Ubisoft Says Star Wars Outlaws Failed Due to Declining Interest in the Franchise
Last year, Ubisoft released one of its biggest open-world games, but it did not achieve significant success, despite the help of the Star Wars brand. Although Star Wars Outlaws generated some excitement, it failed to gain widespread popularity and ultimately became one of the biggest disappointments for the French gaming company in recent times.
In fact, the game even contributed to a drop in Ubisoft’s stock prices. During a recent shareholder meeting, Star Wars Outlaws was mentioned again, and Ubisoft’s CEO, Yves Guillemot, gave an unexpected reason for why the game failed. The shareholders wanted to know what the company had learned from the game’s poor performance.
Ubisoft Explains Why Star Wars Outlaws Failed
While the CEO admitted that Star Wars Outlaws had design issues, he attributed the game’s failure primarily to the overall state of the Star Wars franchise.
He said, “For Star Wars Outlaws, we didn’t reach our sales targets. The game suffered from a number of items. First, it suffered from the fact that it was released at a time when the brand, the brand that it belonged to was in a bit of choppy waters. And the game had a few items that still needed to be polished, and they were polished and debugged in the early weeks, but it did affect sales volumes.”
These comments are particularly interesting because, just last year, Ubisoft blamed players’ expectations, stating that with the current challenges in the market and gamers expecting extraordinary experiences, simply delivering solid quality is no longer enough.
He further explained, “We did heavily improve the game by troubleshooting and debugging, as I said in those early weeks. And when it is released on upcoming consoles, such as the Switch 2, it will have a new version. The improvements to the game are not finished, and we will continue improving it.”
Even though the franchise’s inconsistency remains a valid concern, Star Wars Outlaws was far from a polished release. The game was filled with bugs, had poor animation, and lacked overall refinement.
MP1st’s review of Star Wars Outlaws gave it a score of 6.5 out of 10, stating, “If I could sum up what Star Wars Outlaws is, it would basically be a massive fetch quest, that while looks pretty and manages to capture feeling and look of a Star Wars, is ultimately hindered by its repetitiveness, barebones gameplay, and lack of polishing.”
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Nah, it failed because the main character was boring and the launch version was a broken mess. If this starred Han Solo, Lando or any other cool smuggler, it would have done much better. Also, if the third EA Jedi game came out or Battlefront 3, those would have sold millions of copies in the first week. Star Wars games sell really well, just not the one Ubi put out.
Starring a popular character wouldn’t have fixed the game dude, you’re overestimating the amount of people that actually cared about who the main character is. A broken game is a broken game.
The loud minority is still just the minority, and as always the SW fans crying about that kind’ve shit is ALWAYS the minority.
i mean you keep saying that, but star wars keeps failing. so maybe the loud minority is actually the majority and you just dont want to believe it
Where’s it failing at? Except in neo fanboys brains cuz it’s not straight white and male enough. Is everything a smash no but it’s far from failing.
Buzzword, buzzword, buzzword. It objectively failed, not subjectively. it wasn’t a good game and that’s it. No reason other than that. And if it was a decline in the franchise how come battlefront two had a record breaking resurgence?
Most SW series failed on D+
The only two that had any viewers were Andor and Mando (though the last season of Mando lost a lot of viewers when they started to focus too much on Bo-Katan)
Even shows like Ahsoka didn’t bring in many viewers but the star signed a 2 year contract and it was literally cheaper to produce a second season than pay her contract out.
It isn’t just SW that fails on D+ though… Marvel shows mostly tank as well.
The problem is D+ had a higher sub rate from women age 18-30 so they make shows they think will grab their attention, sadly when you hyper focus on a single group like that not only does that one group not tune in but nobody else feels compelled to watch either.
Sadly you are mistaken. The protagonist can make or break a game, we’ve seen it happen many times before. Yes, the game was a broken mess at launch – but all Ubi games are released as a steaming pile of shit. Nobody cared about the game pre-launch and that was a big problem. Nobody was interested in playing as the protag we got, we heard there was a smuggler-centric SW game coming out and got our hopes up that it would star either a known character or at least a character with the same charisma as Han or Lando. But no, the moment we saw her speak it was clear the main protag was as charming as soggy cardboard. Nobody wants to play a game where they can’t connect with the protag. Even if the game is actually fun, it can flop because all interest is lost in the preview stage.
