Ubisoft to cut on licenses

Movie tie-ins are often considered to be a stab at creativity. Nonetheless more and more games are based on movie licenses nowadays. Our colleagues from MVC learned that Ubisoft is now planning to cut on those costs.

Almost every publisher does it: obtain a license on a popular asset (upcoming movies, television series, etc) and generate at least one game based on that license. Despite the fact that the underlying movie or series often performs well, the games however are often sold at a meager level. One of those examples are Ubisoft's recently released Avatar-games.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has now told investors that the company knows licenses involve taking a risk (especially on movies released around Christmas). With the latest sales figures on Avatar however, Ubisoft decided to reduce the level of investment in such licenses. The company won't move away from them entirely, but their focus will transfer to their own brands.

We'll leave it up to you to decide whether this is a good example or not. On one hand, this allows Ubisoft to put more efforts in original titles and release pressure on the release of games at the same time (due to losing the restrictions from the planning of the tie-in movie). On the other hand it'll be harder to reach the target audiences as the movies often sell themselves.

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