Ubisoft are riding a wave right now, a wave of redemption thanks to a hat-trick of well received titles recently. The release of Rainbow Six Siege was fraught with danger; a multiplayer dependant title that naysayers said was not ready for release, launched with hardly a hiccup – something publishers seem to have huge difficulty with over the last couple of years with a few notable triple A titles. It seems strange that we should be congratulating a publisher for releasing a multiplayer title that actually allowed players to connect and play without some major outage or servers falling over on day one because, what do you know, thousands of people bought a game. That’s what happened though, Siege launched, people played, it was fun, lots of fun. It still is, as the competitive scene starts to flourish, even in the face of pesky cheaters.

Then Far Cry Primal hit the scene, hardly 12 weeks later – another game that was just so much fun to play. I mean, who can resist a game that actually lets you ride a mammoth or befriend a wolf to do all your dirty work for you?

Only a few weeks later, Ubisoft’s most successful game release ever with The Division, smashing all previous sales records.

What’s turned this ship around? For a period of time Ubisoft was labelled as one of the industry’s most disliked publishers, arguably stealing that despicable crown from Electronic Arts. Now gamers who had vowed never to pay full price again for a Ubisoft title, are re-thinking those impulsive words. That was a different time though, right? It wasn’t actually that long ago though, not so long ago that the “Don’t Pre-order Ubisoft Games” banner was raised and people vowed “never again!”.

Ubisoft have turned things around though, with startling success, and the media is taking notice. The Country Caller’s redemption piece is right on the money –

…this short run has thrown a new light on Ubisoft and proves that the company has accepted its faults…

Certainly when I met with Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot, it was clear that Ubisoft were listening to gamers, and they didn’t just want to hear pleasantries, they wanted to hear constructive criticism from the gaming community. Hearing this from the man at the top demonstrated the seriousness of the intent – Ubisoft want to make increasingly engaging and entertaining games, and they seem well on the road to making this intention a consistent success, and not a hit and miss affair.

For Ghost Recon fans, this makes for an exciting year ahead. Ubisoft have learned lessons, they have shown that they can deliver extremely fun games, and that can engage with gamers on the same level. With the success of the recent crop of games behind them, the pressure will be on to really deliver on one of their top key franchises – Ghost Recon, and we cannot wait to see what they’ve been cooking up!