Ubisoft is one of the major players known to be working with Google on bringing existing games to the cloud-based game platform Google Stadia, and the company says that, at this stage, doing so hasn’t been incredibly costly.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and CFO Frederick Duguet briefly addressed Stadia during a Q&A with investors this week. While neither would comment on specific costs, Duguet said that, as far as platform commission goes, “the financial equation is good for us.”
The original question asked how porting costs compared for Stadia versus traditional platforms like PC or physical consoles, though Guillemot didn’t offer a direct comparison in his reply.
“The extra cost to put to make sure the games work well on Stadia is not that high,” said Guillemot. “It’s part now of our pipelines and we have a good relationship with Stadia to make sure it is profitable for us.”
He does note that this largely applies to current titles; what he describes as “2.0 types of games” will “need more work and this we will see more in the future action.”
Keep in mind however that Ubisoft is somewhat unique in that it partnered with Google to bring Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to the pre-Stadia Project Stream beta last year, so the two companies do have that existing relationship that has no doubt helped to pave the way for Ubisoft’s more recent steps towards Stadia.
The company is notably launching its upcoming Uplay+ subscription library on Stadia in 2020, and is so far the first publisher announced to bring such a service to Google’s cloud-based platform. Ubisoft just recently unveiled more details about Uplay+, taking the time yesterday to detail the 100+ games that will be available when the service launches for PC later this year.