Following Horizon: Forbidden West Controversy, Ubisoft Reiterates Far Cry 6 Is A Free Upgrade

Knowing ubisoft they probably were planning to charge $10 until they saw the Sony backlash

@UltimateOtaku91 What is your reasoning behind this comment? Ubisoft doesn't charge more for their games, their games are already large and they offer tons of DLC, they have a free Ubisoft rewards program that gives players free items for completing objectives... So i am confused on why the hate for Ubisoft? Especially since they make some of the best games around.

@OliverOwen just seems like they are using sonys backlash to gain some good will, also they used to make some of the best games around until they ruined assassins creed and they use the same formuka now for all their games, you played one far cry you've played them all.

And for the record I don't hate them, they made immortals Fenyx rising which was one of my favourite games of last year

Great to hear and as it SHOULD be, until we completely leave the previous generation behind.
The Sony defenders will of course see no problem with paying ($10) for their first party current gen upgrades, for the rest of us- well done Unisoft.

@BBB ah I see I didn't realise that beforehand, but yeah my comment was mainly aimed at them using the whole commotion to get in some good will

@BBB that or a fyi as gotta remember most consumers do not visit gaming sites or look up gaming News. Some customers may think that all games now require a 10.00 upgrade for any game.

This sure is a far cry from what Sony wants to do

Kudos to Ubisoft 👏 what’s worrying about Sony’s position is that after Horizon FW they still intend on charging you £/$10 to upgrade your game. On top of this if you are lucky enough to have a PS5 then they want to charge you £70 for first party games. Both of these moves are very greedy on Sony’s part.

Got farcry 3 on pc yesterday it's currently free on ubisoft connect

You know you're doing it wrong when Ubisoft is publicly mocking your shady business practices.

Ubisoft was on the fence with the whole $70 thing and Yves refused to answer the question when investors posed it if they'd be changing prices, last year. They've intentionally stayed on the sidelines watching where the winds blow with public reception. They're in a unique place with their pricing. Sony/EA/Acti/2K's just raising the price $10, but Ubisoft sells $100 bundles with a DLC pre-sale of their games to those "core" fans at launch, so it may do more harm than good for them to alienate casual customers by raising the base price. But rather than feeling like gouging, they pretty much always offer really good value for the DLC money with those bundles where the DLC can be like new smaller games.

Ubisoft can end up with the ideal model though we mocked the "Gold Editions" when they started. Still have affordable prices for the masses to buy their games, but sell super premium kits to the core/day 1/"I want to support multi-billion dollar publicly traded corporations as their sugar daddy" folks, but those kits actually offer excellent value.

Sony and parts of the industry want to normalize the old Nintendo/Sega "generational consoles" structure, while also moving to PC architecture. They're going to use their industry dominance to set the tone that that kind of charging is "normal" even though anyone in the PC (and now Xbox) space knows it's not. Hopefully MS can recognize that and bring their considerable marketing money into creating a fight against that for their own good will (and ultimately benefit the industry.) After all the upcoming big-tech streaming services aren't going to charge you to "upgrade your games" unless they sell "premium graphics" subscription tiers. But even those will eventually have to roll the old into the new.

@UltimateOtaku91 Remember when people were upset at Sony for using Microsoft's backlash to generate good will?..... oh, wait, everyone praised it...

I don't get al the upgrade defenders on pushsquare. You buy a game for a certain eco system not specific hardware tier. Getting the best performing version of a title should be a given.
Didn't enjoy the last farcry that mutch so will skip this one. But I kudos to ubisoft for doing the right thing.

@agito1987 There's a definite difference in mindset depending on your gaming history. And a definite difference in mindset on Push Square versus other corners.

For history, any old form console gamer, particularly ones that stuck only with Playstation or Playstation/Nintendo the idea that "each console is its own complete ecosystem that lives in a bubble and has nothing to do with any prior or later console" is so ingrained in some that the idea of a game improving with a hardware upgrade just doesn't exist to them. A different box is a whole different software library. Back in the day it was always a totally new architecture. People stuck with that mindset.

Anyone who spent much time as a PC gamer knows, you upgrade your video card, you get better graphics. Period. That seems normal to us, and anything else seems like a return to 90's cartridges.

