Ubisoft CEO Changing Focus to Consoles Due to PC Piracy
The PC games space is one that’s ever changing. CPU and GPU technology constantly push the boundaries beyond any other platform, but sadly, the PC also suffers the most from piracy.
Tom’s Games spoke to Yves Guillemot,
Guillemot starts off with something almost all PC gamers can agree with : “The consoles at certain periods are more powerful than the PC, but the PC can improve its capacity and ability every year so the cycle changes. Generally, the PC gaming business gets better over time in these console cycles. So as we continue this cycle, graphically the PCs will continue to get better and the features will become more interesting.”
That’s where the good news ends, however, as Guillemot confirms that PC piracy is influencing the company’s developers to focus on consoles. “Piracy is enormously damaging to the market,” he said, adding that the Internet has made piracy easy to do. “So what do we do ? Well, it’s better not to invest a lot of money on that particular platform.”
“We know that the developers that are creating the PC game are not going to get paid for the work they do and the games won’t break even. So we prefer to focus on platforms that maybe have less piracy and where more customers are actually paying for the content they consume,” said Guillemot. “We greatly reduced the number of people working on PC games because of that.” Ubisoft isn’t ditching PC publishing altogether, but it certainly isn’t as focused as it used to be. The company now hopes to keep PC in the running with better copy protection measures. The problem now is coming up with a system that PC gamers will accept.
“The PC gaming community is very often against any kind of system that prohibits piracy, which I have difficulty understanding. They need to help us to make sure we can invest on the PC, because if we can’t get a return on investment with PC games then we will not invest,” he explains.
One problem is with invasive copy protections that do more to hassle the legit gamer than anything else. Guillemot said that the company is now looking for “a system that will make sure you have a better experience when you buy than game rather than when you don’t buy it.”
Until the PC market changes, there could be fewer and fewer games for platform. Guillemot calls the PC-centric Far Cry 2 game, which will also be released on Xbox 360 and PS3, an “exception.”
Read the full interview with Yves Guillemot of Ubisoft over at Tom’s Games.
- Indilinx Speeds Up SSDs To 230 MB/s
- Leaked IDF Slides Shed Light On Nehalem's Successors
- New Intel Motherboards To Detect Phone Calls During Sleep Mode
- Siggraph Attendees Drool Over Nvidia's Quadro Plex
- Why a Mini-notebook is Exactly What You Will Want
- First USB 3.0 Demos At IDF Next Week?
- Google Turns iPhone Into Universal Translation Device
- Gmail and MobileMe Back Up and Running Following Service Outages
- Canon Patents Fuel Cell Powered Digital Camera
- AMD Has Four New Business Phenoms
- Lian-Li Solves The Xbox 360 Overheating Dilemma
- Former Apple General Counsel Settles Backdating Case For $2.2 Million
- Reports Of Failing iPhone 3G Reception, Apple Remains Quiet
- PS3 Unit Sales Drop Sharply, Wii Remains Strong
- Intel Will Disclose DTS Specs At IDF
- NVIDIA Beta Drivers With OpenGL 3.0 Support
- Intel Prepping SSDs With Up To 160 GB Capacity
- Silverado Pickup - With A Million Miles - For Sale On EBay
Here's an idea...
Stop making games that require super computers or cost near on $100 (In South Africa). Seriously, mental barrier... People don't want to pay more for there games than they do for graphics cards.
and when did Ubisoft last make a PC exclusive game that I wanted to buy....?
Rlease the games on STEAM FFS!!!!! When will developers realise that CD copies of games are easy to pirate, but online ditsribution almost completely removes the chance of piracy and reaches a much greater audience.
The whole argument about software Piracy is Irrelevant. Piracy has always been around. The real issue is that there are so many different configurations of PC's out there that its harder for Devs to test PC games, so if they cite pirating problems its an easy cop out. And of course lets not forget PC games only retail for £30 ish, were as they can charge the outrageous £50 ish for new console games.
I don't agree that consoles are more powerful than PC's when they come out, but having a gaming rig is going to be more expensive, but it has so many more uses.
Its a sad time for PC gaming, anyone remember when the last good PC game came out (last Christmas maybe?) It looks like all the Devs are moving away from the format, ID announced pretty much the same at the start of the week, and if they are letting us down what future is there, sad times.
Ubisoft only have themselves to blame for poor sales figures in regards to the PC platform. When they develop games that are nothing more than console ports with mediocre quality, how can they expect people to pay full price?
I imagine Electronic Arts and Ubisoft have very similar business plans.
(1) Spend minimal time on development.
(2) Offer little innovation.
(3) Create simple and repetitive gameplay.
(4) Milk gamers dry.