According to an exclusive with VGC, Ubisoft is shaking up the editorial team which is basically an advisory board handling upcoming games (thanks, GI.biz). In the article, it states chief creative officer Serge Hascoet will maintain his position as head of the editorial group; however, he will be given a larger team to help advise on the company’s game portfolio in order to make sure the games are more varied. The company believes costumers feel there isn’t enough to differentiate one game from the next. An expanded editorial team, it is believed, will combat this, giving Hascoet a larger group to work with. Instead of just a few franchise VPs, the teams will extend to seven. Each will be assigned a franchise and given more autonomy allowing them to make independent decisions on the direction of the game they are leading. According to a source speaking with VGC, the reason many of Ubisoft’s games ‘felt the same’ was due to the ideas of only “one or two people” getting put into the games. This new report follows one from November which stated Ubisoft was changing the approval process in order to find more unique games and move away from homogenization. Some of this stems from lackluster sales and reviews for Ghost Recon Breakpoint. According to company CEO Yves Guillemot, there weren’t enough “differentiation factors" from the game’s predecessor, Ghost Recon Wildlands. The Division 2 also sold below company expectations. Another reason blamed for both game’s underperformance was difficulty in generating interest for sequels to live multiplayer games, especially when “prior iterations” benefited from years of optimization. Ubisoft said in the future it would ensure more time would be allotted between iterations of its live games.
