Ubisoft Expected More From Starlink, Plans To "Create Better Products" For Family Market

They didn't need a detective to see that this would've failed

It's a shame, it's a really fun game. The gameplay loop is satisfying and exploring was fun. I beat the game and did the Crimson Moon expansion, and it's well worth the time.

I REALLY really hope that they make a second Starlink game. Just skip the physical toys and stick to all the content in the game. They did a great job and it is unfortunate that it sold poorly due to one bad decision.

Most fun I had with a Ubisoft grind-fest in a long, long time.

Played it as a starfox game and that was really good.

The game is good looking and serviceable but personally I was hoping it would play like Rogue Squadron. I am one of the people who got it heavily discounted and I don’t own any of the toys. For a bargain bin game it’s great but I’d have been very disappointed buying this at full price let alone deluxe with all the toys.

Love the game, only play digitally though. They could have skipped the plastic bits, probably would have confused/frustrated fewer players- or parents- looking to get into it.

This strikes me as so tone deaf and a bit out of touch. I mean, its not like there isn't a history of toys to life or games that involve heavy use of peripherals eventually crashing and burning. So you go out and create a whole new IP and expect a different result?

The whole pricing and all of the necessary dlc that cost me even more really put me off from buying this game. Just sell me a complete game for a reasonable price and I will buy it.

I really wanted to get this, because I've been craving a new Starfox style experience. But then I remembered I've never enjoyed a single Ubisoft game. Even for a moment.

I hope that doesn't mean they're abandoning hardcore games for Switch in favour of kids/party games.

I think a lot of this game's demographic was (and still is) playing Fortnite, Minecraft, and Rocket League. It was far too expensive for a slightly repetitive experience.

I paid full price for it.

It’s a shame, because the game was quite fun and unique. I think launching it with toys was a mistake, even though they aren't required to play. There’s a clear stigma against toys-to-life at the moment, and it ruined this game’s chances for success.

Starlink's biggest shortcoming was using the toys-to-life crutch, especially at the tail end of the toys-to-life craze. This flaw even permeated the digital deluxe version of the game, where every time your ship blew up, you had to waste time picking another ship to fly and then finding an outpost or going back to a checkpoint to repair the destroyed ones. This problem is even worse if you're in the middle of space, where it takes long gaps of time (à la Wind Waker) to reach certain areas, checkpoints are few and far between, and outposts are basically nonexistent.

If I'm playing as Fox McCloud and I bought the digital deluxe version (essentially paying a premium to have almost all the toys in digital form), I want to fly the Arwing all the time; I don't want to be forced to fly another ship, and I paid a premium thinking I could fly the same ship nonstop. That's like forcing Captain Falcon to fly the Fire Stingray every time he crashes in an F-Zero game. The most frustrating part is that Ubisoft could patch in a change to this mechanism, especially now that they have nothing to lose by doing so. However, considering that Ubisoft won't even confirm if you pass or fail their Mario + Rabbids Community Competition challenges, I have little faith that they will fix Starlink.

When I finally bought the standard digital edition I had great fun with the game. The problem was that the game was priced stupidly high on release because of the toys to life element and the basic digital edition was one of the most expensive games in the eshop. I'm guessing the digital pricing was so high because they didnt want to lose physical sales. I don't think it was too surprising that it failed in this respect, which is a pity as it was a fun game when I finally got round to playing it.

They really expected more from this model? A model that was all but dead by the time this came out and whose peak was 5 or more years ago. If Lego combined with some significant TV/Movie licences couldn't revitalise the genre, how on earth did they expect a few random spaceships to be able to?

The sad thing about all of this is that the game is actually pretty good, particularly with the Star Fox content and had they just released it as a full game where you could unlock everything, I truly believe they would have sold a lot more and made a lot more money from it

For starters, they are idiots for cheaping out on the cartridge while expecting us to pay AU$300 or so in accessories to enjoy the full experience. I'm not going to invest in all of those collectibles if the means by which they are usable will eventually be rendered useless.

