Opening Thoughts

Ubisoft is one of the founders of the modern video gaming market as we know it. With nearly a dozen titles that are some of the most decorated and highest-selling games of the last 25 years, the multi-billion dollar French company continues to stamp its authority on the current gaming market.

However, they have had a difficult time recently with a number of issues both in-house and in their gaming releases. It feels as though the company is now at a crossroads, with the next 12 months set to be the most important in its nearly 40-year history.

Ubisoft’s Early Influence

Although a number of acquisitions and ideas propelled the company into the higher echelons of the global gaming world throughout the 1990s and 2000s, one of their most notable and ambitious shifts was their reach into the free online gaming model in the 1990s.

At the time, the internet was still in its early stages, and although other gaming sectors, such as roulette gaming, were looking to expand into the digital market, the market was still thin. The internet was nowhere near as quick, accessible, or convenient to access as it is in 2024.

Now, we appreciate that free-to-play games and playing at online casinos have many differences to consider, but the underlying theory remains the same. If roulette casinos could reshape their entire audience and turn a traditional game into a new, online version despite roulette itself being 300 years old, then it showed that the gaming world was in a transformative state.

All bets were off, essentially - as a whole new gaming world opened up to designers brave enough to explore it. The success of free-to-play games like League Of Legends and the multi-billion dollar success of roulette casinos show that both sectors were right in jumping in with both feet, and Ubisoft was one of the first major international game design companies that explored the free-to-play online market before many others inevitably followed suit.

It’s this same mentality the company needs to channel if it is to continue keeping itself internationally relevant in a global gaming sector that is jampacked with stiff competition and forward-thinking creators.

Update To The Season Pass

Ubisoft has announced they’ll be making big changes to their season pass model, which is long overdue. While this is likely to take shape before the end of this year, we expect 2025 to be the year it begins to gather momentum.

Gamers have felt the impact of the cumbersome and dated DLC models that Ubisoft has continued to plug, so changes to this model are welcome. Although several of their titles, most notably Avatar, sold poorly in comparison to other top Ubisoft titles, due to the structure of their season pass, they still had to ensure they had expensive and timely DLC updates.

So, gamers will not be the only ones breathing a sigh of relief with this change. It’s one of many they will need to make quickly to steady the ship, and this alone will not do much to stem the current tide.

A Possible Buyout?

There have been rumblings that Tencent and the Guillemont Family are weighing up a potential buyout following a torrid 12 months of share price action and plans to drastically restructure the company.

Even the rumors of this potential buyout rocketed the share price by over a third, and although there hasn’t been much news about this buyout that has emerged since the first week of October, expect to see this play a big part in the company’s potential direction moving into 2025 and beyond. If this buyout goes through quickly, this could be the catalyst that gives the company a new lease of life and capital, but it could still jeopardize its long-term potential.

Big Name Titles In 2025

As more companies explore the idea of AR and VR development services, other disruptive gaming technologies, such as AI, are proving to be a big challenge for companies like Ubisoft. Although they collaborated with Nvidia to pioneer NPC interactions in gaming.

While the initial response was positive - again, this is just one of many areas where Ubisoft will need to become a market leader to try and change the current rhetoric. It feels as though the new Splinter Cell and the forever-delayed Assassin’s Creed will be vital in stopping their spiral into gaming obscurity. Still, with the company reportedly planning on releasing ten Assassin’s Creeds over the next five years, it doesn’t speak volumes about the company having many bright, inventive ideas.

Final Thoughts

Ubisoft is facing a perfect storm at the moment. Many gamers feel taken for granted by their distant and cold corporate approach to gaming updates and news. Even though a buyout is generally considered positive, their stock price has hit a decade low, and if they go private, this will change the whole dynamic of the company.

If they fall back on the Activision route of simply releasing a cluster of high-profile games each year, then there’s a strong possibility that this is the beginning of a slow bleeding out for Ubisoft. 2025 will be the year that cements whether they’re a company looking ambitiously to the future or confined as a relic of gaming history.