Thats what happens when you make starwars gay
You’re what happens when your mother drinks too much alcohol while pregnant.
You’re what happens when they close the asylums and let blue hairs walk the streets with normal people.
No, it’s what happens when a company makes a bad game. Your pathetic homophobia has nothing to do with it.
Go woke go broke.
*screams in incel*
Hey, don’t worry man. I’m sure you’ll find someone eventually. Not really relevant to the conversation though.
There is no conversation, just some right wing loser parroting what they hear in their talk radio bubble of idiocy.
You sound mad that your ugly female lead didn’t sell so well
Just some left wing devs putting blame outside their own incompetence.
The easiest cop-out when you don’t like the points someone is making: say they aren’t making any points. Its not real, pay no attention to the arguement behind the curtain!
No one likes Gay star wars.everyone loves regular star wars. You came to the wrong place to defend it.
Cute theory except Star Wars has never been more popular or made more money. It’s also never been better. With the exception of Empire Strikes Back, Disney gave us more good hours of Star Wars with Andor alone than Lucas ever did. Sit down and stfu incel alt-right.
Yeah how did the acolyte go? How did the sequel trilogy come out? How did anything besides rogue one, andor and mando work out for the company? Oh, not very well. Mando, Andor, Rogue One, the ea jedi series and battlefront 2 are the only decent star wars products in almost twenty years. But back to what he said – people prefer normal star wars, not gay star wars and they intentionally made acolyte gay if you listen to the director and writers interview and it crashed hard. Starwars bounty hunter was peak bounty hunting on GameCube. Runner up is bounty hunter class story on starwars the old republic mmo.
Yeah we get it everything not straight white and male is bad. Acolyte was cool and if they had to lilly white leads you dorks would have loved it. The sequel trilogy while a cluster fuck behind the scenes and making it, still made boat loads of money and didn’t really bother anyone except you neo fanboys that bad. Def could have been better but SW fans have hated everything new damn near since ep 6 came out and I’ve even read reviews from then that crapped on RotJ ffs. Not everything is a smash hit but 99 percent of the time it doesn’t deserve the hate it gets especially from you amped up internet goofs. Y’all ruin fandom. Find new hobbies..
Just reflect on your own fabrication of the people you are talking to, Jesus, get off the internet and smell some fresh air of reality.
You have a very, very low benchmark for quality if you think Acolyte was good…
I watched Acolyte and tuned out after 3 episodes like most other viewers. It just really sucked and felt like I was watching a Teen Nick series from the 00s… The writing was HORRIBLE and the acting was shit. Disney throws so much money at their series and yet cheap out on the writers for some reason.
Even mando got wrecked when they milked it beyond the initial scope, wonder why.
That last season where they focused too much on Bo-Katan was terrible…
Amen…to bad this site seems to pander to the neo fanboy Tate bro cuck incel brigade.
Who hurt you as a kid? Such fanatical hate, i thought only radicals spoke with such fanatical retoric.
Picking the cherry in a sea of rotten tomatoes is also a quality.
It failed because it’s Ubisoft, I have a bunch of Publishers on my blacklist for consumer hostile business decisions, Ubisoft is one of them…
The sad part is investors will eat this up and believe it. “It’s not that we’re making bad games nobody wants to play, it’s that the IP we use isn’t good anymore!”
This is the same investor meeting where they also said micro transactions makes games more fun and gamers love them.
Gamers do love mtx. Anyone that says differently is a liar and a poser. Numbers don’t lie and the industry make tens of billions of dollars off of microtransactions and pay to win mobile games every year. If it didn’t they wouldn’t exist.
How ridiculously ignorant. If given the choice between “push this button and pay x for x thing” and “push this button and get x thing for free” which do you think is going to be more popular, you clown
Yes mobile and games like FIFA. But as EA found out with Battlefront 2, it does not work for Star Wars.
Star wars battlefront 2 has a huge comeback, many people start playing again after years. It’s actually a great game!
Which is why the entire gaming community was excited about overwatch 2 mtx decisions and didn’t like overwatch 1 play to earn structure right? Wrong. Gamers do not love mtx. Gamers still scold Bethesda and the oblivion horse armor for starting the mtx plague in 2006. Idiot kids and rich incels love mtx. Gamers prefer earning unlocks rather than paying for shit that should be available in paid games. Zero Gamers like mtx in games they’ve already paid for. Free to play is different.
