Ubisoft’s post-earnings call last week heavily featured pre-orders, and it seems that things haven’t been going as expected by the video game giants.
When asked how the pre-orders are coming up for their upcoming uber hyped Watch Dogs 2, CEO Yves Guillemot said, “We do consider that preorders are important, but they are not completely crucial for the success of the game.”
Ubisoft pointed out that they don’t really consider pre-orders as good reliable indicators of the game’s performance as they used to in the past. One major reason for that would be the customers being aware that scarcity is not an issue anymore. With digital downloads becoming more prominent, they don’t need to locate a physical copy even if they decide to buy a game on launch day.
The executives also mentioned that pre-orders can vary from game to game. For instance, Far Cry 3 didn’t have a lot of pre-orders because people wanted to see the reviews before actually spending money on the game. Similar was the case of Rainbow Six Siege, which didn’t do quite well at launch, but grew to be a huge game thanks to the devs spending the time to improve it.
Ubisoft is currently anticipating heavy sales for their upcoming title Watch Dogs 2, set to release on 15th November on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and 29th November on the PC.
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