Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot has appeared in the midst of another financial update with good news, bad news, and hot takes. While Ubisoft hasn’t done all that badly since Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced has already smashed expectations, the future of the company is still rooted in live-service operating models.
In one segment, Guillemot turned his attention to the recent disc vs. digital debate that has run rampant across the industry, offering his two cents and suggesting it’s not all that bad, after all.
Guillemot is All For Dropping Discs
Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft, recently spoke to investors during a financial update that broke down the company’s Q1 financials for the current fiscal year. He addressed the recent scandal that saw Sony reveal that, from January 2028, no new PlayStation games will be printed on disc.
It’s a bold push for an all-digital future, and it was met with uproar from the wider gaming community.
Guillemot compared the situation to the almost blanket cutting out of discs in the PC gaming space. That was a paradigm shift that occurred many years ago, and it’s now the stock-standard approach for all PC gamers worldwide.
Guillemot said:
What we saw on the PC is that it helped to grow the market.
There’s also some pressure for the future on the cost of machines, and being able to be only digital will help to have a more accessible machine, I would say. As you said, there are pluses and minuses. But we think it will not disturb, too much, the industry.
(Thanks to GamesRadar for the quote)
Not only does Guillemot think it won’t disturb the wider market, but it will also make ‘machines’ more accessible. By that, he might be suggesting that price points will drop, because the accessibility of digital gaming is something under intense scrutiny. If you don’t have great internet, you’re basically written out of digital gaming.
Do you think Yves is right, or will the end of disc-based games have deep ramifications across the industry? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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