Another very Ubisoft-ty move, as in, we couldn’t have second guessed other publishers doing this (minus EA).
Ubisoft is big on preorders. Remember the pre-order saga with Watch Dogs? Assassin’s Creed: Unity has its own proprietary pre-order program called “Unite.”
What this means is that basically Ubisoft wants you running to your friends, begging them to preorder Assassin’s Creed: Unity with you. Unity focuses on co-op, so the idea behind this greedy capitalist program is get as many people to preorder the game.
How this works is, you log in to your Uplay account and create your team, or join a friend’s team. This grants you a cosmetic sword reward. When you pre-order the game, you redeem the code you received on preordering, which grants you another cosmetic reward, the Heavy Pack which features two axes.
When a second team member enters his/her preorder code, you get another in-game cosmetic reward, this time the ‘Guard Pack’, which features a pair of trousers and a spear. How exciting eh?
With a third team member entering his code, you finally unlock something not as pointless as the first three rewards i.e. the original game soundtrack and the digital format comic book.
On the joining in of the fourth member, you unlock the co-op mission “Killed by Science.”
I really don’t know how Unity will turn out as a game, I’m having an open mind and I want to game to be good, but that doesn’t change the fact the Ubisoft’s business practices are totally blatant, especially when they’re disguised behind ubiquitous pre-order schemes which offer nothing but mere cosmetic upgrades and a side mission.
Seeing how Watch Dogs unfolded as a game (an above-average one), Ubisoft was desperate to get the people to buy the game before it launched because I somehow believe that they knew the game wasn’t going to do that well once the critics judged it. Thats why they were pushing heavily for people to preorder.
Is it the same case with Assassin’s Creed: Unity?
What do you think?