One way they can make up for this disaster is to release the Digital Deluxe Edition in physical form, negating the use of toys and containing the entire game (plus all patches to date) on the cartridge/disc. Hell, they should have offered something like that from the outset for a small premium. I understand that not everybody has the room for toys, and the dependence of the game on them would have made the game difficult to play while "on the go".

Release the Digital Deluxe Edition on cart, spruik it as some kind of special edition, and you might just have yourselves a winner, Ubi.

The full digital collection of extras is on sale in the EU eShop for £21.46 (as of 01/09/19 until 11/09/19) massive saving for a load of DLC. Recommended. This is what Ubi should have done in the first place.

The game wasn’t bad. It failed because nobody wanted another toys to life game. Unfortunately, I’m thinking Ubisoft just assumes the game itself wasn’t liked and won’t be looking to continue the franchise.

Have to disagree with most of the people that have posted so far. I found the game too repetitive & fetch-questy. I was getting bored a few missions in.

I ONLY picked up the game for the toy Arwing.. wondering if game could have actually done even worse without them?

@DanteSolablood

I agree, it was your typical repetitive open world Ubisoft game. Mario + Rabbids was much more unique and I hope they get more creative with their next Switch offering.

I think an exclusive Nintendo version would have been better with a focus on star fox. I’ve just got it digitally in the sale and I’m enjoying it so far.

I agree with @carlos82, and I'm one of many people that could have bought this long ago, but got confused by the way they implemented the toys-to-life part. I mean, it should have been mandatory to play with figures or the latter not having been there at all. I didn't understand this "you can play without after the first time" craziness and scratched it from my wishlist.

Didn't buy it until I could get the starter pack for 18,90 €. And that's because many people fought for it and gave it good opinions, despite all the bad press. So I bought the game because it ultimately is (or so they say) good, but don't care about the figures. With Lego Dimensions I was almost addicted to the packs, with a lot of great franchises involved. I almost didn't care about the game itself.

We really enjoyed the game, went straight digital and didnt bother with the toys (already went thru Skylanders and Infinity stages with my kids). But in all honestly it was obvious this was going to bomb. Hope there is an oppoutunity to continue the franchise

The toys were never my thing due to not meshing too well with portable gaming, but I never understood the complaints either - we aren't talking a console Disney Infinity here, it's a game that's entirely playable digitally if you so wish. With the general backlog of mine and the consideration to invest into the second big DLC pack first (which isn't a cheap one), my own Starlink journey is still at the beginning (but always with me because the whole thing went and installed itself to internal memory for some reason🤔), and it's a damn promising ride. Impression-wise I pretty much got my money's worth during the prologue while gliding and flying and collecting stuff and unlocking new upgrades... not unlike BotW felt worth its money within the limits of the Great Plateau alone. And there's that much more beyond.

And I still find the decline of TTL trend a bummer because it dragged Disney Infinity down with it - one of the best interactive Disney experiences which undertook what Super Mario Maker is making look cool years later - creative toolsets to let the audiences legally go to town with famous fictionverses. I also think the trend itself, given amiibos' comparative longevity (emphasis on 'comparative' in case you want to argue), might get more mileage if it likewise diversified the application beyond being a fancy collectible DRM key for a single game; I could easily picture a character figurine connecting with a kid's phone to unlock a wide array of adaptive Google Assistant-esque interactions across the board (come to think of it, didn't even game stories like that of Mega Man Battle Network play with the idea in-universe?), although I also realize this might well be a licensing and possibly programming nightmare to implement for real. ¯(ツ)/¯

The quests got so repetitive. On top of that, there's Outer Space and you hardly do anything in it. The big battles had no sense of grandeur save for the final one. And they didn't even come out with their best foot forward in terms of content.
I bought (but have no room to download and am not sure I want to play) the Peppy/Slippy/Falco expansion in the hopes that Nintendo gets the idea to make an actual Starfox game, FFS.

