Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora came out last week with hardly anyone saying anything about it. This time last year, Avatar: James Cameron’s The Way of Water also opened in theaters in a similar situation, but still grossed more than $2 billion in ticket sales. House game title Ubisoftalthough the revenue has not yet been announced, it will almost certainly not be able to bring in as positive results as its “brother” who shares the same bloodline.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is Ubisoft’s biggest open-world game of the year so far, while Assassin’s Creed Mirage can hardly be considered a major title. However, the game was only released quietly the week that The Game Awards 2023 took place. With tons of information about new games or updates announced during the event, along with the strange silence of the parent game company, it’s easy to understand why Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was so quiet.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was first revealed last summer, expected to release the same year, but was ultimately delayed until last week. During the Ubisoft Forward event last summer, the game was revealed a bit with a fairly long gameplay trailer, but then went quiet until launch.
In fact, the game has some quite interesting marketing materials, but they are not introduced to players, players will have to search for it themselves. Ubisoft’s Youtube channel has a number of featurettes that explore the music and delve into Massive’s partnership with James Cameron’s production company Lightstorm, which explains how the game became a destination expansion reality of the Avatar universe. There’s an interesting interview on IGN with producer Jon Landau and some of the developers on the same topic, and of course there are previews.
But that’s not enough to promote a major game that’s been in development for years like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and no one knows that better than Ubisoft. When a new Far Cry game comes out, you can’t miss it. It appears on every Youtube ad, every TV commercial, and every annoying pop-up on every website. It covered tall buildings in every major city around the world with Giancarlo Esposito’s face in 2021. It’s safe to say that Avatar didn’t get even a fraction of the advertising campaigns there, and it’s easy to see the results.
Ubisoft is no longer a true giant like when Far Cry 6 was released. Financial difficulties and poor leadership have led to several mass layoffs, the most recent of more than 100 people last month, and the decision to cancel many projects in development to focus on franchising The company’s core commerce. It seems Avatar would have almost been one of those canceled projects, had it not been so close to completion. Ubisoft may no longer be able to support new game launches like it used to.
However, it’s also possible that the company doesn’t believe Avatar will be a success and decides not to throw any more money at the game. Early reviews were not positive and the average score may have had an impact on the company’s decision. 73 Metacritic scores are definitely not the score of a blockbuster, but many other games have sold well with similar scores. Ubisoft’s darling, Far Cry 6, coincidentally only has 73 points.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, in my personal opinion, is not a masterpiece, of course, but certainly deserves a better promotion campaign from Ubisoft. The game has an attractive look, a colorful open world, and has no competition in December. If Ubisoft gave it a little attention, it would be about 1/10 the price of Far Cry , then perhaps things will be much brighter for the game.
