Last month’s most hyped game launch was probably Star Wars Outlaws. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite get the ratings many had hoped for, and there have been unconfirmed reports that sales have been less than stellar.
Now, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot has confirmed this in an internal letter to the company’s employees, in which he writes, among other things (via Insider Gaming):
“Star Wars Outlaws’ initial sales proved softer than expected, despite solid ratings from players that recognized the game’s faithful transcription of the original trilogy’s essence and richness: 76 on Metacritic, 3.85/5 on PS store, ~4/5 on Xbox and 4.4/5 on Epic. While players praise the sense of detail and the beauty of the graphics, the effectiveness of the reputation system, and endearing characters like Nix, some also noted areas of improvement.”
Guillemot goes on to explain that they have heard the criticism and that “development teams are already hard at work on this, focusing on save issues, stealth mechanics, more frequent quest checkpoints, and better NPC AIdevelopment teams are already hard at work on this, focusing on save issues, stealth mechanics, more frequent quest checkpoints, and better NPC AI”.
Consumers are becoming less and less patient with games released in an unfinished state, something that is also addressed in the letter (and is said to be behind the decision to delay Assassin’s Creed Shadows). We’ll see what this means for future Ubisoft games, the company’s overall strategy, and also for Massive, which has now delivered two gorgeous but underperforming licensed titles in a row, the first being Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which premiered nine months ago.
Are you surprised that Star Wars Outlaws hasn’t done better commercially?