In Ubisoft’s most recent earnings call, CEO Yves Guillemot said he was “disappointed” with the performance of Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR (2023) and that the company will not be increasing investment in VR right now, as it awaits further growth of the medium.
As a Quest exclusive, Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR brought the franchise’s patented mix of parkour, stealth, and combat to VR for the first time. Released in November, it was well primed for strong holiday season performance on Quest 2 and the new Quest 3 headset.
During the Q&A section of the company’s Q3 2024 fiscal year earnings call, Guillemot said the VR game markedly underperformed though, which has led Ubisoft to pull back on further VR investment. Here’s Guillemot’s full statement:
“We have been a bit disappointed by what we were able to achieve on VR with Assassin’s Creed. It did okay, and it continues to sell, but we thought it would sell more, so we are not increasing our investment on VR at the moment, because it needs to take off.
We have been very impressed by what Apple came up with, and we think it’s fantastic hardware, but we continue to look at this VR business as something that we have to look at but not invest too much in, until it grows enough.”
Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR represented the beginning (and possible end) of the company’s second wave of investment in VR. The first started in 2016, which saw the release of Eagle Flight (2016), Werewolves Within (2016), Star Trek: Bridge Crew (2017), Transference (2018), and multiplayer arena shooter Space Junkies (2019), that latter of which was pulled from stores in late 2022 due to low engagement.
The studio also released PC VR space exploration game AGOS – A Game Of Space (2020) in late 2020 with surprisingly little fanfare.
Ubisoft’s more recent reluctance to develop VR games didn’t start with the poor performance of Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR however, as the company announced in 2022 that it would be cancelling its much larger second wave of VR content, including Splinter Cell VR, Ghost Recon Frontline, and two unannounced titles.
Thanks to tech analyst and YouTuber Brad Lynch (aka ‘SadlyItsBradley’) for pointing us to the news.