Big games are getting bigger — and so are the stakes

Ubisoft is making some massive changes to its business: As part of a reorganization, the company will focus its efforts on the big open-world games it’s famous for along with live service titles, and it has canceled six in-development games, including Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake. It’s all part of a recent trend of the industry’s biggest publishers, including companies like EA and Sony, making fewer but bigger games to avoid risk.

Under its new structure, Ubisoft games will be developed by five “Creative Houses” focused on specific genres and franchises. The previously announced Vantage Studios, for example, will develop Ubisoft’s biggest franchises to “turn them into annual billionaire brands,” including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six. Other Ubisoft studios are focused on competitive shooters, live service games, fantasy and narrative-driven “universes,” and casual games.

Ubisoft’s press release lists a lot of familiar series that will live under these studios, including The Division, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, Just Dance, and Prince of Persia, despite the Sands of Time cancellation. Even Beyond Good & Evil, the sequel to which has been in development for well over a decade, is included. But Ubisoft says that there are just four franchises that are actually new in development — and that it canceled three franchises in the works — indicating it plans to rely more on familiar brands instead of branching out. In addition to canceling games, the new structure has also meant the closure of several studios and will likely lead to more layoffs in the future.

This structure puts more pressure on these games to be successful, as shown by the catastrophic failure of PlayStation’s Concord. That game, which was in development for about eight years, was reportedly expensive to make and didn’t catch on right away. As a result, Sony took the game offline just two weeks after it launched, and a few weeks later, it permanently shut down the game and developer Firewalk Studios. Ubisoft obviously wants to avoid those kinds of fiascos, and by banking on known games and franchises, it reduces the risk of a bomb. And games that probably won’t be a smash hit, like the years-in-development Sands of Time Remake, seem like they won’t be a major part of the strategy moving forward.

“What we’re seeing is a classic risk-aversion strategy,” Joost van Dreunen, a New York University games professor who also writes about the industry, tells The Verge. “When markets get choppy, large publishers retreat to what they know works: their established franchises. It’s a rational response to uncertainty, but it comes with real costs,” he adds, like recycling proven franchises instead of developing new experiences and potentially raising prices to justify big-budget sequels. “This strategy might work for publishers with deep catalogs of beloved franchises, but it’s not a guarantee of survival,” van Dreunen says. “It’s more like buying time than building a sustainable future.”

Ubisoft’s shift is similar to what we’ve seen from other big gaming companies. EA, even before the announcement of the $55 billion deal to take the company private, had been focusing more on tentpole franchises with big online communities, like Battlefield, EA Sports FC, and The Sims. After Battlefield 2042’s rocky launch, Battlefield 6 was a pivotal moment for the series and EA, and it was also a huge undertaking, developed by multiple internal studios. That bet seems to have paid off as the game has been a massive hit, with EA proclaiming it to be “the best selling shooter game” of 2025. Like Ubisoft, EA has smaller franchises, like Plants vs. Zombies, but it has also whittled down its library, canceling a Black Panther game in development.

Sony is similarly focusing its efforts into fewer games that largely fall in two distinct groups. While Sony has scaled back its live service ambitions and weathered some failures, live service games are still a key pillar for the company — it even announced a new studio last year that’s spun out of Destiny maker Bungie. Meanwhile, Sony is also continuing to push the big-budget single-player exclusives that have become so closely associated with the PlayStation brand. Its known projects in the works include expansive single-player games that build upon what their developers did before: Housemarque’s Saros follows up the well-received Returnal, Marvel’s Wolverine is the next game from Spider-Man maker Insomniac, and The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog is hard at work on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

In Wednesday’s press release, Ubisoft cofounder and CEO Yves Guillemot summarized the problem the AAA market is facing: It’s more competitive, has higher costs, and has greater challenges, but successful games have “more financial potential than ever.” The company, like many others, is making the bet that refocusing on bigger and known brands that are released on a more regular cadence will be a more stable business. That path may prove successful, but it’s also one saddled with issues, from lost jobs to less creative innovation. The future of blockbuster games is unclear, but it will be full of familiar faces. Get ready for even more Assassin’s Creed.