Ha I just bought it yesterday for $20 and I love it so far. But yea the writing was on the wall that it would fail. Toys to life was long since dead when they hopped on the scene. Bummer

@Abeedo the game itself is a must play really. They are talking about the whole videogame toy thing failing not the game itself.

Got the starter pack for £10 it’s not a bad little game. Had they gone the whole hog and made this a Starfox game and foregone the other platforms they would have had a successful release on their hands.

It's a really fun game, and one of my favorites in 2018, but they really should've seen that making the toys a big part of the advertising would put a whole lot of people off

Should have made a rabbids and Starfox game instead.

It was more of a 'Helicopter' game in the way the ships moved. Fine, but that is not the Star-fox on-rails, or Rogue Squadron-like gameplay that fans of this genre would have wanted/expected. If you can stop the momentum of your ship at any moment that takes away any real nail-biting dogfighting.

So even though it was imo still a pretty good game, there was that. But the worst they did was the greedy marketing. The 'standard' version was originally £69.99 I think, with the Deluxe at £84.99. If this company or any thinks they can price a game at more than BOTW or Mario Odyssey and expect people not to hesitate, then I'm afraid it's more fool them.

The game deserved to do well, the pricing and marketing did not.

So in my view, this game was a winner from the POV of being a clear labour-of-love by the developers and the visual and audio art teams, and a total disaster from the POV of the marketing and finance team.

The final failure was that after the initial over-pricing greed strategy not giving them the big bucks, they totally over-reacted with massive devaluing sales (in store in particular) that would make any potential buyer question the actual value of the product.

If the silly-billies had just sold a complete game at £49.99 I, and many others I'm sure, would have bought it day one.

All that Deluxe, and immediate DLC nonsense just leaves you feeling like you don't have a complete game. Who want's to pay £69.99 and still have that feeling?

DLC in my view is a way for a company to extend support and appease fans with additional content, after they have already enjoyed a **complete and full experience**. Even then some 6 month or more should pass after the games release.

I hope they learn to cut the 'clever' marketing and just sell a good game for a good price.

As they say, it isn't rocket science.

It came a few years too late. Amiibo, Lego Dominions, Disney ?? etc. market were dead when Starlink came.

This kind of market is gone. Gone like music games etc.

Honestly, the biggest problem was the marketing. It was confusing for consumers to understand what was and wasn't included with the different price tiers and digital vs physical options. I agree use this to make a sequel of sorts without toys

Starlink was good. The toys were gimmicky though I do like my Star Fox ship. An online cooperative or competitive mode would have really extended the games life.

Starlink is definitely not a family game. But then I wouldn't call it a non family game either. Starlink is a wonderful game. Its main problems are lack of pacing and a clear sense of motivation to encourage you to reach the set goals and finish the game.

Great game imo. They did pretty well making an "open-world" space game. I hope Ubisoft continues the IP, at least on the Switch with the Star Fox tie-in. It was definitely refreshing seeing something new from Ubisoft other than the usual Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy titles. Gods and Monsters looks great too.

Not console warring at all but this should have been a switch exclusive and it would have done a lot better. They killed it themselves with all the star fox stuff. It’s like they wanted it to be an exclusive but could make themselves do it.

Just like the excess of plastic instruments/games featuring them, the toys to life trend had been done to death excessively. Of course it wasn’t going to go very well. The only thing remotely successful these days is amiibo, but I expect that to go to the way side at some point down the line.

Good game, still enjoying it. Loads of content.

It's actually a good game that was ultimately held back by that over priced and over used toys to life gimmick.

Outside of that it was genuinely a solid game. I picked it up on that £10 sale a month or so back and I've had some fun with it. Definitely £10 worth.

I never even tried it.
The toy gimmick turned me off it and by the time it bargain bins so many other games have been released that it fell completely off my radar.

The game itself was really good, but they were about 10 years too late with the toys. We're over that. It's too bad to see an otherwise great game sunk by a terrible marketing decision.

I’ve finished the story line and did some additional exploring, but after 15h I was done with it. The planets were all beautiful though.

Makes me worried for Snack World if Level-5 and Nintendo follow through on the western release for that game.

