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| [Dec 11, 2008, 12:02 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments |
Gamasutra
interviews Ubisoft CFO Alain Martinez, who provides insight into Ubisoft's
evolving view of the influence of review scores on game sales. Though he
confirms their commitment to quality, he also says they've come to the
realization that review scores may be an overrated component of a game's
reception. Specific examples are given as Assassin's Creed, which went on
to be a hit in spite of an average
Metacritic score of 80, compared with
Metacritic scores in the 90s for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,
which went on to be a retail disappointment. This leads Martinez to comment:
"It's not ratings that mean everything, but we think quality and innovation are
the key." He also expresses disappointment at Atari's acquisition of
Cryptic, saying Ubisoft had also bid on the MMO developer, but that they
still have other acquisition deals in the works, and he expects one or two of
them will be closed in the next three or four months. In other Ubisoft news, the
collapse of Woolworth's and its distribution business EUK will cost several game
companies some cash, though
arguments
over how much are underway and
EUK says they are still looking for a buyer, and
GamesIndustry.biz quotes Alain Martinez on Ubisoft's potential losses,
saying "Woolworths is going to be bigger, probably it's going to be between EUR
1.2 and 1.5 million."
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| 9. |
Re: Ubisoft on Review Scores and Acquisition Plans |
Dec 11, 2008, 19:14 |
danebramage |
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Quality and innovation are not the key. Advertising is the key. Unless your game is truly terrible (which AC was not, it just wasn't good), you can spend enough on advertising and advertising-related endeavors such that hype will glide you along to profitability. I think you're missing the guy's point. Sure, advertising is necessary. Who would argue with that? I think what this guy is saying is that what's important when it comes to a purchasing decision is the perception of the game in the buyer's mind, and that the buyer's overall perception isn't as influenced by reviews as it is by his perception of the game's content and quality gleaned from other sources. That doesn't necessarily result from advertising hype.
AC succeeded because it looked like a cool, exciting game to play--an assassin jumping around and backstabbing people is inherently cool in the eyes of gamers--and BECAUSE IT WAS AN A-LIST TITLE FROM A MAJOR PUBLISHER. (PoP:SoT didn't succeed because, even though it had publisher cred, its content apparently didn't particularly appeal to the mass of gamers. Gamers today love evil: princes in shining armor are out, dark, bloody assassins are in.) If AC had been a $20 shelf-stuffer from JoWood, it would likely have flopped, no matter what the reviews said. As long as Ubisoft puts out the best quality stuff they can, and the stuff they put out "looks cool" in the eyes of gamers, AND they retain their brand credibility in the mind of the consumer, their games will sell.
The game review "industry" (and it almost is, or was, one) has brought this on themselves. Reviews by any except a very few established names--and who but true geeks even know who those people are--are mostly worthless, because anybody and everybody who has ever played a videogame thinks they're a game reviewer and now clogs the web with his/her shallow, sometimes incomprehensible and contradictory opinions. I give little credence to the vast bulk of what I read about a game, because I know that the vast bulk of what I'm reading has been written by simpletons...I also know I'm not alone in that. The same goes for movie reviews and just about every other other kind of review in the age of the Internet. Their ubiquity and the poor quality of their authors has made them worthless as any kind of dependable guide to quality. (This is not an attack on all game reviewers. There are some very good ones out there--Chick, Geryk, et al--but Metacritic doesn't measure the good ones. It lumps everybody in together, which makes its scores something akin to judging the quality of a school's football team by measuring the muscle mass of the entire student body.) |
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