While they ”haven’t announced anything” on the Far Cry front, they’re definitely keeping its future in mind. Asked about any new Prince of Persia, Corre says they’ve ”a lot on the show floor” already.
Not every franchise is getting something in the pipeline straight away, he says, but has to wait until its creators bring something together that’s interesting.
”We’re thinking of the future of this brand. We don’t know yet when it will emerge,” Alain Corre said of Far Cry 4. ”Again, it’s cooking. Something is cooking!” Far Cry 3 has been a tremendous critical and commercial success for Ubisoft, reigniting the shooter series after it seemed to flounder from that stint in Africa. It won’t take too long to return will it?
”No no! No way. We try to put the fire a bit stronger.”
So what about a new Prince of Persia after reviving it with The Forgotten Sands back in May 2010?
”All our franchises are always in gestation,” Corre continued. ”We are iterating. We are thinking about what can be done. But we can’t bring all the games and all the franchises every year. We have a lot on the show floor this year already.”
”It will happen when we feel it is ready, when the creators have brought something interesting. That’s the case for all our franchises. They’re cooking. Some are cooking longer than others, but they’re cooking.”
It was thought Ubisoft had something to say about the Beyond Good & Evil universe during E3 2013, but it turned out that an image of one of its characters was shown purely as a nod to their catalogue of classic characters, and ”wasn’t meant to be a tease,” said Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot.
”It was just part of our promotion in the run-up to E3,” Guillemot said, ”homaging some of the characters from our past. I think that was maybe misinterpreted. I think the first game was exceptional, and people remember the experience they had, so they would like to see it again.”
”We had a period where we had a demo that went out before it was quite ready, so everybody saw something that appealed to them. That’s why I think they keep expecting something. But I can’t say much more than that.” That demo was a CGI involving the main hero sitting by their broken down car, while a fly gets snorted up the nostrils of a pig. Classic.
”There are some works on it,” said Corre. ”There are some iterations on it. Now, some games are taking longer to be done, depending also on the creativity the creator can bring. You see the level of quality of the games today is very high. It takes time to find the right angle and message.”
”It’s true that the trailer we showed years ago, in the desert with the pig sneezing and flies still resonates very well. These kind of brands are part of Ubisoft’s DNA. It will happen when it will be perfect.”
Beyond Good & Evil 2 was said to be now in the works for next-gen platforms, and that Michel Ancel had to slow down the proceedings in order to concentrate and finished Rayman Legends, which has ceased to be a Wii U exclusive and become multi-platform for fear of low sales.