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Watch Dogs engine originally built for a racing game
Watch Dogs began life as a very different game. When the team was formed years ago, the goal was to create a driving game. "They were working on a driving engine, working on something. We had the Driver license. This was years ago," Ubisoft North America President Laurent Detoc told IGN. "Then we were thinking, 'no, this is not the way we want to go with a driving game,' so we canceled that and restarted. It's not like Watch Dogs started as Watch Dogs. The Watch Dogs project was initially another game." Detoc added that some parts of the engine were then incorporated into Watch Dogs after the team reshuffled and added a new creative director. Ubisoft was also working on another driving game at the time – either Driver: San Francisco or The Crew – so it made sense to cancel the project. "What happens is that a game gets canceled, and then you take pieces of that game to make a new one. We could have had another driving engine from another team in another place, and then it would have been used by the Watch Dogs team." Watch Dogs, which was originally due to launch this year, was pushed back to Spring 2014 in October. The delay contributed to a drop in Ubisoft's stock, though company president Yves Guillemot is adamant "the team needed additional time to realize the game's full potential."
Declassified: Ubisoft's 'Rainbow 6: Patriots' goes back to the drawing board
Ubisoft's Laurent Detoc admits Ubisoft has had to scrap Rainbow Six: Patriots and take the game back to the drawing board. "We had a core team. They had a good vision. They got started, and then the game wasn't working. So [they had] to start again," Detoc told IGN. "Rainbow had to be remade," he went on, saying it's "one of those examples where you try, it doesn't work, you try again. If it doesn't work, we're not going to bring it to you." Detoc also specifically called out next-gen consoles as possible recipients for the new Rainbow Six game, though that's admittedly something that's been on Ubisoft's mind for over a year. "Could it become a shooter with another name in the end, because the team doesn't want to do counter-terrorist guys? Say they want to be in a mercenary setting? That's possible," Detoc added. Rainbox Six: Patriots, first announced on the cover of Game Informer in 2011, has presumably been in development for over two years now. A year after the announcement, Ubisoft restructured the team building Patriots and decided to keep the setting that focused so heavily on the moral grey area of counter-terrorism.
Detoc: Rocksmith reviews show 'lack of enthusiasm' for innovation
Laurent Detoc, Ubisoft's North American executive director, believes Rocksmith didn't fare better in reviews because it was just too innovative. "What I see when I read the reviews is a lack of enthusiasm for something that is new," Detoc told Gamasutra. "We, as human beings, tend to like what we know." That lack of interest in new experiences, of course, is exactly what led us to say that Rocksmith "oozes boredom," suffered from audio latency, and "declines every single opportunity presented to educate the player on music theory." He then went on to say that reviewers are asked to cover too many disparate genres. "We can't expect critics to be experts at everything," he said. That was the other unspoken issue, we suppose. Rocksmith was too new, and we don't have a dedicated "being taught how to play the guitar" critic.
Ubisoft on becoming Kinect's 'top third-party publisher,' and on its history with 3D camera tech
Last night, Ubisoft held a Kinect-specific event in downtown San Francisco. There, president Laurent Detoc and senior VP of marketing and sales, Tony Key, talked about the company's strategy for Kinect and why it's investing so heavily to become the biggest third-party supporter of the device at launch. "I think today is a pretty good testament that we think Kinect will do well because this is an event only about Kinect, so that's our statement on how well we think it's going to do," said Detoc in his opening presentation. It's a technology the company believes is the future of gaming and it's not afraid to say it -- Detoc's next few minutes addressing attendees proved that.
Ubisoft NA prez missed memo that Beyond Good & Evil 2 is totally confirmed
Ubisoft North America president Laurent Detoc admits that the publisher is "working on some some Beyond Good and Evil stuff," but tells IndustryGamers that the decision on "whether there's going to be a new game or not" is "something for the future." Wait a second. Shouldn't that have been "something from the past" ... ? Series creator Michel Ancel has flat-out talked about the sequel and some of his plans for it. More importantly, Ubisoft president Yves Guillemot himself debuted the game to the world's gaming press at last year's international Ubidays event -- which was also streamed live worldwide via the web, no less. (Oh, and Guillemot also spoke more about it later, as well.) Mr. Detoc, if you're reading this, here's a handy link you can click before your next interview -- which is almost certain to include more questions about Beyond Good & Evil 2 (a.k.a. that game your company is so making). %Gallery-23890%
Casual Wii games cost Ubisoft serious dollarz
Poor old Ubisoft. Contrary to popular belief, it turns out that casual games won't pay for your entire HQ to be paved in gold. According to Ubisoft North American president Laurent Detoc, this is because any savings made on developing such titles goes towards marketing the things, which apparently costs an arm and a leg."The margins on these games are good when you look at development, but it takes a lot of marketing dollars," revealed Detoc to Gamasutra, instantly endearing himself to all of us hardcore gamers who can't stand a lot of the casual tat on the Wii. "It's like packaged goods. You have to think about marketing, retail space, branding." My, isn't it nice to see that the creative flame still burns bright in the industry?Anyway, Ubisoft is especially struggling with its Wii line-up of casual fare, with Detoc admitting that much work is to be done if Ubi's games are to "sell as well as Nintendo's own Wii titles." Needless to say, our hearts bleed.
Ubisoft blazes third party trail for Nintendo
So, uh, remember when people were talking about Nintendo and that whole hate they supposedly had on for anyone unfortunate enough to be not-them? Yeah ... someone forgot to ship that memo over to Ubisoft, because not only are they planning to develop a veritable slew of games for the innovative console, they've promised seven just for the launch window:
