I just learned that Ubisoft’s stock plummeted yesterday after releasing their financial results. Why? Apparently, substantial losses and title delays. Oh, and they mentioned that they were restructuring to give more support for their AAA titles and franchises.

Game companies: please stop focusing on your best franchises and releasing them year over year with minor tweaks.

I understand, once you have an established franchise, it is significantly cheaper to continue to develop for that franchise and you will gain more and more sales as the franchise continues. It gives you the revenue to continue making awesome games, understood.

But it is an incredibly short-sighted way of approaching the business.

Let me explain. In the case of Ubisoft, they are pulling resources away from new properties that may or may not become a hit. For a business, it is a good business decision to cut the assets that are not making money or may not make as much money as other assets you may have. But for a gaming company, not continuously building a bigger and better pipeline of different titles is a good way of shooting yourself in the foot. Yeah, you can easily make a killing by continuing to develop your franchises and churning out mediocre game year after year.

But will we want it after its 6th iteration?

Please game companies, buck the trend and go back to developing awesome titles that do not already have established franchises. It might suck for your bottom line in the short term, but in the long term you’re going to enjoy the fact that your titles will be diverse and one failure does not determine the financial health of your company.