Staring Down The Barrel Of A Rough 2026, Ubisoft's Uk Arm Says...

I'm not sure about that one, chief—or at least I can be, for $9.99 a month.

Ubisoft has decreed that fully-priced games you pay for once are no longer sure bets—and by "decreed", I mean stated as much in a sales warning offered by its division here in the UK. It's important to note that the arm in question, Ubisoft Limited, is mainly concerned with "wholesale publishing and distribution of games", rather than development.

As spotted by CityAM, Ubisoft's given a stormy-cloud financial warning that its "physical software sales in the UK market" are going to see a decline next year, and that it expects a dip in revenue. That's because, as the document states, "The traditional 'full game' model of selling a single £50-£60 game to a consumer as a one-time purchase continues to become less ubiquitous."

The warning then goes on to peer into its crystal ball and determines that: "Multi Game Subscription services, long-running Games As A Service titles, Free To Play games and Cloud Streaming offerings all [provide] new and attractive ways for consumers to access gaming content.

"Consumers are playing fewer games, playing them for longer, and as a result, outside of a few notable exceptions, many new games are struggling to stand out and achieve the sales they may once have had, whilst the market is more volatile and the potential for any specific title is less predictable as a result."

Hmm. I'm not entirely sure about this one—Ubisoft has been in deep water, mostly unrelated to consumer tastes, recently. A new creative house, spats between Tencent and founding family The Guillemots, the departure of former Assassin's Creed franchise boss Marc-Alexis Côté, studio closures and AI snafus: There's trouble in paradise.

That's not to say that spending hasn't gone down everywhere. Times are rough, wallets are thin, and we'll all likely be looking to our existing libraries rather than spending money on new games—hell, just getting the gear for a new PC is hard enough. Hopping on something free-to-play where you might only need to shuck out ten bucks for a battle pass every other month is somewhat more appealing.

But are we really calling the shot that live-service games are a surer bet? We've got Concord and Suicide Squad uncomfortably dead in the rear-view. Sony's rapidly pulling the plug on a bunch of them before they can even get made—and MMOs are getting sent to a nice farm upstate.

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Source: PC Gamer