Ubisoft Talks Delaying Watch Dogs

Executive Laurent Detoc says delaying Watch Dogs was the best decision for the game.

Ubisoft North America president Laurent Detoc spoke about the delay of the open-world game Watch Dogs from November to 2014 saying it was "intense decision," but was in the best interest of the game.

“I think one of the fascinating things about this industry is that you can go from genius to idiot in an extremely short time frame. These are some of those moments, where you’re riding sky high on Watch Dogs or Rayman, and then suddenly you have to break it to the outside world, and sometimes even convince the inside people. Not everybody agrees. You have to say, ‘this is in the best interest of the product, to do this,’ because at the end of the day we’re going to be able to do this extra fine tuning.”

Detoc said that as late as Gamescom, most people at Ubisoft expected the game to launch on schedule, but the game was delayed shortly thereafter, because it wasn't ready.

"Some games, you just can’t make them that much better because of how they’ve been progressing. Part of the decision to delay Watch Dogs is also that," he said. "We know it’s not where we want it to be. Can it get there? What will it take to get there? That’s why it takes a longer process. But in August we really thought we were going to have that game at launch.”

If the game had been on schedule, it could have been the "best-rated game on next-gen," Detoc said, claiming Ubisoft is breaking ground" on various gameplay assets that put the game in "uncharted territory." But it was not good enough for Ubisoft.

“The whole package is there already. But without sending them too many flowers, the guys at Rockstar have showed us again that if you make a 96-percent game, people will come," Detoc said. "Watch Dogs, I can only hope we get to that level. There’s an attachment to the brand, in the case of GTA, that makes people really want to give it that 100-percent review. We’ll be missing that on Watch Dogs until we go further, potentially. That’s what we’re after.”