Ubisoft has been a main stay at E3 for years. In a time where 3rd party publishers are like EA are leaving the show and doing their own thing offsite, its a great sign Ubisoft is staying. Ubisoft’s press conferences can at times be wacky, but the one they do, is announce a game that we had no expectation was truly coming. Last year at E3, Ubisoft had a lot they talked about during their press conference as well as what they had on the show floor. They held a behind closed doors demo of the Beyond Good & Evil. They had demo for several games: The Division 2(huge improvements over The Division), Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, Just Dance(a yearly staple for Ubisoft), and Skull & Bones, just to name a few. Of everything they had to demo on the floor itself, Skull & Bones is the only game not to release yet. It has been delayed until the end of fiscal year 2019 or beginning of fiscal year 2020 at the earliest. Honestly this is a good thing. When we all played the demo at E3, we walked away with the feeling that it was just a PVP versus of the ship combat from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. Big difference is that the ship combat was better in AC: Black Flag. That’s not to the rest of the game is bad, but that is the only they showed off at E3 and even the trailer made it feel like an offshoot of it. The one thing I applaud Ubisoft for is their willingness to hold back a game for development. We all know the debacle that was the Assassin’s Creed: Unity launch. Since then, Ubisoft has done their best to ship games that are ready to go.
So far, Ubisoft has been pretty closed lipped on a lot of games they have coming out. I think at E3 we will probably have a new trailer and game play demo on the floor of the Ghost Recon game Breakpoint. They released a trailer for the game a few weeks ago, and for good or bad, they are definitely upgrading the Ghost Recon experience. It would be a safe bet we see a new Just Dance at E3 as that has become a yearly staple for them. They do have 3 AAA titles that are set to release by the end of March 2020(their fiscal year), however they have not released any details on what those games are. For as long as it has been in development, Beyond Good & Evil needs some more info and possibly a trailer. There are rumors of a Viking era based Assassin’s Creed as well as a new AAA IP that would be coming to the Switch. Personally, this is the year for Ubisoft to shine. EA, outside of their sports titles, have not released anything meaningful and it going to be changing their development cycle due to the failures of Anthem. Its safe to say EA will have more from Apex Legends as well as Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order. SquareEnix could be going big based on the rumors that are out there, and we have discussed those on the podcast as well. And Sony, well we all know Sony will not be at E3. The spotlight will be wide open this year and I anticipate Ubisoft to show up with some good news.