My parents got me the physical edition on sale for Christmas. They knew I wanted the Arwing, lol. However, this game would have done better as a $40.00 or $50.00 budget title with no toys-to-life aspects. Still could have released character and story packs as DLC. The physical toy part was DOA.

This is such a great game. It needs to be continually supported one way or another by Ubisoft.

I am still annoyed I paid so much for the toys and have now seen them heavily reduced and what's worse is they still want me to buy the second Bundle for £40. I'd sell all the physicals and go digital if it would even get the price of the first bundle.

I bought into the hype - honestly just missed Starfox - and it's not a very interesting game - certainly not a skill shooter like Starfox.

It's a cumbersome Ubisoft open-world with copypaste mini-map objectives, RPS combat tied into a cumbersome loadout system (moreso if you opt for toys), and the whole thing just feels safe and low-stakes.

The shame is that they will miss the lesson here: Mario x Rabbids was a bold title supported by Nintendo IP, where Starlink was a bland shooter with Nintendo IP bolted-on to trick dopes like me into buying it. I'm sure there's talent at Ubi to do something unique and profitable in that underserved genre, but this ain't it.

It probably hurt to go multiplatform as well - everyone felt like they were getting the inferior version for some reason or another, and that don't fly at the prices they were asking.

Would of bought it, if not for the forced/required download

Although in all honesty I just want a proper StarFox game

Just remake Starfox 64/Lylat Wars and I'll be happy

I liked it for what I payed... But it is not something I played till I couldn't keep myself awake like Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

Those are the games that sell millions.

I almost bought this on sale on the eShop, but with two different versions, both listing additional costs for other stuff, I couldn’t be bothered working out what to buy - give me a version with all DLC and no extra costs, and I’ll be interested

Honestly they just screwed up on how they marketed this game. I think if they just released it as a full game with all the extra content just a part of the standard retail release it would have done well, but they went for this pointless toy add-on deal and the digital version was broken into DLC unless you got the version that included all of it. It's actually a good game especially on the Switch with the Star Fox content, they just did a terrible job of selling it.

Personally, I think a sequel would be great. Improvements I would like would be:

• no toys (pointless to be honest)
• more variation in missions, and perhaps an online mode similar to monster hunter?
• an store similar to crash team racing, where in-game currency earned through gameplay can be exchanged for characters, ship parts and skins

I bought it heavily discounted and liked what I’ve played so far.

It has a lot of flaws that don’t have anything to do with the game itself but with Ubisoft decisions. Not putting the whole game on the cart, forcing you to unpack the toys again once a week to keep using them without that stupid grip, not having the weapons unlock as story rewards...

The game itself is great, but the “business” decisions surrounding it were terrible.

Does it's playable on Switch Lite?

Ubisoft should have focused more of their marketing on the starship battling and StarFox collaboration rather than the physical toys. It's a shame, because the game is quite fun even if it's flawed.

@ConanLives likewise. For me it was a digital download StarFox game that I got about 30 hours out of, plus the DLC was another 4-5 hours.

They should release a Starlink expansion solely focused on MORE StarFox content. That's all they should do with the property.

@electrolite77 space shooters are most definitely big business, shame on you

People just aren't into buying a game and then buying a bunch of toys for the game. They just aren't.

Amiibo were successful because they were characters that people already liked.

The toys and strange pricing really hampered this from being successful. Ubisoft was about 5 years too late to capitalize on the toy market.

I'm hoping they see fit to light Starlink 2 someday, minus the Toys to Life of course. Though in the meantime, Gods and Monsters is looking nice.

This pisses me off bc they shot themselves in the foot. Starlink is a beautiful, fun game but bc they wanted to push the dumb toys to life thing and then try to convey that you don't need any of the toys to get all the items or even play the game no one bought it. They didn't want to deal with toys and I get that. If they just released this game without them it would have done better.

It's interesting that he phrases it as "this franchise". Perhaps we'll see more of Starlink in the future.

If they'd put the whole game on the cartridge without the forced download crap I would have bought it on sale.

