or do you rather stand as inseparable from the Xbox / PC?
I think it's the second option. We are much closer to the games that will run on the PC and next-gen, than to pure exclusives on these machines.
But to talk about the Wii U, you are aware that the abandonment of Rayman Legends' exclusivity made a lot of noise. Is there a problem between Ubisoft and that machine?
No problem with the Wii U. In fact, we saw the opportunity, by giving more time, to have the best game ever made for the Wii U. Teams began to show what they made with the whole social aspect, which they will release in April. This makes it possible to make a social part which was impossible until now, and additional bosses. The goal is to make one of Ubisoft's best games. The team is fully on Wii U to do that, but it also works on other generations, to arrive on several generations at the same time.
To rephrase: you have nothing to say about the current sales of the Wii U?
We can not say we're satisfied with the sales of the Wii U. They were good in the United States in November / December, but did not go well in January 2013. We're waiting to see the evolution of things, we look at this closely.
A recommendation as a publisher? Is a price drop necessary for you?
I don't have a recommendation, Nintendo is big enough to analyze the different things to do. Many games are coming soon, which should help the machine to resume sales.