Ubisoft's brand has been struggling in recent years, but with the current plans for games like the rumored Far Cry 7, it looks like the company might be getting serious about fixing its image. While Ubisoft has some great games under its belt, it's also become synonymous with an arguably misguided approach to iteration. The freshest ideas presented in early entries of franchises like Assassin's Creed have largely been diluted over time, and the strongest new concepts can end up buried under a focus on monotonous scale.

That isn't to say that the games are just getting worse. On the contrary, I'd argue that the past few years have seen meaningful improvements across Ubisoft's titles, and the publisher's willingness to delay Assassin's Creed Shadows resulted in a game that was in surprisingly good shape by launch. Shadows might not be enough to restore interest from former fans who have already sworn off Ubisoft games, however, and that's where the company's next steps might become critical to ensuring its relevance for years to come.

Ubisoft Is Delaying More Games

Assassin's Creed Shadows Was Just The Start

A lot of Ubisoft's slate is currently hazy, but thanks to a new fiscal report available on GlobeNewsWire, we now have some direct confirmation that 2025 won't be especially busy. In a statement provided alongside the earnings figures, co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot stated that Ubisoft has "decided to provide additional development time" to flagship productions, resulting in a concentration of "significant content" in the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years.

"Additionally, after a review of our pipeline, we have decided to provide additional development time to some of our biggest productions in order to create the best conditions for success. As a consequence, FY2026-27 and FY2027-28 will see significant content coming from our largest brands." - Yves Guillemot

This isn't quite the same as the Assassin's Creed Shadows delays, which pushed a hard release date twice while the launch was close at hand. Major projects like Assassin's Creed Hexe and the next Far Cry game have little to no details publicly available, so Ubisoft isn't having to renege on previous release date promises. Additional development time does mean that internal targets are changing, however, and this could affect the vague 2025 windows that were confirmed for Anno 117: Pax Romana and the mobile titles Assassin's Creed Codename Jade and Tom Clancy's The Division Resurgence.

Far Cry 7 Will Be The Product Of A Different Ubisoft Environment

Things Are Changing Within Ubisoft

It's currently anyone's guess as to which Ubisoft flagship will release next, but whichever one it is, it's going to have a very different set of circumstances along its release than preceding Ubisoft games did. In addition to the expanded development cycles, Ubisoft also recently announced a major change in structure, creating a new subsidiary that handles Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six with Chinese holding company Tencent as a minority stakeholder. The earnings report provides a minor update on this situation, reporting steady progress toward a closed transaction by the end of 2025.

When the next entries in these franchises do start to roll out, Far Cry 7 may be the best litmus test for how things have changed. The last Far Cry title released in 2021, and its tepid critical reception indicated mounting fatigue with the repetitive nature of the series. While Far Cry 3 is still fondly ed, an over-reliance on its formula in subsequent titles has led to diminishing returns, and frustrating decisions like Far Cry 5's tendency to punctuate its gameplay loop with random kidnappings and generic shootouts make any changes hard to appreciate.

If Far Cry 7 releases in 2026, it'll need some major shake-ups to re-energize the franchise. The five-year gap will only raise those stakes, but the extended development time that Guillemot is promising for major works-in-progress could be a great opportunity to punch up the experience. Assassin's Creed Shadows' changes were all happening with the finish line looming, and pulling back to recalibrate before the next Far Cry entry has even been revealed could move the focus from emergency fixes to more fundamental design improvements.

Ubisoft's Next Era Is Its Most Important

Far Cry 7 Is Poised On The Pivot Point

No two people are likely to have the same opinion on when exactly Ubisoft fell off, so to speak, but by the mid-2010s, you were certainly seeing a mixed bag of experiences. For my money, things bottom out around the end of the 2010s and beginning of the 2020s, with even the better titles mostly feeling like lesser versions of things that came before. In 2023 and 2024, games like Assassin's Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and Star Wars Outlaws started to incorporate new ideas, and while the results have been mixed, it does feel like an upward trend.

From an optimistic perspective, the last few years have been a period of coming out of a tailspin, but none of that will matter if the next slate of games can't chart a confident course forward. Far Cry 7 could invoke the genuine chaotic opportunities of Just Cause, tell a story that rises above juvenile punchlines, or fill out a world with a more bespoke sense of exploration. It could also, however, just be another Far Cry. Either way, it may be the benchmark that determines whether Ubisoft is capable of truly redefining itself.

I don't know how much faith I have in Far Cry, and as far as personal enjoyment goes, I'll probably get more out of Assassin's Creed Hexe than whatever Far Cry has to offer next. These are massive, expensive projects, though, and Ubisoft needs to capture audiences that go beyond the most loyal franchise acolytes. If Far Cry 7 does nothing to win me or other skeptics over, it might herald the end of the road for Ubisoft rather than the dawn of new possibilities.

Either way, I'll certainly be paying attention, as Ubisoft's make-or-break moment didn't start and end with Assassin's Creed Shadows. One of the biggest gaming juggernauts is in need of reinvention, and it may be stepping back to do just that. Assassin's Creed Shadows reminded me that Ubisoft can still make fun games, but Far Cry 7 could determine whether it's capable of anything more.

Source: GlobeNewsWire