Investors are actually smarter than that. They pay attention to when stuff like BF2 gets a resurgence, I wouldn’t be surprised if right now there were behind the scenes talks of a new BF game getting started once Battlefield 6 comes out.
Will Ubisoft ever take responsibility for their mistakes?
No it failed because Ubisoft has lost its touch.
Some would say one of their problems is too much touching.
Battlefront 2 making a huge resurgence begs to differ. Bad and sometimes even mid games don’t get played even if they have a powerful IP backing them because people do not possess infinite time or money to waste
Nope, microtransactions make tens of billions a year.
Sure Ubisoft, sure.
I hate your guts Ubi and I’m not buying anything from you anytime soon, just like I haven’t bought anything from EA in 13 years.
You could have got my attention had the game looked great and not an awkward clunky mess and not had a disgustingly ugly version of a beautiful model you chose to put into the game. YOU….. ARE….. DONE.
I’m straight up calling you a liar on both Ubisoft and EA. I guarantee you’ve bought games from both companies when you said you didn’t.
Doesn’t change the fact that ubisoft is falling under over their shit sales and mass player boycotts. Ubisoft is failing in real time quarter after quarter. Because of shit games like this. The dude you’re calling a liar very well may not be lying. Sales numbers prove it. Bad earnings reports prove it.
Lol so they won’t learn from mistakes and the next game will be just as bad if not worse. Ubisoft used to be one of my favorites. Now they are one of my most hated. I only paid for a mont subscription to Ubisoft plus, less then $20, to play the game and still felt like I wasted my money
Meanwhile Star wars battlefront 2 has the most concurrent players since it’s came out it’s not a matter of no interest it’s a matter of not being interesting
Unisoft say alot of things
Ubisoft say alot of things
Everyone is to blame but Ubisoft huh? I guess dragon age veilguard failed because the franchise isn’t popular right now? No, that, just like Outlaws failed because of the poor quality writing, poor quality design, intentionally ugly character and woke rubbish shoved down our throats.
Only right wing incels care about how attractive a videogame character is and there’s not a single woke thing in Outlaws for any intelligent human being.
Only left wing imbeciles would be too proud to admit when their belief system is no longer relevant. No one wants a ugly female lead. Pull your head out of your ass but you probably like the way it feels.
He’s probably one if those Queers4Palestine fools that spouts nonsense and protests yet will never go to Palestine because his queer ass will get lynched by the locals.
I think it’s funny that games with hot lead female characters (ie: Stellar Blade) outsell games where the female lead is a troll.
No, get back to reality. Im a european leftie pretty much a commie in the eyes of umericans. I do care about the looks of my mc and it bugs the hell out of me if they dont have the right look for the setting.
Now that was not the big issue with outlaws. The issue is that they cared about sending a msg more then making a fun game.
Look at expidition 33, thats what Ubisoft employees could make if they were allowed to make games instead of propaganda
I’m obese because people cook good food
How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man
Oh really a declining interest. Yeah no who ever thinks that is clearly a idiot. Like come on this game had so much potential but we get stuck playing as a lame character. They should have given us the option to make our own character male and female options. Some of the combat animations are questionable and should have been thought about, the gun combat is weak, there should have been a better cover system. The story is not all that exciting, just getting the chance to explore some star wars world is a fun idea. If i could somehow get a triple A game company id make sure it was a better game and not a quick cash grab. Company’s need to switch to making good games and not just worrying about getting rich quick.
Oh, I’m a poor little alt right incel and I don’t like girls. STFU and grow up, you loser.
Loser says what? Seriously, can someone explain why leftists will champion someone saying that they want to see someone who looks like them, as long as they are a minority or female, but as soon as a white guy says “hey, how about you let us design the main character?” all these confused children suddenly start shouting “incel!!!” Both sides suck, and if you can’t see that, YOU are factually the problem. Every game should allow you to design your own character, it’s 2025, let’s stop “playing games” so that we can start playing games without any stupid politics involved. And seriously, grow up, child.
Idk man, incels as a general demographic are usually left wingers. Same with keyboard warriors like you, usually living in their mom’s basement
The only reason i didnt play it was when I learned the only character I could choose to play as was a ugly butch lady.
