Ubisoft’s upcoming open-world hacker, Watch Dogs, one of the mostly hotly anticipated games of the year, has run into a PR disaster. A new story trailer released on Thursday for the already 6-month delayed game shows the effects of noticeable graphical downgrading, sparking vocal concerns amongst the gaming community. Can Ubisoft turn it around before its too late? Of course they can, but they need to act quickly.
Watch Dogs currently ranks as the 5th most pre-ordered game in the USA, an impressive indication of the impact the E3 2012 reveal and subsequent E3 2013 showing had on the gaming world. Ubisoft’s new IP is so hot they are internally estimating global sales of a lofty 6 million units, which would make it one of the most popular titles in their library, right up there with the likes of Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed. With fans eagerly awaiting Watch Dogs’ release this May after its initial Nov 2013 date was pushed back “to take extra time to polish” the title, a new trailer was released on Thursday to ramp up the pre-release hype. Here it is:
This trailer was issued with a statement from Ubisoft EMEA senior VP of sales and marketing Geoffroy Sardin, saying: “We are extremely confident that the additional time we afforded the dev team to refine and polish the game will be more than worth the wait.”
Oops. No doubt about it, the graphical downgrading compared to the impressive E3 2012 and 2013 footage is evident. The realistic explosions, quality lighting and overall polish that made early footage so drool-worthy appears to have been removed. Some downgrading was to be expected; it’s known that publishers take highly polished code to be displayed at shows like E3, and with Watch Dogs being a cross-gen title coming to PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, and PC, compromises to the new Disrupt engine would have to be made to create a game that fits them all.
Pockets of vocal fans think Ubisoft has gone too far though, and are publicly lashing out. The following two GIFs are popping up everywhere, showing a noticeable dip in quality between E3 2013 footage and the recent gameplay. Not the kind of press you want to be dealing with when release is just 2 months away:
A noticeable difference
What happened to the awesome weather effects?
So can Ubisoft rescue Watch Dogs’ first taste of bad PR and keep it on top of people’s most wanted lists? Of course they can. It doesn’t look anything close to ‘bad’, not by a long shot. They just need to get their act together quickly. This is becoming as much a mini-study in effective PR as it is about the game, and so far the results aren’t what you’d expect from a AAA publisher.
A trailer should paint your game in the best light possible – that’s a given. The new trailer, released on Ubisoft’s official YouTube channel, looks downgraded – that’s a given too. Yet Ubisoft maintains that Watch Dogs is still as graphically stunning as the footage shown at E3 2013, as highlighted by this tweet.
@Im_render Look: Yes & Yes for blood (but not gory for nothing)
— Jonathan Morin (@Design_Cave) March 7, 2014