XDefiant: Ubisoft confirms: Shooter falls short of expectations

Ubisoft is currently going through difficult times. It has now been confirmed that the shooter XDefiant, which started with hope, also falls short of expectations.

Things are pretty much haywire at Ubisoft at the moment: Star Wars Outlaws has clearly missed its internal expectations and is nowhere near as big of a commercial success as hoped. Based on the experience with the launch of the sci-fi title, the biggest hope, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, was postponed from this November to the coming year 2025.

As if that wasn’t enough, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has now officially admitted that the shooter XDefiant also falls short of the company’s expectations. There had been similar rumors before, but this was followed by a denial that the shooter was generally on the brink.

All of the problems also result in a reduction in sales forecasts in the second quarter by around 30 percent compared to the previous value. In this context, Nicholas Langlet from BNP Paribas asked Guillemot whether this was solely due to the poor performance of Star Wars Outlaws.

The Ubisoft boss replied that the new forecast primarily reflects the situation surrounding Star Wars Outlaws, but not only. “We’re also behind expectations when it comes to XDefiant, which we’ll give you a few more details about towards the end of October,” said Guillemot. “To a much smaller extent and with a more limited impact, the now lower expectations for XDefiant have also been taken into account.”

At the launch of XDefiant, Ubisoft and CEO Guillemot celebrated the shooter when it got off to a very good start. They wanted to build on this and continually increase the number of players. The quarterly roadmap with new content should also help. The plan to grow the community has so far been anything but successful. This is also why there has already been speculation that the shooter’s post-launch support could be discontinued if the number of players improves significantly by the end of Season 3. This has already been denied in a blog entry and emphasized that XDefiant is “absolutely not in the process of dying.”