10 Reasons The Video Game Industry Is Heading For Another Crash
2. Publisher's Disregard For The User Experience
If there is a gaming apocalypse, historians will look back and brand AC: Unity the first horseman. Or maybe the E.T. of the 21st century.
Ubisoft's 2014 release already appeared on this list due to its ludicrous amount of glitches and bugs, but Ubi are just as guilty of introducing terrible 'innovations' like forced interaction with smartphone apps - manifesting itself in Unity by gating content behind a registration wall.
What really pushes AC: Unity into E.T. territory was Ubisoft’s response to all this. Reviews of the game were embargoed until 12 hours after release, ensuring unless journalists wanted to be threatened with lawsuits, they couldn't do their job effectively and inform the public of what they were going to buy. It felt entirely like Ubisoft knew they were peddling a broken game, and intentionally prevent reviews from being read.
When consumers did get hands on and the list of bugs became a mile long, which feature did they choose to concentrate on fixing first? Their number one priority was the “Helix Credits issue”, meaning after having asked you to spend $/£60 on their game, the first thing they are going to fix is the ability to spend even more money.
Gee, thanks a lot there, Ubisoft. It's not like Arno was falling through the floor or struggling to maintain his facial muscles or anything.
Which brings us to the saddest fact of all...