Ubisoft bringing its franchises to virtual reality early next year
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2015 commitment lands at the start of the first VR content race: months later, Sony said it expected 50 PlayStation VR games by end of 2016 and locked up a Star Wars Battlefront exclusive, making launch-lineup depth the metric every platform holder was chasing. Ubisoft is positioning its existing franchises as the fastest way to fill that gap rather than building new VR-native IP.
First-order effects
- Ubisoft diverts development resources from its established catalog toward headset launches whose install bases are still unproven, betting franchise recognition can carry early VR sales.
- Platform holders gain a marquee third-party publisher for their lineups just as Sony sets its 50-game bar, raising the cost for Microsoft, whose own VR story remained rumors of an Xbox-compatible game from a well-known European studio.
Second-order effects
- Once Ubisoft proves its franchises sell on headsets, platform holders start bidding for exclusivity rather than mere availability — four years on, Facebook signed Oculus-exclusive VR versions of Assassin's Creed, converting what began as multi-platform support into locked-in ecosystem content.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, major publishers' back catalogs become the decisive currency in VR platform wars, pushing studios toward whichever deal structure pays most for exclusivity — and, as Ubisoft's later $14.99/month UPlay+ library subscription showed, toward direct-to-player distribution models that bypass platform gatekeeping altogether.
The trend: VR hardware platforms are competing for survival through exclusive access to established publisher franchises, turning legacy IP into negotiating leverage between studios and headset makers.