I can't speak for anyone else, but Starlink was a smash hit in our house. I enjoyed it greatly as did 2 of my sons, and we ended up with 7 physical ships plus a couple of extra pilot and weapon packs. It is still being played regularly.
The CrimsonMoon expansion was great! And The Star Fox content was certainly a highlight overall but I enjoyed it enough to give Mario + Rabbids a try after seeing Ubisoft's work here.

Toys-to-life is dead, of course this was going to fail.

@electrolite77 I wont argue that they arent big business anymore, but they're still medium business on PC. A quick google search, or browse on Steam, will flood ya with them. Heck, even Switch has some now, with Everspace and Manticore (and this).

Honestly? The game isn’t bad but it’s definitely unfinished. The main story is rushed to the point they had to shove in fetch quests so it wouldn’t feel shortened. It jumps from a “we’ve located the villain’s hideout” to the credits roll screen with no proper story development. Even the open world itself gets repetitive way too fast with the same scripted enemy encounters and lifeless, generic planets.

Second, splitting the game into two different versions, and charging the absurd amount of $50 for a DLC wave DIGITALLY was a nasty move from them. Toys-to-life was proven many times before to be a bad route, and in Starlink they’re an afterthought that gets in the way of the gameplay: they have made ships extremely fragile so you would have a reason to snap parts constantly, and consequently, feel inclined to buy more and more to stay alive for longer in tougher missions.

All Ubisoft games are unfinished. I will avoid them.

I'm 53yrs old and I loved Starlink, I thought it was great fun and I hope they give it a second chance. I do agree that the toys although great and really well constructed were a bit unnecessary. Still great fun though and well worth it at the price you can pick it up for now.

The game was made by Ubisoft Leamington who I applied for a position with many years ago when they were Free Style Games. Safe to say I never accepted the position. At the time they had just released Sing Party on the Wii U which flopped and in there own words were like "It's a singing game, what did people expect".

Well Unisoft should learn to monitize their games better as what they had in this one was a 40€ experience.
For me I enjoyed what I play and I liked even more what cost me as I bought at discount for 30£ at Argos and traded it a month later for 25£ at game lol

I've preordered a Switch lite and i'm interested in Starlink. Somebody can tell me if this title is playable in portable mode? Without toys?

they doomed the game because of those stupid toys you needed to play the game nobody wants to buy those expensive toys to play a video game

As far as repetitive gameplay loops go, they work if the world is compelling enough to be fun. I’m still doing quests in Xenoblade X on the Wii U because the world is freaking amazing. Diablo 3 is probably the most repetitive gameplay loop possible, but it’s combat brings that compelling feature. What makes Starlink compelling? It obviously wasn’t toys. If the world, characters, or mechanics are good, United should emphasize those.

It was a great game, I initially passed it because I thought you needed the little plastic toys to play it. Once I learned I could play it without toys I grabbed it and had a good time. Best part was the Star Fox tie in.

Nice with a vow that they will try to "do better" rather than "hit the audience better".

This was doomed to fail, but it shows what can be done with the IP Nintendo....
Online dog fights open world space exploration, gripping story.
Dump the toys, dump the repetitive gameplay.

@Likethepear I am truly sorry

@Rez Not with the toys because you need to attach them to the controller when in docked mode. I got a cheap digital bundle and played the entire in handheld mode so methinks switch lite should play it.

@electrolite77 I loved star wars on the 32x!! Not enough to buy a 32x but enough to rent it at overnight rates for a solid week of star wars dogfights.

@electrolite77 it's a shame, I liked 1994

@electrolite77 Yeah. It's sad. Wish they were more widespread and loved. Same with mech titles. Man, I miss Mechwarrior proper.

The toys to life fatigue killed this game

Was hyped for it until I discovered that in split screen player 2 has to be quite close to player 1 if not you will be automatically teleported back to player 1. Simply annoying and game breaking for me. Played for 2 hours and sold it. I mean c'mon even Lego City allowed more freedom in split screen.