Late in 2019 Ubisoft announced to investors that The Division 2 and Ghost Recon Breakpoint sales did not meet expectations. Ubisoft mentioned at the time that it believed it hadn't managed to differentiate the games from their predecessors, The Division and Ghost Recon Wildlands. How Ubisoft planned to address the issue going forward wasn't made clear at the time. Ubisoft has now made a major internal change, restructuring its editorial team, to specifically address this problem.
Ubisoft's editorial team is said to be an advisory team built of around 100 designers and producers. The team helps to create a cohesive vision across the company's multiple studios and franchises. While the team isn't directly responsible for game development, it is nevertheless hugely impactful. That's why Ubisoft is taking this team, which up until now has been a single unit, and will be reorganizing and reinforcing it going forward.
According to an official statement released by Ubisoft, this "reinforcement" of the editorial team is being done to make the team "more agile" and to help it "better accompany our development teams." Reportedly, this means that the editorial team will be split into more independent and focused subsets working to ensure Ubisoft's different franchises and games are both unique and uniquely presented.
Within the editorial team at Ubisoft going forward there will be seven vice presidents. Each vice president will be given their own franchise or franchises to control, to be run independently of the other teams. All seven VPs will report to CCO Serge Hascoet, who previously ran the editorial system as a single group. This will blunt Hascoet's role in oversight and decision-making, which has been speculated to be part of the reason why so many of Ubisoft's games have the same tone.
The results of Ubisoft's pending changes to the editorial team won't be seen or felt by game players for some time. The games currently in production are likely too far along to see significant changes. Games moving into production in the next few years will be the first to be influenced by the new editorial team structure. Those games will likely take years to develop. Considering this, it's going to be some time before Ubisoft game players see the product of the company's efforts to ensure each game stands out as unique.
Source: VideoGamesChronicle