Underperforming XDefiant Pours More Misery on Embattled Publisher Ubisoft 1

Ubisoft is going through something of a sticky patch, with Assassin’s Creed Shadows getting delayed and Star Wars Outlaws underperforming. Now boss Yves Guillemot has admitted what many suspected: first-person shooter XDefiant is also falling short of the French publisher’s targets.

Speaking as part of an investors meeting, the bigwig said: “We had behind expectations for XDefiant, which we will give you a bit more detail at the end of October. To a much lesser extent [than Star Wars Outlaws], with a limited impact was a lower expectation for XDefiant.”

Ubisoft had previously said XDefiant was “off to an encouraging start”, but there had been reports the game had been struggling to maintain players. Insider Gaming claimed the development team had until the end of Season 3 to turn things around, but in a subsequent statement it said the title is “absolutely not dying”.

It seems that the big challenge for Ubisoft is getting players to open their wallets, as while there’s been an uptick in players with recent updates, very few are coughing up their cash. As a free-to-play shooter, player retention is a big deal – but it means little if they aren’t actually spending any money.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens here. Better games than XDefiant have ended up getting cancelled, so it’s going to take one helluva an effort to turn things around. The good news is that Ubisoft generally has a good track record when it comes to post-release support – but the French firm has never found itself under this kind of financial pressure before.

[source edge.media-server.com, via insider-gaming.com]