Mostly I think long-time console-only (especially PS/Nintendo-only) gamers tend to not "get" that these consoles are now PC architecture, running PC parts, with a PC distribution model, and PC norms really need to apply. That's the whole reason publishers wanted them to go that way.

From the business perspective there's also the "used game" issue on consoles that isn't on PC....they want the first buyers to pay for all the future buyers. There are times when I kind of wish matrick actually got his way. I was massively against it at the time, but in hindsight, we could have kept game prices lower, almost certainly, but monetizing the used market. It was Gamestop that created the merchandized used market where the publisher gets no cut of full retail sales. That's why prices went up to $60 back in the PS3/360 era according to the industry of the time (not "inflation"...)

Push Square seems to also have a higher than average portion of commenters who feel the need to "support the devs" by paying the maximum possible amount for a game. It's a weird notion that these massive, public corporations need "support" beyond consumerism. Indies, sure, but EA and Sony are not indies. If they need you to "support them" then surely you should demand higher prices at Walmart to "support the local retailer." Weird mindset where game customers see themselves of patrons of the arts, looking to find more ways of throwing money at the artisans like it's a non-profit charity. Plenty of people complaining about the prices too, but there's definitely a higher portion of customers citing "support the devs" there than PXB or NL that I've seen.

I kind of expected that more from Nintendo fans, where I assume they're mostly the Apple crowd. But I see it more from PS fans. I get the impression there's a greater collection of wealthier people in that circle, as Sony tries to promote itself as premium and attract that crowd. Though that crowd has never represented their success in the video game market, so I'm not sure how it'll play out long term.

@NEStalgia I get what you’re saying. But all 3 push for digital. And in that context I don’t think this is something we should support. People that support it so vocally are the reason I get to pay more as well. I have been fortunate enough to always own all systems. So its not like all my chips are in one basket. But the greed from the big players with re releases, remasters and now next generation upgrades. Is just based on wanting more, the dev costs are covered in your initial sales. But that’s just my 2 cents.

But like I said I get the points you mention, & do understand why people defend it. But this whole subject is more about people defending big companies & not what would be best for them as a consumer.

@NEStalgia you talking about the used games scenario? And yeah everyone but xbox fans praised it and now the roles have reversed. Sony need to change their policy permanently ASAP and reduce game prices otherwise they will go all gen being branded greedy and anti consumer

@agito1987 Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree with you entirely. I just mean the mindset is so different I think in the community as to why it's perceived so differently.

I can understand the used game fee. Matrick went about it the wrong way. But what "broke" the industry is, really, GameStop. Used games weren't a real problem for the industry until GameStop bought up nearly all independent dealers and then moved their model to push their trade/used program FIRST. They made it their primary busines to move customers into the "commercial-used" group, meaning the primary retail sales of the primary store, moved to netting zero return to the publishers, and guided customers AWAY from new purchases into the used loop. Worse, they started opening new games at wholesale price, and selling them used as first sale preetty much completely denying a huge profit channel to publishers. GameStop's greed and arrogance broke the whole industry of physical games circa 2005.

Yes, the publishers are greedy now, but that's why there's so much hate for the used games market from the industry and so many weird monetization schemes around it. And what Matrick was hamfistedly trying to handle (badly.) It was mostly a "fsck Gamestop" maneuver.

But now it's going the other way and they're taking those schemes to the max to monetize entirely.

@UltimateOtaku91 A lot of the PS4 launch, the used games, the "for the players" sloganeering, the indies program, everything was designed as a big finger in the wind to ride the air MS blew. And it worked. And it reeled me in same as everyone else.

I don't think "xbox fans" were really praising it at the time. Everyone hated it for the most part (though in the above, in hindsight I wonder if it wasn't as bad as it seemed.) "xbox fans" jumped ship to Playstation in droves. I mean how many were really left until 1X/S? I argued with the few remaining XB fans on NL that MS was done and wouldn't have a next console, lol. Boy was I wrong. That was pre-Phil though.

