You may not know the name Ubisoft, but you probably know some of the company’s franchises: Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Far Cry, Rayman, Raving Rabbids, Just Dance, or Assassin’s Creed. The latter will become more well known with the December 2016 release of an Assassin’s Creed film produced by and starring Michael Fassbender.
This game developer and publisher is based in France, though it has dozens of studios all over the world. It had €1.46 billion ($1.63 billion) in revenue in its last fiscal year. According to the company, it has sold over 500 million games. Fast Company spoke with CEO Yves Guillemot about how the company embraces risk to survive. Here are the ways Ubisoft uses bold choices to operate and succeed.
Ubisoft is known for making games on every platform. The company creates titles for new hardware, seeking to find some business amongst those early adopters, usually by making a game that works to the strengths of the new game hardware.
Guillemot says: “When you start something for a new machine, there’s a big amount of uncertainty. But it’s also about maximum reward. That’s why we go early, so that we can try. If we see quickly it doesn’t work, we don’t continue to invest. But if you wait, when you want to catch up, you have to go twice the speed.”
For Nintendo’s Wii and its unique motion controls, the company made a first-person shooter called Red Steel. When Microsoft released the Kinect camera for Xbox 360, Ubisoft had Your Shape: Fitness Evolved ready. And with Nintendo’s Wii U, it had ZombiU, a game that used the hardware’s tablet-like controller to great effect.
Read the full article at Fast Company.