It's a Ubisoft game. It may not be unplayable but its probably in a terrible state which will render it unplayable for some people. All Ubisoft games seem to ship this way to some degree. Every game I can think of I've played from them was barely functional at launch.
I have not had that issue, and I played a lot of ubisoft games day 1, their issue wasn't bugs, but the slow but steady deterioration of game design quality, and the increase of "the message".
They could reverse course and it would probably work. We've seen course corrections make a difference previously. The character design for Sonic in the film is one example. Games have often made a comeback after being significantly reworked. it would probably go over well with fans and actually make money. The problem is, this would probably delay the game by a couple of years as they remodel game assets and change out the main protagonist, record new voice lines, rewrite the bullshit story and so on.
They did reverse course for Ghost Recon Breakpoint and it worked out for that game, but because they did it post launch it didn't help sales of the game, which is likely why we haven't got a sequel.
The return on investment for doing that likely isn't there. It might cost them a hundred or two hundred million dollars to retool the game and rework it into the game audiences actually want. They are probably better off just Willowing the thing or bringing it out and getting some money for it even if its well below expectations.
I think you are overestimating the cost, I think 99% of the game would be OK as is, they need to do new VO, which is scraps based on how much voice actors are paid, redesign a few missions, but that's about it.
Not to mention, delaying the game for a significant amount of time to rework it is akin to Ubisoft acknowledging they made a mistake and are delaying the game to fix it. I don't think they are willing to do that for a variety of reasons.
Well they just delayed it to 2025 February, is that a significant time? Yes, but not enough for a full rework and protag swap, and they are also not acknowledging the problem. Which would be key to get back into gamer's good graces.
I think it will bomb, but not like Concord or Dustborn did as its an Assassin's Creed game. There will be people who will buy it on that basis alone. However, I think it will the worst Assassin's Creed game by far in terms of fan reception and sales. I also suspect that it may end up being the biggest flop for Ubisoft this year, though Skull and Bones will be tough to beat.
I think Mirage already underperformed for them, and it was what the fans supposedly wanted (not me though).
The "game journalists" like IGN etc. are largely irrelevant. People have caught onto their bullshit and can easily spot a shill when they see one. I don't think gamers put any stock in their opinions anymore than people listen to movie critics.
They still have a lot of followers unfortunately and while they can't mobilize normies to buy outright repulsive games like Concord, but they might be able to sell them an AC game. IGN has been nothing but the marketing department of big publishers for a very long time.
Over the years so called "game journalists" have become increasingly disconnected from audiences. We've seen how this shakes out in the movie industry too. All my life film critics have largely been divorced from the opinions of the public but there were a few people that hung on the words of the few honest ones out there. But I don't think that's really been true in the era of review aggregator sites and Youtube commentators that aren't afraid to express their opinions one way or another.
I wouldn't be so fast to trust commentators either, they have a tendency of playing into ongoing controversies. Many of them just take the prevailing sentiment and run with it not even bothering to look into it personally. And their followers take everything they assert as fact.
We've seen critics praising absolutely ****ty films and TV shows while audiences trash them. The filmmakers and reviewers claim its review bombing but viewership numbers where we can get them don't lie. People see how bad this stuff is and simply don't go see it. We are seeing the same things in the gaming industry with Steam DB showing us the player figures for some of these abysmal games.
Critic reviews were ever unreliable. I haven't trusted game reviews since printed magazines, and I quit buying those after 2002
Reviewers sucked on the non-binary trouser sausages of Firewalk Studios and gamers didn't buy what reviewers and Firewalk were peddling. They didn't show up to play the game. The 25,000 copy sales figure is probably overly generous as I'd bet anything that those are physical copies bought by distributors and sold to retailers. The actual player numbers are more consistent with an actual sales figure that's probably no more than 10% of that supposed 25,000 copies figure. Dustborn sold dozens of copies at best, etc.
I'd love if Concord heralded the end of woke gaming, but I'm not so confident, I think this is not the pendulum swinging back, it is just experiencing some resistance for the first time. So I expect a doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on the message in the near future.