Then you’re a sad loser in life.
Cause and effect, folks, cause and effect.
Is dude trying to get fired? He sounds utterly clueless. Meanwhile battlefront 2 is having a huge resurgence, something about it being a quality game and nothing to do with “franchise interest”
ubisoft made over two billion dollars last year. I doubt anyone is getting fired.
And yet had to go begging for $7 Billion dollars in emergency funding from tencent you get a solid F- in Business dumbass
The game fails to embrace more RPG qualities. Skills are developed but not until they get unlocked as some mission based event. While on the surface this allows a different order of events to provide a unique play thru, it ultimately limits a player’s experience.
The IP is what got me to buy the game, and the star wars backdrop is what kept me playing despite the bugs. But about 80% of the way, stopped for a newer game and haven’t been back. It was definitely the gameplay itself that lost my interest. Not Star Wars.
Typical CEO blaming away their shortcomings. UbiSoft makes great looking games, yes, but this one lacked vision for the overall experience.
The game failed because people know Ubisoft games. Ubisoft is the spirit airlines of gaming.
Ubisoft blaming there customers yet again for a Mediocre game, bet you half the development teams ideas where shot down, and the project was most likely rushed, executives clapping at graphics but not focusing on actual gameplay and Stealth Shooter / RPG Fundamentals. Big studios ruining the Star wars IP with there mediocre rushed slop expecting millions just for the name alone.
I enjoyed it even with the launch issues, most of which are gone. Outlaws is not a bad game by any measure.
Knew it you’re on ubi payroll
No its not. Its a buggy mess without any choices. Streamlined and lacking in combat mechanics.
There is no freedom, the bikeing is reqlly aweful, the animations are klonk, the gameplay is childish and mostly the story and dialog is at the level of an elementary school kid. Its barly a functioning game.
You gave us flat a copy and female character and played it safe with her and still lost. I think the game takes place around the the same time as the war of the bounty hunters arc in the comics, but I don’t think the game touches any of that. This particular time of the Star wars timeline was ripe full of interesting things, Everyone fighting for Han Solos body, Crimson Dawn goes to war with the Empire, A dark Scourge takes control of billions of droids across the galaxy, first it comes for the metal, then it comes for everything else. If Kay doesn’t die in this game, she may have died to the Scourge like a month or 2 later. If they wanted to give us a good story, the comics have already did their job for them. I’ll wait till the game is on sale and is dirt cheap.
Yeah blame everything except realeasing a buggy, boring, mess that no one enjoyed playing. These companies are so out of touch it’s unreal.
So many people were hyped for the game despite the issues. Does ubisoft even know it has a reputation for just copy pasting crap and pushing out sub par games now?
I rememeber when the studio was synonymous with amazing games. Now it’s just cookie cutter garbage that performs even worse than you’d expect cookie cutter garbage to do.
It failed because it looks like every other ubi game. Generic open world and buggy.
None of my friends play ubi games, and their response seems out of touch with what gamers actually think
Stop making garbage
It’s a genuinely good game, Ubisoft really just messed up it’s release extremely hard.
From issues with Ubisoft Connect to game mechanics at release that didn’t make any sense whatsoever.
The failure of this game was nobody’s fault except theirs. It didn’t have anything to do with anything else. Not the protag being female, not a declining interest in Star Wars, not because people thought Kay was unattractive, but because Ubisoft themselves screwed it up…
But if course they won’t take responsibility for that. Who am I kidding?
It’s been the best Star Wars game since KOTOR, maybe Fallen Order, you all on crack
Its worse then yoda stories
It bombed bc it was very generic and boring after a few hours. No one wants Star wars anymore?? That’s the only reason I bought the game. I’ll just replay Lego Skywalker.
The game did not fail due to a lack of interest in star wars, at the time several star wars games where released in or around the same time, the only issue is that what Ubisoft provided wasn’t as good as they pretend it was, it was a horrible, boring and outright thoughtless story that failed to hook the audience, the gameplay was a significant downplay from its advertisements and it suffered from significant issues related to quality control. A lack of star wars interest may have played slightly but in the end, from day dot Ubisoft simply failed to deliver a product that pleased fans or brought any form of interest to itself
The declining interest in star wars stems in part from a decline in trust in those controlling the franchise, who seem to value spectacle over substance.
