The last few days have been some of the most difficult in Ubisoft‘s history. The company has seen its stock drop below ten euros, a near-tragic loss of value caused by the poor performance of Star Wars Outlaws and the delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. However, these were not the only bad news shared by the company. Their other big project for 2024, XDefiant, a game that started off strong but has been forgotten just a few months after its release.
A new opportunity for XDefiant
In an investor call that took place as an extraordinary meeting, company officials confirmed that XDefiant was underperforming. “The revenue from the second quarter of our fiscal year reflects lower-than-expected sales of Star Wars Outlaws. We are also below expectations with XDefiant. We will provide more details on this in October,” they explained. To have the full context, you should know that October is when the company will release its financial results for the first half of the fiscal year (April 1 to August 31).
The news is not particularly surprising and comes after leaks indicated, at the end of August, that the game was struggling to reach 20,000 concurrent users across all platforms (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and PC). This situation is especially concerning considering that XDefiant will soon have to compete with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. The competition between the two games is direct since this project was conceived as Ubisoft’s alternative to the CoD series.
XDefiant Season 2 premiered on September 25… without much fanfare.
While it cannot be said that the game was immediately at risk of closure, Ubisoft has now confirmed that this is not the situation they envisioned when they launched the title last May. Especially considering that XDefiant was a huge success in its early days. However, the inability to address community feedback gradually led to its current problematic state. Surely Ubisoft has bigger concerns, but the failure of a service that could have been a new Rainbow Six: Siege (in terms of revenue for the company) must not sit well within the company.
Why do I say XDefiant has a second chance? When stocks that were once valued at 100 euros drop below 10, companies reconsider their decisions. In Ubisoft’s case, one of the changes they have announced is that their PC games will now also be released on Steam. The company had abandoned this store for their recent releases, only publishing titles long after their initial launch. In this sense, the possible appearance of the shooter on the Valve store (although not confirmed yet) opens the door for the company to be back in the eyes of the users.
During a ‘slow’ weekend Steam accumulated more than 36.3 million users.
Releasing XDefiant on Steam would not be a magic solution, but a second chance. The Valve store has been breaking user records every few days in recent weeks and at its peak was serving 38.3 million users at once. Such exposure could resurrect any game. Additionally, the title becomes more accessible. I’m not the only one who, when unsure what to play, looks at their Steam library rather than Ubisoft Connect. In this sense, and although it’s not a guarantee, a new attempt is more than what most projects have.
As for whether the game can make a comeback, it will all depend on them addressing their issues. The foundations of XDefiant were very solid, but the technical aspect was lacking. Hit registration issues led to too many frustrating experiences, its ranked mode is the worst I’ve ever tried in terms of matchmaking, and there were barely any incentives to progress in the game. If they fix these three things (and I know they are working on it), the in-game experience was actually very good and the gameplay had everything it needed to succeed.
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