The problems really started when Ubisoft headquarters began interfering more and more with the studio's decisions. Because of that management pressure, a lot of the top talent just decided to leave.

Ubisoft leadership has made so many bad moves lately. They wasted huge amounts of money on NFT/crypto stuff that nobody wanted. Then they made that awful comment about how "gamers should get used to not owning their games." Even if that’s where the industry is heading, saying it out loud to your own customers is just crazy. It’s like they don't understand their own audience anymore.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UBI.PA/

Recently Hytale, a would-be Minecraft successor, released early access. That project started around a decade ago as something of an indie project, was purchased by Riot, then cancelled by Riot, then recently sold back to the original project people... who basically undid a lot of fruitless work done by Riot and... as I said... now released as early access. A well received early access as far as I can tell.

I wonder why we don't see more indie games and new developers that are more able rising to challenge what look like dysfunctional incumbents?

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know anything about that industry, but it seems like there's space to make progress for newcomers.

But the fact that their only answer to this is doubling down on the strategy that has stopped worked years ago does not bode well for them.

It might be frequency-bias, but of the companies downsizing/closing in my area I see almost all of the published explanations are blaming wages. And there can't be a really fair counter-view by the journalist because what are they to do, interview a laid-off worker at the business? I doubt someone would go on the record lambasting their former employer, but it would probably turn up the truths such as fraud or waste.

It's almost, almost like people are valuable and worth retaining.

Why, we have AI now ...

The design work was complete long before anyone working on this project was hired by Ubisoft, and proven in the form of a game that shipped several console generations ago. Ubisoft presumably still has all of the original art assets for reference.

All that had to be done was to study the original game code, port it for modern systems, and then polish up the visuals some. Not a trivial amount of work by any means, but much, much easier than starting from scratch and making a game from nothing.

This should've been a layup for any competent studio given SEVEN YEARS(!!!) to work on the project.

That it wasn't, is undeniable evidence of a AAA game development competency crisis.

Isn’t that what they’ve been doing for a decade that got them to today?

The problem is the large corporation wants to remove creativity from the process. They want a repeatable formula that they can scale and infinitely reproduce.

The wet dream for the modern AAA studio is a "game" like FIFA that has annual releases and loot boxes to gamble on to get better pixels. Call of Duty and similar games are the next best because it's user-generated content ("UGC"). They still have to invest to create maps, which they don't like doing. But you still have micro-transactions for skins so that's good (for them).

I played Assassin's Creed Odyssey a lot. Some people don't like it because it's too CRPG. That's why I liked it. They paid a lot of attention to the environment. I've heard of teachers using it to portray ancient Greece.

They managed this even though it was a little formulaic. I suspect that any future AC releases will be even more formulaic.

The one exception to this "large game studio = bad" rule had been Rockstar. The various GTA3 titles and GTA4 were widely renowned because of their social commentary and wit, as well as being groundbreaking (at the time) for open world games.

But GTA5 was a turning point for me. Yes it was a sprawling, beautiful environment but the writing was complete ass. It had none of the intelligence and insight of earlier titles. The characters were awful. But Rockstar seemingly didn't care because they're discovered the GTA Online money faucet, something I don't care about at all.

I really wonder if GTA6 will be beautiful but soulless. It coudl go either way. RDR2 was released after GTA5, after all.

These big studios really do have a habit of killing successful franchises or simply sucking the life out of them. There are few bigger fumbles than the EA SimCity fiasco. I guess you can say Civilization has maintained... something. But honestly I haven't really felt compelled to play the franchise much since Civ4.

I do miss the days when games were games not just loot box slot machines with annual reskins.