RIP, PC: How Ubisoft Managed to be Wrong and Right

Between their always-on DRM scheme and the continued practice of bringing most of their biggest franchises to consoles first and foremost, there’s a lot of dissension toward Ubisoft from the PC gaming crowd lately. And those are the very reasons behind this new editorial on VG247 that seeks to point out why Ubisoft has fallen from grace, but might yet make a splash with their free-to-play MMO titles:

Triple-A PC gaming is dead. Done. Over. Six-feet under. Now, it’s important to understand that I’m referring to triple-A gaming in the traditional (perhaps even colloquial) sense. Specifically, I mean $50-$60 price tags, physical retail copies, glitzy hype-driven marketing campaigns, and one-time paid-in-full (finished) game releases. Piracy, of course, is holding the smoking gun, but perceived inaccessibility’s at least helping bury the body. As such, Ubisoft saw the writing on the wall and reacted accordingly. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier’s silent stroll into console-only territory, I believe, is the culmination of that.

Logically speaking, it all checks out. Here’s the problem, though: for far too long, Ubisoft misread the writing. It thought it saw a platform on its deathbed and chalked everything up to (piracy this, piracy that.) In reality, PC was (and is) experiencing some particularly excruciating growing pains. It’s evolving, and evolution as humanity’s lack of super lungs that process all polution and Superman skin that deflects bullets will tell you doesn’t happen overnight.

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At this point, hardcore PC gamers need to be convinced that games releasing under these new business models are worthwhile just as much as publishers need to be convinced that PC’s worth developing for. But if publishers won’t give it their all, consumers won’t pay attention. Instead, PC gamers will continue to feel like they’re getting sloppy seconds while console players enjoy big-budget feasts served up on silver platters. And then we’ll be right back at square one, with companies like Ubisoft saying, (Well, clearly PC gamers don’t want to spend money on these games) when, in reality, the content they’ve been offered hasn’t been worth the asking price.

Obviously, Ubisoft’s hardly the only guilty party here. PC gaming’s transforming in a big way, but many hardcore PC gamers still pine for the past, back when big-budget retail games were made nay, forged with their beefy rigs in mind. So it’s time for big publishers to put up or shut up. Bring out the big guns. Give us something with the impact, scope, and craftsmanship of a Battlefield 3 and the business model of a Ghost Recon Online.

As long as Ubisoft keeps the Heroes of Might and Magic and Settlers series exclusive to the PC, I will happily put up with the online requirement. I feel sorry for those people who have previously enjoyed the publisher’s action titles on PC, though.