Ubisoft’s Michael de Plater has said the ”biggest” lesson he learnt with EndWar was how ”blockbuster-driven” the console market is compared with the PC.
He expected players and ”game design” to play larger roles than they did, there was ”so much pressure” to be in the Top Ten, that’s where success is. EndWar did ”well over a million”.
”It was the biggest learning experience of my life,” de Plater told VG247. ”We did well over a million, and us and Halo Wars were the biggest RTSes of the past few years. We beat C&C on our first go, we beat Total War. So we were like, ‘Wow, this is fantastic. It’s this huge new RTS.’”
”But, in the console space, there’s so much pressure to really be in the top ten… It was a big learning experience that really the difference between console and PC isn’t so much about the players or the game design or the things we thought it was: it’s actually about the market, about how blockbuster-driven it is, and how hit-driven it is, and how big you have to be.”
Ubisoft Shanghai, of which de Plater no longer has digs, has begun work on an EndWar sequel. The PC’s more ‘Cannes Film Festival’ then, we enjoy our indie cult hits more.
