Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, was the latest to get the GT interview treatment, this time addressing the saga of Patrice Desilets and his game, 1666: Amsterdam:
What’s very important when you create a game, it has to be done with a team. And you have to make sure that there’s a good balance between graphics and gameplay, and we couldn’t find that in this occasion. So, when you put $100 million on a game, you have to make sure the end product will really be up to the level of quality on all the aspects.
I thought we would be able to convince Patrice to change his contract so that we could work together more closely, and we couldn’t make it. You know, he was in breach with his game because he didn’t deliver the milestone that he was supposed to bring, and so we tried hard to solve the problem so that we could see if [it could cure the breach].
Unfortunately, Yves only gave his side of the story – Game Informer reports that Patrice is suing Ubisoft for $400,000 and the rights to purchase 1666. Ubisoft then replied to this by saying “We received Patrice’s legal request and will address it in court.” During the GT interview, Guillemot did say that “we don’t know” when asked whether or not we’d ever see 1666: Amsterdam, so it looks like we’ll have to wait for this legal stuff to sort itself out before knowing anything.
Yves also talked a little bit about the next generation of games, mentioning that he’s “very confident with the industry now” and has “always been confident,” with the new consoles “coming with the level of quality we could expect.”
When it came to how Ubisoft seemed to be backing the PS4 more than the Xbox One, he added:
When we saw that we could bring something very strong to Sony, where Microsoft seemed to have enough on their plate, the games that we were bringing suited [the PS4 more].
Do you think 1666: Amsterdam will ever see the light of day? Let us know in the comments below.
