It looks like their business model is mostly just remakes and remasters now with these closures. Does the C suite really believe that they can just milk those IPs forever and never create anything new?
Their last (2022, pre-acquisition) annual reports literally spell that out.
> For example, in 2022, revenues associated with our three franchises—Call of Duty, Warcraft, and Candy Crush
—collectively accounted for approximately 79% of our net revenues—and a significantly higher percentage of our operating income. We expect that a relatively limited number of popular franchises will continue to produce a disproportionately high percentage of our revenues and profits. - https://investor.activision.com/annual-reports
CoD is a different beast though. In 2021, PlayStation tracked that that 1 million players on their console only had CoD installed and played no other games. Most Ubi franchise aren't that type of game ouside Rainbow Six which has a lot of years on it now.
Ubisoft games used to be varied and innovative and they boiled a dozen IP's down to the exact same open world slop with different coats of paint while sending loved unique titles like Splinter Cell to the graveyard.
It's like the companies who have tried to be the next Destiny or WoW. Those games did not become what they were by copying predecessors but by innovating and creating something new and unique that engaged gamers.
This is what killed Bioware. Decades of innovation, each game something new and different. Improvements on previous design, ne styles of game play... then it became let's just copy what we did last time and what everyone else is doing.
Large gaming companies, like a lot of other big companies, are extremely risk adverse. Instead of creating new things, they innovate by buying companies that have done the hard work of innovating or creating new IP.
The creators and innovators in those acquired companies usually burn out from trying to work in a large, stifling corporate environment, and leave. So the large corporations are left with people who are not creators and innovators.
Given that the cancelled PoP title in question was supposed to be a remake of PoP: The Sands of Time, it would seem that not even remakes/remasters can save them now.
> It looks like their business model is mostly just remakes and remasters now with these closures. Does the C suite really believe that they can just milk those IPs forever and never create anything new?
It only needs to work until they're on to their next job.
