GodsAndMonsters

An Ubisoft press release detailing the company's financial targets and release schedule for 2019-20 suggests that its multi-platform open-world adventure game Gods & Monsters has been pushed into the next financial year.

Originally announced for release on 25th February 2020 (as the official website still indicates), the wording in the report describing the initial financial targets for 'fiscal 2020-21' states that the decision has been taken to "increase development time for Gods & Monsters" as well as the non-Switch games Watch Dogs Legion and Rainbow Six: Quarantine. These games "will all now be released in fiscal 2020-21", according to the report. The timing isn't more specific than that, but it seems that the launch has been bumped back by at least a couple of months, potentially more.

According to the document, the disappointing performance of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint has caused the company to reevaluate its approach and lineup for the coming year. One of the reasons for the game's underperformance noted by Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot is that Breakpoint "did not come in with enough differentiation factors, which prevented the game’s intrinsic qualities from standing out."

Guillemot continues:

We are tackling these issues head-on and already are implementing significant changes to our production processes. We are confident in our capacity to adapt and evolve, as we have done successfully many times in the past.

In this overall context, we have decided to postpone the releases of Gods & Monsters, Rainbow Six Quarantine and Watch_Dogs Legion until 2020-21. While each of these games already has a strong identity and high potential, we want our teams to have more development time to ensure that their respective innovations are perfectly implemented so as to deliver optimal experiences for players.

A general fatigue with Ubisoft's open-worlds led to the Assassin's Creed franchise taking a welcome break from its annual outings and coming back stronger than ever with 2017's Assassin's Creed Origins. From the sound of things, a similar malaise might be affecting other games in the company's roster.

Ultimately, we're happy to wait until the game's ready. There's hardly a shortage of stuff to play on Switch, but there will certainly be people disappointed to see the game getting delayed. We'll keep you posted when more concrete release date details emerge.

Were you looking forward to Gods & Monsters in February? Had you forgotten all about it until you saw this headline? Let us know your thoughts on the state of Ubisoft below.

[source ml-eu.globenewswire.com]