Ubisoft is probably the best AAA gaming company.

[Arceal]

I know I am stirring up a hornets nest by saying this, but I used to hate Ubi and the Uplay program even more.

This is literally the only AAA company that cares about their games. They genuinely do. Name another company that cares even a little about previous titles that flopped in the beginning. Literally every other company would drop the game, and immediately start working on "For Honor 2" instead of fixing the old game.

Granted Ubi can be critiqued just as much as any other company, but they seem to care about the game and not as much about the money.

[Firerodan16]

Originally posted by | TajMahBalls |:

Meh. Indie company that pretends it's triple A

So Valve's an Indie company aswell then?

[Zerrill]

CD Project Red + Ubi + EA = love

[Firerodan16]

Originally posted by Zerrill:

CD Project Red + Ubi + EA = love

Replace EA with Larian Studios and we got a deal!


Cause EA is garbage and must be purged.

[.]

The friendly guys on the devstream aren't Ubisoft; they're people who work for Ubisoft. The sympathetic faces like Pope and Jurassic that Ubisoft puts out to feel for them are not Ubisoft, nor are the incredible art and animation team who polish this game with amazing production quality.

The real Ubisoft is a beast comprised of executives in suits who have almost nothing to do with video games who look at graphs representing profits and pass orders down the chain from there; everything from demographics and market research teams who look at what sells and what people want, to the people writing code from scratch, to the people that you see on the devstream every week; the people who we curse and praise and thank, who are just guys at the very end of a very long chain who have been given a lot of rope (which they seem to be trying to hang themselves with pretty consistantly) to make their passion work, all ultimately to appease to the desires of faceless shareholders sitting behind the scenes.

It's not really feasible to judge the entire conglomerate entity as a whole based on the performance of the few visible cogs in the machine.

[Kolser]

Originally posted by Arceal:

Granted Ubi can be critiqued just as much as any other company, but they seem to care about the game and not as much about the money.

Right, they care about adding content. Not fixing their servers or game-breaking bugs. Pff, who does that?

[Sujak]

they've been increasing cash grabs on rainbow 6 so no

[Chizzler]

It wasn't long ago that I'd given up on Ubisoft. Over the years they've brought out some of my favourite games. Rayman 1,Far Cry 1,Splinter Cell Trilogy & the Prince of Persia Trilogy.

Unfortunately they then went 10 years pushing out yearly Assasin Creed games and making a mess of both Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell. Their other games were poorly recieved too and I moved over to the indie scene because there were no AAA studios releasing anything of value anymore.

Even Bethesda have lost their way a bit, with Fallout 4 being a shallow experience compared to their earlier RPG games (New Vegas is a special case, being outsourced to obsidian, but both Skyim and Fallout 3 were still far better games than FO4). Their efforts to monetize the modding community in recent years is what really puts me off them at the moment though. I don't see myself picking up FO76 or Elder Scrolls 6 if they continue down this path.

Ubisoft have still have troubles releasing good games, but i've heard they've made huge efforts to support those titles, bringing For Honor, Rainbow Six:Seige and The Division back from the brink of death and are now considered good products.

They also brought out Rayman Origins and Legends, both of which I found fantastic (though a little lacking in challenge). There's also a new Splinter Cell on the way which i'm cautiously optimistic for.
They're certainly improving and I no longer consider them in the same bracket as EA, who i've boycotted for at least the last 15 years... In that time I don't feel i've missed out on anything they've had their hands on.

As for other AAA Studios. Epic Games seem to genuinly care about Fortnite. That game was dead before it even released, having spent 6-7 years in a troubled development. Now everyone knows it's name and there's updates every week.

I'm not sure CDProjeckt Red counts as AAA or Indie these days, but they're passionate about their games even if we won't see another release from the studio for another year or 2.

Paradox Games have released some great products in recent years too. Cities Skylines is hands down the best city builder that's ever been made. Their other titles arn't my thing, but they've all been positivly recieved at launch.
They get a bad reputation for their DLC practices but the truth is (and I can only talk for Cities Skylines here) the game stands on it's own without DLC. None of it feels like it was missing from the core product or stripped out to sell later. They also release free updates alongside their DLC and as such I've not actually had to buy any of it to continue enjoying the game with improved content.

the AAA industry as a whole seems to be shifting towards smaller development teams who are actually passionate about the projects their involved in... They've seen the success of the Indie scene and realized they need to change the way they operate.

EA and Activision are getting left behind and I wouldn't be upset to see them dissapear entirely. They're companies that are so large that the profits of the shareholders are their primary focus. A "good game" to them is a game that can siphon the most cash out of customers wallets.

[Bullett00th]

Ubi used to be my favorite gaming company, but that used to be in the days of the Prince of Persia trilogy, Splinter Cell and generally their first decade of the century lineup.

I strongly dislike them now.
Not even because of Uplay - it's bad, but whatever.

My issue is that they completely dropped the ball with singleplayer. Every singleplayer Ubi game is basically the same thing with a different coating: an open world littered with busywork and a main questline that often requires this busywork done. People eat it up so they keep doing it, they found their Call of Duty formula.

They did unexpectedly find redemption in very original multiplayer games like For Honor and R6 Siege, both of which had rough beginnings but indeed survived and thrived thanks to the company's dedication.

HOWEVER they have little to no respect for their legacy. I lost all hope when they turned off the servers for SC Chaos Theory. I tried switching to the latest SC game with my coop buddy, but the online system simply did not work for us. We wasted an hour and couldn't get into a game together.

I also dislike how their third person games mostly play themselves. Do a timely button press and watch a sexy animation. Which is why Assassin's Creed will ALWAYS be vastly inferior to Prince of Persia in terms of combat and traversal.



They're not the worst company in the world, they're not bad or anything. But in my eyes they have fallen very low compared to what they used to be.

[| TajMahBalls |]

Originally posted by Firerodan16:

Originally posted by | TajMahBalls |:

Meh. Indie company that pretends it's triple A

So Valve's an Indie company aswell then?

No. But Ubisoft makes some many Indie like games.

[Arceal]

Originally posted by Winchester:

Ubisoft is a professional Indie company at best. They dont make AAA games at all. lol

This is actually pretty accurate.