The French publisher has announced the number of players its free-to-play FPS has attracted since launch, which is good at first glance, but the game’s model means it should be maintained.
Yves Guillemot, CEO of the French publisher (who also recently revealed that remakes of several Assassin’s Creed games are planned), revealed on the Ubisoft blog that XDefiant has reached 11 million players in the five weeks since launch. But it’s a live service title, so while that may be a good start, if the game doesn’t expand and grow with the audience, it will jump ship and the product will cease to exist…
“We need to continue to listen closely to our players and make informed decisions about where to focus our efforts, because if you can be successful in GaaS [game-as-a-service], you can be successful in the long term. Let’s look at XDefiant. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but it has attracted 11 million players in a short period of time. And that number will grow with all the work the team has done to make sure that Season One adds a lot more to the existing experience. It’s about making the right decisions and sticking to them. Aside from the fact that it’s constantly being updated, with different experiences and tweaks to the gameplay, I’d love to see it as a serious e-sport. But really, there’s no limit to the future for a game like this. And we’ve got a fantastic team on it that listens to our players and communicates with them, which is so important. We’re off to a strong start, but there’s still a long way to go, and I’m excited to see us rise to the challenge,” Guillemot wrote.
Tom Henderson wrote about XDefiant that it was the fastest Ubisoft game to reach 1 million players. It’s still in the pre-season 1 phase, with the first season starting on Tuesday. That’s when the GSK faction from Rainbow Six Siege arrives, three new maps (Daytona, Clubhouse, Rockefeller, one every month), ranked starts as usual, but also Capture the Flag mode and new progression rewards.
Time will tell if the demand is there… but if there are too many Live Service games on the market, not all of them will stay afloat.
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