In a new interview with gamesindustry.biz, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemont provided more insight into why the company has shifted their focus into creating massive open-world games such as Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey that takes around 60 hours to complete than something more focused like Assassin’s Creed: Unity which took only 15 hours if you just did the main story. The interview also discussed the sustainability of creating these types of games and how the continued support for their games help.
Speaking on the chance that Ubisoft will go back to creating more focused titles, Guillemont said: “no. Our goal is to make sure you can have a Unity within an Odyssey. If you want to have a story of 15 hours, you can have it, but you can also have other stories. You live in that world and you pursue what you want to pursue. You have an experience, many Unity-like experiences.” Talking about sustaining the sheer level of quality and size of a game like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with the price of $60, Guillemont talked about the growth of the gaming industry, specifically the number of people playing games. Guillemont said: It is sustainable, because the world is big and the number of players that can play our games is immense. What we’ve seen in the last few years is the number of players that play our games is constantly growing.”
Guillemont added: “New markets are opening up and games live a lot longer than before. So at the moment we see that we can continue to increase the investments because we know we can have a return on investment that can be quite long[-tailed].” Ubisoft is one of the best publishers at making sure that the games that they create and invest in continue to see support and Guillemont says that it helps them to continue to create games with massive open worlds.
Guillemont said that the 60-hour average playtime for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey proves “players got a lot more from their investment in the game, a lot more than they got before. Our teams don’t stop after launching the game. We have huge teams that continue to create content for players to stay in those universes they love to be in. The fact that we have some players buying items in these games is giving our teams the chance to continue creating that extra content.”