Had a different, and totally reactionary blog I was going to post but changed my mind and couldn't delete it, so I'm changing it.
I'm sure you've all heard of what Ubisoft is doing with The Crew and not allowing any reviews until launch. It follows what they've been doing with their games for awhile now and is completely wrong.
I'm a fan of the Assassin's Creed series, always have been and likely always will be despite some bad games and questionable moves. But honestly, before AC I don't think I played a single Ubisoft game. It's safe to say that Ubisoft's successes can somewhat be attributed to luck, and so it's kinda frustrating to see that they have become way too big for their own good to start pulling such B.S. moves.
Microtransactions in games? Nothing new, but still annoying. UPlay, I don't notice problems with it on consoles, but it has to suck for PC gamers. Poor PC ports? Inexcusable. But highly restrictive review embargoes? Totally wrong.
Ubisoft, you're asking for people to pass on all of your games because they'll believe that the games are broken at launch. You are showing little to no faith in your games and asking us to trust you. What kind of fools do you take us for?
I suppose that we do slightly have ourselves to blame, as these things wouldn't ever happen if we stood up to the publishers, but even still this is just completely wrong.
Ubisoft is also excelling at flimsy excuses, with the latest being "we want reviewers to experience the game with other players and not just other reviewers." Ok, so then make an open beta at the same time you give out review copies and open the game to everyone that way.
You're tanking Ubisoft. You'd better shape up because the attitude surrounding you and your products is already in the toilet, you don't want it to be flushed.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
"I suppose that we do slightly have ourselves to blame, as these things wouldn't ever happen if we stood up to the publishers, but even still this is just completely wrong."
I put the onus on the game reviewers and so-called journalists. It's their job to take these publishers to task, and each time they make excuses or brush it off as if it's still a consumer issue to solve.
It wasn't the consumers who reported on Aliens Colonial Marines, it was morally bankrupt games media. Consumers only went out and bought what they thought would turn out to be good based on the hype generated by the fools who manage the platforms that dictate what gamers know and don't know about an upcoming title.
The Crew? It looks completely mediocre to me; not even a game I would buy to pass along a lazy Sunday afternoon.
It's likely the reviews will reflect this, but how many game journalists will consistently point out that the game wasn't so great even in the preview builds they've played?
Thankfully Ubisoft spilled the spaghetti all over themselves by making a blog post that explicitly states that there will be no early review copies. Simply put, they've made the choice for a lot of consumers, which is a good thing.
And yeah, I agree that Ubisoft is tanking. They cluttered one too many games into a release window at one time and now the lack of quality is beginning to shine through with their rushed titles. They're reaping what they sowed.
There should be a minimum review embargo of one day. Blocking the publication of reviews until release date is unfair to consumers; it prevents them for getting insight on the product that interest them.
It's funny too with ubisoft, Assassin's Creed Unity had post launch embargo and it turned out to be a buggy mess. Far Cry 4 the embargo lifted a week before launch and it turned out to be a pretty good game. The crew has a post launch embargo again and judging from the beta it's gonna be bad. So basically if ubisoft makes the review embargo to be post launch they aren't confident in the game and they know it's not very good, if they don't have a crazy embargo then they feel good about that game.
Moral of the story, if ubisoft enforces a post release embargo then even they think the game is below average.
As far as a regular customer of the industry can go, all future Ubi💩 games of interest will be shopped at the GameStop used rack. The Crew, eh, not bothering with that game at all. Next time I walk into GameStop and see AC Unity in the used Xbox One section I'll definitely buy it as Assassin's Creed games are usually really good.
First, I don't believe in review embargoes. I believe a review should go up any time after you provide a copy of the game to review or whenever a person can get a copy of the final release game. I don't like this attempt to control who says what and when in order to sway the public. It's wrong. That's just my opinion.
Second, if you ever need a blog deleted, let me know, DragonKnight.