Ben-DutkaIt came as a surprise when Ubisoft announced the Watch Dogs delay.
Originally set to launch in the fall, it was supposed to be a launch title for next-gen systems. And as the game had received a tremendous amount of hype, the delay got Ubisoft plenty of bad press.
But Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter says in fact, it was the right thing to do. Speaking during the latest Bonus Round episode , Pachter said he "admired" the publisher's decision to push back Watch Dogs :
"Their stock got hammered. The management got criticized. And that franchise matters; it sounds really good. And if it doesn’t work, it’s a big waste of time and waste of money. So I’m hopeful that that six month delay makes that game great. But I think that was headed for disaster."
Well, if the game was going to be disappointing, they definitely made the right decision. It always sucks when a title is hyped through the roof and ends up falling well short. Besides, it's not like we didn't have other games to play for the holiday season, right? Here's hoping Watch Dogs ends up being a legitimate Game of the Year Contender.
Related Game(s): Watch Dogs
Hmm… what sticks out most to me in that statement is the "I think". Yeah, the extra time gives Ubisoft more time to polish it and get it working as they want it to, but he really has no evidence that it was "headed for disaster". It's a groundless statement. I can't help but think that it was delayed in attempt to boost its eventual sales.
Someone from Ubi already said that they were confident that, had it released at Gen8's launch, it would have been the highest scoring title, so there is confidence in the product there. But let's be real. In general most of a game's sales come within the first six weeks of availabilty and Watch_Dogs had a lot more hype as a Gen8 title than a Gen7 one; more so than any other game. People would still have bought it for the PS3/360, but because of the public perception of it as being a game for the X1/PS4 it sales would have been severely impacted by that, mostly because of the comparatively low availability.
TL;DR: Reasonably certain Pachter is full of c**p, as per usual.
I think it was a missed opportunity. Unless the game was broken/unplayable due to an 11th hour find of a major glitch, "polishing it further" could've been done in a next iteration of the game, or even a patch if it wasn't that big of an issue. They have lost a lot of the hype momentum they had, and would have released in a not-so-crowded field if released at launch as promised. If anything, I would think that the 6 month delay puts at least some doubt in the minds of hard-core gamers about the game itself (it's not like it only got delayed by a few weeks or a month or two); I'm sure there are people that would argue that they'd rather see the publisher "get it right," but we're talking about an unproven new IP for which we've only seen some in-game footage of and promises of what one can do in the game.
I just don't like the idea of "well, it's good enough to ship, so let's polish it later". No no no no no! Bad developer! Better to wait until a game is actually and completely finished to ship it. Sure, there will always be tweaks to be made. No one can test in-house as well or thoroughly as hundreds of thousands of players in the field. That's just reality.
But to suggest shipping a non-finished game (and risk a low metacritic score)? Too risky. Shouldn't happen. Especially with a new IP. Ubi did the right thing here, IMO.
Last edited by Norrin Radd on 1/27/2014 12:03:56 AM
I think it's a conspiracy, this will pay off in the end.
haha… another DNF of this scale would be epic.
IF, thats a pretty big assumption to make though.
the expectations of this are through the roof though so hopefully for once this will meet them.
nice to see a big game releasing in june as well if the rumors are right, normally big name game such as this either release in march or may or wait till at least september.
come on ubisoft, release this in june, and watch it sell 10M copies!
we REALLY need to dispel that myth oh so badly!
I think GTA5 would have over shadowed it if it launched last year. Only because it is an established franchise.
I'm glad they delayed it, gives them time to make it really special.
I'm having a hard time getting interested in this game. Running around a city while a gazillion little pop-ups appear on screen allowing you to do different things…meh. Just seems hard to imagine how that's going to translate into a fun gameplay mechanic. I mean if there actually were a gazilion different things you could do, it would be impossible to keep track of it all in your head. So the options are to A) rely on a few basic things you do over and over (which a lot of games already have) or B) have a bunch of one-time-only things that make it all seem like a guided tour.
But who knows.
And I admire Pachter for made a living from making BS statements.
I remain convinced that the game was ready to go and delayed for other reasons. If a game is troubled enough to be pushed back by 6-8 months then that would be obvious enough that they wouldn't wait until the month before launch to announce the delay! It would have cannibalized sales from Black Flag so they moved it back to a less crowded part of the calendar. When it sells well (and based on what I've seen it very well may) the unhappy investors will be happy again.