The nerve of this clown!Ya it wasn’t us it’s just Star wars isn’t popular anymore🤣 That’s some Serious delusion. How about this you were trying to panda to a certain audience with your character who was okay at best. When the obvious choice was there in front of you the whole time with the most well-known smuggler in all of the galaxies han solo! But once again just like your answer for why the game didn’t perform up to expectations you are full of delusion again and thought you could make up some random character with a boring backstory and no actual ties to the franchise and would just knock it out of the park?? Stop thinking you’re smarter than everybody else and just go with the formula that always sells!! It’s not that hard to sell anything Star wars they have a rabid fan base that will always support this franchise. There was many other issues with the game itself but I’m not going to get into writing a novel. How about just owning up to your mistakes and try to trying to blame the franchise that has proven to be a winner over and over again until you touched it!
Well, if you scroll through these asinine comments, you’ll see that a lot of emotionally-immature, basement-dwelling dudes just cannot stand the idea of playing as a woman. Women won’t touch them, so there’s a lot of anger and spite when it comes to the idea of women being the main character (and why they childishly scream “woke” whenever an actress takes lead). I honestly think that’s a big reason why the game didn’t meet its goals.
LOL if a game is gonna cost as much as outlaws did and be considered made for next gen consoles, it’s reasonable for players to expect a WELL DONE game with exquisite graphics and dynamic character development and story telling. No, it’s NOT enough to have just an okay game anymore. Not at $80+ a pop. The company is so out of touch with its players and so tone deaf in their comments it’s preposterous.
ngl i am bored with star wars and probably wont watch any movies or shows. or play any of the games. the spell is broken and now it all just seems silly. way to go rian johnson
I think it really suffered because it has no replay value.
People want good star wars game with as much of characters to choose to play, also coop and a lot more planets to explore.
Outlaw was just boring from the start.
Developers should do more research what players actually want and not just quess.
Yet again big game company execs that haven’t a clue about what gamers want.
Says it’s because it isn’t what gamers want because Star wars is failing as an franchise.
Despite Battlefront2 making an huge resurgence of late and people screaming for the 3rd installment, sans P2W
People screaming for Squadrons 2
People wanting an open world moorpg like Galaxies.
Instead we get outlaws, which wasn’t terribad but was lacklustre and buggy AF.
That actually is the reason I didn’t buy it. Disney killed my interest in Star Wars.
Not saying it didn’t have bugs and whatever else people are saying here (haven’t played it) but just personally, he hit the nail on the head for me.
Its the players
No wait its the franchise
How about, not putting the cause elsewhere? I like me a good star wars game, this wasnt it.
No, I bought every star wars game in the past decade except this one. I am a grown up man and I won’t play games where I am skinny teenage girl. From what I heard, at lunch the game had serious issues, the character seems boring and interesting, I bet the script was terrible too. I want Knights of the Old Republic revival. It’s 21 century let me create my own character.
It failed because of a terrible launch using an engine that was prone to constant crashing on some platforms and it was a copy and paste assassins creed/avatar engine game. I still enjoyed it, through the mountain of issues that I had and they’re were a lot of parts that could have been better. Ubi need to get those act together and stop saying things like “first open world star wars game” when there were others.
No, it failed because it’s not a very good game.
I thought the biggest issue was. The problem was, I think their product was a 100 bucks for the base game. I think I know that turned me off for sure. I don’t want to know nothing about the game and eventually, we’re be playing on gamepass that much was, certain
No, the reason is super simple but these developers are too short sighted to get it.
It’s not just original film characters people want, it’s not that they care about gender or race…
They want Jedi. Or Sith, too.
They want the Force power fantasy and the lightsaber mystique. Blasters and droids are ok, but they’re not compelling.
Yeah, non shooter games like X Wing and RTS like Empire at War don’t need that, but if you make an FPS or RPG and you dont have playable Jedi you are handicapping the game from the get go.
I dont care how many of you here might say “oh, but that’s not me.” That’s irrelevant. There are millions of gamers out there who aren’t coming here and giving their opinions but DO feel that way.
Look at Star Wars Galaxies and what happened when they finally introduced Jedi…it’s what everyone flocked to play.