VR fans hoping for Ubisoft to invest more in the space will be disappointed to hear that the company is not planning to increase investment in VR games following disappointing sales of its most recent VR endeavor Assasin's Creed Nexus VR.
During a financial Q&A to discuss Ubisoft's third-quarter sales for the 2024 fiscal year, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot responded to a question from a caller who asked what the company plans for VR development due to the recent hardware releases, most notably Apple Vision Pro. Guillemot revealed that Ubisoft does not want to invest too much in the VR market due to Nexus VR's sales.
"We have been a bit disappointed by what we were able to achieve on VR with Assassin's Creed," Guillemot explained during the Q&A session. "It did ok, and it continues to sell, but we thought it would sell more, so we are not increasing our investments on VR at the moment because it needs to take off."
Guillemot also noted that Ubisoft was "very impressed" with Apple's new spatial computer that launched last week, however the company is not going to expand more on VR development, saying that it will continue to "look at but not invest too much in, until it grows enough."
Assassin's Creed Nexus VR was released last November exclusively on the Meta Quest headsets. In our review, we said: "Assassin’s Creed Nexus is an impressively complete Ubisoft game, even if not all those parts stick the landing in VR."
However, it is not Ubisoft's only attempt to dive into the market as the French-based publisher has produced several games for virtual reality headsets. In 2017, Tom Clancy's developer, Red Storm Entertainment, released Star Trek: Bridge Crew for PSVR, PC VR headsets, and the Meta Quest. Additionally, Ubisoft released Space Junkies in 2019 and Transference in 2018, the latter of which supports VR and non-VR formats. Ubisoft has also developed virtual reality experiences, like Far Cry VR: Dive Into Insanity and Escape The Lost Pyramid.
Unfortunately, Ubisoft's confirmation of not further investing in VR is not entirely surprising. During an earnings call in July 2022, the company announced it had canceled a VR game based on Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell franchise. Like Nexus VR, it also would have been exclusive to the Meta Quest headsets.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
