Ubisoft can't stop dropping the ball this year as the developer has now admitted that its PvP shooter, XDefiant, is underperforming even by the low standards the company had already set for the free-to-play title.
In an investor call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot finally addressed the current XDefiant situation, a game that seemingly faded from the landscape without much fanfare after being released on May 21.
Stating that the game is currently performing "behind expectations" paints a dire picture, especially if the bar to be considered a relative success was already low. No specific numbers were mentioned in regards to how much revenue the free-to-play shooter had generated, but they are looking grim in terms of player count.
According to a report back in late August by Tom Henderson, it seems that XDefiant is currently struggling to hit 20k concurrent players. Part of the issue is undeniably the fact that Ubisoft has been stubborn enough to keep their shooter exclusive to the Ubi launcher, missing out on a massive portion of potential players who rely on the Steam launcher.
The issues with XDefiant just add to other problems Ubisoft has been dealing with in recent weeks. Their big AAA open-world Star Wars Outlaws is underperforming both commercially and critically.
Outlaws also launched with massive bugs, including one that corrupted save files from players who progressed through the game during the early access period. This led Ubisoft to delay Assassin's Creed Shadows, dropping early access perks in the process.
A report by Games Industry stated that Ubisoft expected profits of around €500 million with both Outlaws and AC Shadows being among the titles they expected to perform solidly, especially after the company outperformed their expectations during Q1 of the current fiscal year which ran from April to June, helped funnily enough by XDefiant which was a huge success during its first weeks on the market.
Sadly, it seems the shooter has failed spectacularly when it comes to player retention and it could prove difficult for the game to shine in such an incredible competitive market.