Ubisoft Exec Suggests Gamers Need To Get Comfortable With Not Owning Their Games

Game Rant ^ | 01/16/24 | DOMINIK BOŠNJAK

[BenLurkin]

A senior Ubisoft official suggested that gamers need to get comfortable not owning their games. The executive's perspective on the subject of game ownership, or lack thereof, arrived amid his company's latest digital push that saw Ubisoft make big changes to its subscription service.

Philippe Tremblay, Ubisoft's director of subscription, labeled the latest changes as the company's attempt to "evolve." In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, the executive explained that splitting the subscription offering into two will allow the publisher to better cater to its ever-diversifying customer base, which now includes a substantial number of people who are primarily interested in older releases. And while it might seem intuitive to assume that this particular demographic is price-conscious and hence uninterested in subscription products, Tremblay appears to be of the opinion that's not necessarily the case, or at least won't be true forever

Looking beyond Ubisoft, Tremblay's forecast appears to be well-rooted in reality; according to a number of recent reports, physical game sales continue to decline across the board while the industry, on the whole, keeps growing. And even traditional digital sales only work to strengthen Tremblay's perspective, as platforms like Steam and PlayStation Store have long normalized selling game usage agreements instead of actual games.

[L,TOWM]

Civ IV, Steel Panthers...

Yeah, I’m good.

[Cowgirl of Justice]

I worry about that as well and have been buying old DVDs for the past year from the Salvation Army, Goodwill and other thrift stores. I have found all of my favorite movies and even some copies of movies from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s!

I have a few hundred. Ya nevah know!

[Track9]

People opting to live in a fantasy world won’t own their stuff.. oh the irony.

[fruser1]

I never had any interest in doing games online.

[Political Junkie Too]

That's okay.

I just took the dust off of Bruce Artwick's Tower from 1995. I'm running it on a virtual Windows XP machine in Oracle's VirtualBox.

That was after putting aside Silent Hunter III from 2005.

-PJ

[KobraKai]

Bfl

[Bernard]

My wife likes Scrabble. I like Risk. no on-line; just set up the game board and the pieces, and you’re ready to go. Just make sure you put all of the pieces back in the box when you are done.

[wally_bert]

I’m a Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam player sometimes and every so often a vintage Monopoly game version I like on CD.

Every few weeks I will play them a little.

[Major Matt Mason]

You will own nothing...

And you vill eat ze bugs - Klaus Schwab.

[FrankRizzo890]

I’m very familiar with that guy! I was thinking Ubisoft STILL doesn’t understand that there will most likely ALWAYS be piracy, and that SOMEONE will figure out a way to cut them out of the picture.

[Political Junkie Too]

I got sucked into Civilization IV (another 2005 game) last year, but my laptop had to be reimaged and I haven't reinstalled it yet.

-PJ

[wally_bert]

I also have a few legacy MS flight simulators that I should install sometime.

[Jonty30]

It is taking me forever to finish Diablo I l, because Im trying to get all characters to level 50m

[Eagles6]

Actually, I did get 1 or 2, I think...and then I did the math and tried to stop it, which was, virtually impossible.

Then, at my Dad's suggestion, just wrote Addressee No Longer Lives Here, on them and gave them back to the Post Office😜.

[Revel]

Al the newer games suck. They can keep them. There were better games on SNES and Sega Genesis than there are on the PS5. At least from a fun factor. Modern youth don’t know the difference.

[Jotmo]

Much of the industrial software is going the same way. Subscription only.

[LegendHasIt]

Klaus Schwab and the WEF approve.

Pretty soon, you won’t even own the hardware. You will have to make a down payment on it equal to what would be the purchase price, and then pay a monthly lease on it.

[Shoefus]

Same with me for music. I own hard copies of anything that I love.

[The people have spoken]

Same as the software industry. It used to be that you could buy MS Office and it would be fine until you wanted to upgrade. Now you need an annual subscription to MS 365. For occasional users like me, that’s not going to happen.

[Justa]

It’s not a down payment. It’s rental of a specific Virtual Machine platform to run a particular game. The VM is tailored specifically to run that application and is maintained 24/7 to do so. Everybody competes equally.