Yeah, I don't see Sony dropping prices. They seem bent on doubling down on them. I don't think it's 100% their own greed, technically, I think they, as the biggest platform sat in their dark, smoke filled rooms with EA, 2K, Acti and decided they were going to group power-play for new pricing. I still think HzD and their reluctance to raise prices on PS4 indicates they're unsure though. If they were REALLY sure, they'd just be charging $70 across the board for these new games. They never promised PS4 games would forever be $60. So that they're not charging it tells me they're not really confident in mass acceptance of that pricing. They just know the whales are on PS5, and hope to normalize the prices by the time everyone else catches up.

To me, it comes across a lot like "If some players like cheaper games, we have a console for them. It's called PS4." I'd like to think they'll hit a tipping point and drop prices, but it seems almost impossible now with the formal $10 upgrade program. People will go along with it for the next 7 years, while looking over their shoulder at the greener (pun intended) grass over at Xbox where everything looks cheaper. When they go to preorder the PS6 vs Series Z.....sales might look interesting.

@Originut Thanks!

Yeah, I had a 360 and a pretty good library on it, but skipped the X1 wholly at launch. I watched that E3 and as a PS3 and 360 owner (who was jaded against Sony after they compromised my CC and made a living nightmare for me with their lax network security) my sale was anybody's game, and I wanted to lean toward MS after that. I just laughed for days after the Call of Doggy demo, and preordered 2 PS4's minutes after the "this is how you share games" and $399.99" announcements. Laughed at "the highest quality pixels anyone has ever seen" when MS teased the X1X. Then kind of got impressed the next year with the formal 1X reveal, and ended up owning one by that April. Then re-bought half my PS4 digital library on it.

I definitely agree with digital and incentivizing it. I think the problem with that is retailers. They can't undercut their retailers. Retailers don't pay $60 per unit sold, they pay wholesale price. Maybe $40, maybe $50 depending on if you're Amazon or Bob's Computer Games. So every copy the sell on PSN/MS Store nets them significantly more profit than a copy sold to Best Buy. They could easily offer us wholesale pricing and it literally wouldn't affect their bottom line at all.

But, they can't undercut the retailers. They need to keep an environment where the retailers have the net normal price. Meaning the digital store has to always cost the same or more than retail MSRP other than promo sales. Which makes it kinda useless.

I think that's where things like Game Pass, and the included discounts, etc shake things up. It's a way of outcompeting the retailers without directly breaching contracts or earning their wrath. BUT, Sony's playing greedily and not trying to work around it and extend promotions, as much as possible, either.

Because everyone else's comments were so long, I thought I'd post this, which says nothing...

@NEStalgia PS owners behaviour has always come across and sycophantic brand loyalty to me.

Where their contentment is tied directly to how well Sony is doing as a company. So "supporting the devs" or as I call it 'throwing your money at a Sony' directly feeds their emotional needs.

@Richnj LOL, yeah, there's a lot of that. It's utterly bizarre. I think there's more to it than purely bolstering a corporation to satisfy their emotional needs, though. Almost a vanity. An idea that oneself is important and monied, and these handcrafting artisans depend on oneself to sustain their art and existence. Apple tries to tap that, too. I assume these are people that buy handcrafted yard art (read: rusty metal bits) at a boutique in Greenwich Village for high premium.

@Originut I can't imagine the result of the case comes down to ending the walled garden. I'd love to see it, but I can't imagine it enduring. But, I think if it comes to that, the idea of it being a general computing device will be at the center, so games consoles could get a pass.

I definitely think the idea of "walled gardens" needs to be evaluated, though, from a legal standpoint. The idea of multiple platforms existing as closed monopolies, especially as retail is winding to an end for software and moving all digital, we have each of these products locked to a particular store and only that store, with no hope of competition. That both changes and breaks the whole of the industry, and raises a lot of legal questions. When the competition requires a physical hardware purchase to engage with, there's a lot of legal gray areas there. Especially as we hear from indies and the like that Sony, for example, basically invites you to participate in sales, you can't choose to run a sale, etc, you have to wonder how any walled garden makes it out of anti-trust consideration entirely.

Ubisfot acting all ubihard...naaaah, I'm joking, I'm joking. Paystation has become the epitome of video game greed.