The [a]list daily got the chance to sit down with Ubisoft’s CEO to ask him about the prospects for the company’s holiday season and the marketing challenge ahead. With expensive new consoles coming out this Christmas, is Guillemot concerned that it might reduce spending on current-generation games “In fact when a new console comes, you have lots of games that come back to the market because people sell their games to buy the new consoles,” Guillemot said. “You have an influx of lots of games and machines on the market that is making the market change a little bit. That’s what we can expect. What I’ve seen is that the guys who are capable of buying new machines are capable of buying quite a few games. They are fascinated by gaming and have enough money to buy good quality games.”
With all the games coming out are you increasing your marketing spending this holiday “We are spending more this year,” Guillemot said. “We are really in the transition period where we have lots of machines, so people are more difficult to reach than at the beginning of a console cycle. Next year maybe the marketing will go down, because it will be easier to reach those gamers unlike at the end of a cycle where we have do a lot of TV advertising.”
Guillemot thinks changes in business models have not made marketing games more difficult. “I think all of those systems are ways to help people to get in games,” said Guillemot. “The more we help people to start playing and have a good experience, the better.” He doesn’t see prices increasing for next-gen games, either. “At the moment we can expect to have around the same prices,” Guillemot said. “What I feel, though, is if we can give more content in the longer term, we will have a game that will continue to live longer with the possibility to buy your way in.”
