Ubisoft recently reached its thirty-sixth birthday, a milestone that not many video game studios have been able to reach yet. It seemed like the future was going to bright for the developer as well given how many new titles it had in development, but in recent weeks, Ubisoft has announced the cancellation of some of its major games, while also delaying the highly anticipated Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and an unannounced "premium game."
The news was definitely a disappointment to fans who were hoping to see Splinter Cell VR and Ghost Recon Frontline at some point, but it didn't necessarily come as a massive surprise. Ghost Recon has been a staple of the military tactical shooter genre since the first game released in 2001, and players hadn't had a new title since 2019. The previous entry, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, was the first installment to require a constant online connection, and it seemed like Ghost Recon Frontline was adding even more innovations. However, it wasn't to be, and it seems like Ghost Recon's live service future is now in doubt.
Trouble At Ubisoft
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Ubisoft's recent Q1 Financial Report provided some much-needed insight into a few of the games currently in development at the studio, and not all the news was good. Ubisoft had plenty of titles in development with question marks next to their release dates and a distinct lack of updates to provide players with anything to go on, so it was hardly surprising when a few of them turned out to be canceled. Ubisoft has unquestionably released some great games in recent years, like Immortals Fenyx Rising, and there are lots of things on the horizon for some of its flagship franchises like Assassin's Creed.
However, there does seem to be trouble brewing for a few of its games. Skull & Bones, a much-talked about upcoming action adventure title with a sea-faring focus, seems to be in development hell. It's reportedly had multiple changes of direction and a shifting scope over the course of its development, and there have been rumors that Skull & Bones' gameplay is still fairly shallow and that it won't be able to do the kind of big business that Ubisoft hopes it will. With speculation swirling around the state of some of Ubisoft's upcoming games, it was hardly a shock when the announcement came that Ghost Recon Frontline had been canceled.
Ghost Recon: Frontline's Unsurprising Fate
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First announced in October of last year, Ghost Recon Frontline was intended to be live-service FPS MMO in a departure from previous games in the franchise. This could be seen as an expected shift in direction, considering the runaway success of other live-service shooters in recent years like Apex Legends, and could have been the injection of freshness that the series needed, but it did cause some controversy. Things didn't exactly get off to the good start for the game, and its first trailer received multiple criticisms from fans who felt that Ubisoft hadn't done the IP justice in recent years, and it was flooded with dislikes on YouTube.
This may have been the reason that Ubisoft subsequently canceled the game's alpha test and delayed it indefinitely. This is never really a good sign, and usually means that the title in question is still a good distance away from where the studio needs it to be. Ghost Recon Frontline's fortunes hardly improved, as a closed beta was launched in early 2022, but participants were under strict confidentiality agreements. This didn't seem to stop some gameplay leaking out onto Twitch, and the response from fans was just as negative as it had been for the trailer.
Many felt that the graphics were not up to scratch and there wasn't enough done to distinguish Ghost Recon Frontline from similar games like Call of Duty: Warzone. Considering many fans were either already skeptical about the upcoming game or outright set against it, this hardly did anything to overturn opinions. It may be that Ubisoft felt like it was fighting against a growing tide of player disappointment, or potentially there were other internal issues at play, but either way it wasn't at all shocking when Ghost Recon Frontline was canceled in July.