A whole new open world.
Ubisoft+ has just launched on Xbox. And yet, people are actually wondering why it’s a separate thing since they’re used to the Game Pass ecosystem.
The reality is that it does not, in fact, come bundled with your Game Pass subscription. It’s a separate subscription service that will run on multiple different platforms that support it via a single subscription (so, for example, your subscription on Xbox is also good for use on PC or any other platform Ubisoft+ is available for, same login across the board). Among the currently available platforms are Xbox (natch), Amazon Luna, and PC through Ubisoft Connect.
That said, it also comes with a cost: $17.99 / €17.99 / £14.99 per month. And, more importantly, this is just for Ubisoft games, a much smaller catalog than Game Pass. Even more limited when you consider the number of games they’ve been shutting down or delisting simply to avoid server costs. Most are noting that the lineup simply isn’t there for this price.
Me personally, I can count the number of Ubisoft games I’ve bought in the past 5 years on one hand, and they aren’t exactly the ones they’re known for. Though admittedly, they do have a (small) number of games available on the service that I’ve wanted to play (that I don’t currently own). That said, the list is still roughly a 7th to an 8th of what Game Pass offers (depending on whether you’re playing on console or PC). It’s not surprising that potential users feel like Ubisoft is trying to put the squeeze on them here.
The deal gets a bit worse when you consider that a small number of these games are also currently available through Game Pass (no idea on if Ubisoft will “rectify” that situation): Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Far Cry 5, For Honor, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Immortals Fenyx Rising, Rainbow Six Siege, and Watch Dogs 2. There are roughly 65 listings for Ubisoft+ on Xbox and while 8 games may not be a lot, it’s still nearly an 8th of their list.
As for why they decided on this course of action, Ubisoft+ director Philippe Tremblay said the following to GI.biz:
We haven’t necessarily seen that this market has reached the maximum opportunity here. It’s still fairly new across the board that we have subscription offers, even from Xbox or other partners out there. I think the key point – as we see in many other industries – is the content being at the centre of what the consumer wants. That’s what we are putting forward with Ubisoft+ again, it’s the great content we have behind. That’s the point of differentiation that we bring.
Philippe Tremblay
Personally, I’d disagree; what we’re likely to see soon in the subscription market is the same issue the television/movie streaming market is currently experiencing. By fragmenting this market further, users will start to pick and choose what they subscribe to a bit more carefully; it’s hard to justify paying $10-$20 per service for things you’re not actively using every day (in other words, the business plan for all of these subscription model services), and that gets even worse for games, where the content in question often runs much longer than the 30 minutes to 2 hours shows and movies usually run. This is the sort of market that shifts dynamically, and drastically, the more entrants there are.
Currently, while Ubisoft+ is on PlayStation, it has a much more restricted catalog, that will presumably open up at some point in the future. It’s still a very hard sell over simply buying the things you actually want (possibly on sale), versus paying over $200 a year for a lot of games you may not play or get around to playing.
Source: VG 24/7
About Author
