Ubisoft serves as a cautionary tale of a creative studio getting too big for its own good. After years of bland 100-hour sandboxes, the company is beginning to feel the goodwill it amassed in its early years start to run out, leading it to finally ask the important question: why?
Well, Star Wars Outlaws seems like a good place to start. Touted as the first open-world Star Wars game ever (debatable), its checklist of samey missions and activities was as massively inflated as its budget, and it seemed to mark a real turning point in Ubisoft’s perception as a game company. Critics and fans alike were lukewarm on the game, but far more importantly to the suits in charge, it failed to meet sales expectations. In response, Ubisoft has launched a massive internal review to find out what exactly is going wrong behind closed doors.