Ubisoft has been listing so bad recently that it needed an investment from Tencent to stay afloat. It has missed the mark with several recent games, not to mention being beset by scandal. So when CEO Yves Guillemot fielded questions about the performance of Star Wars Outlaws, might he or his company take any of the blame? Nah.
Game File published a report on the meeting with the CEO saying “We didn’t reach our sales targets. The game suffered from a number of items."
One of those items was that “the brand that it belonged to was in a bit of choppy waters.” I'll be the first to admit that not every Star Wars project is great. But these brand problems didn't hurt EA's Jedi Survivor. Its mobile title, Galaxy of Heroes is doing well. Heck, even Star Wars Battlefront 2 is experiencing a resurgence in popularity.
Now to be fair, Outlaws got caught up in the same racist maelstrom that plagued Assassin's Creed Shadows. None of that is Ubisoft's fault. The Star Wars of my child had more people with blue or green skin than brown skin, and both George Lucas and now Disney have been working overtime to change that.
I was excited to see Kay Vess, a character portrayed by actress Humberly Gonzalez, front and center in this story. I hope we still see this character in other projects, even though Outlaws didn't hit its sales targets.
I also hope that when not in front of a microphone, Ubisoft's executives understand the role their floundering company played in this game's shortcomings.