In June, Ubisoft revealed that Beyond Good & Evil 2 will not be releasing on the current generation of consoles. The title was first announced in 2008, with the expectation that it would release for the Xbox 360 and PS3, along with the PC.
However, that will of course no longer be the case. Speaking to GamesRadar, Michel Ancel, Creative Director at Ubisoft and the game’s creator, explained why this decision had been made:
“It’s a complex game. [With] the first Beyond Good & Evil… we had the feeling that we could do whatever we wanted. But in the end, what we were really about to do was far less than what we wanted. And my thing is that we really want to make the game that was previously imagined, with all this feeling of travelling. Mass Effect did a good job on that side, and I think that there are a lot of things to do to continue in that direction, with storytelling and a massive world.”
So in short, Ancel would not be satisfied with releasing a game that fails to satisfy his dreams a second time in a row. Hopefully the next generation of consoles will be good enough to maximise his creativity, whenever Microsoft and Sony choose to release them!
Source: GamesRadar
teflon
The current generation can now be extremely limiting, depending on what the developers are trying to do. It’s all about RAM, really. If the 360 and PS3 both had the 1GB of RAM they originally planned to quite a few limitations would be raised.
Obviously, faster GPU and CPU wouldn’t hurt much either ;)
bunimomike
I appreciate what you’re saying but from Skyrim to Uncharted 3 to everything in between. We’ve definitely arrived at a generation where technical limitations are now usually circumvented or dismissed altogether.
If he’s looking for technical clarity, frame-rate, resolution, I understand but outside of that it’s tricky to see how his vision couldn’t be realised. I fear he’s simply being picky and nothing else. Either that or he’s stalling for time because he’s done eff-all for the last few years and his bosses want to know what’s happening in their Monday morning meetings. ;)
MayContainEvil
How in gods name have technical limitations been ‘dismissed altogether’?
Nothing of the sort has happened, it’s just that the bar has been raised far above what was possible last gen. I agree that some games do look truly beautiful this gen, but I can’t help but feel this statement is silly.
bunimomike
I was implying that anything left (that resembles a technical limitation) can easily be worked around with the current hardware. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. :)
plutoniumdragon
There isn’t much that can be done to overcome that serious ram limitation though – if he wants a large open world game it’s either lots of loading screens or stream from the disc with reduced textures and pop ins. Maybe he doesn’t want that?
I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here – chances are the others’ are right and it’s been effectively shelved :(
Ben
Interesting to consider that the teaser footage for the sequel once looked stunning and now seems altogether average.
http://youtu.be/y6R6EN-soJ0
Kaminari
Tired of reading this bullshit about hardware limitations. The problems are elsewhere.
Ancel is like Suzuki. As nobody at Sega wants to hear about Shenmue 3, likewise you will never see a sequel to BGE — this generation or later. Ubisoft is just not interested in BGE. Do you truly believe that Ancel is going to “compete” against Mass Effect with a team of 5 (FIVE) people?
Get real, guys.
Tuffcub
Why not try developing for this gens console, then you wouldnt have any problems. This is known as ‘common sense’.
The Lone Steven
He does know that both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are capable of producing some excellent graphics and gameplay right?
So they have done naff all with Beyond good and Evil 2. They risk losing a lot of fans as they may end up forgetting about BGAE2.
Why don’t they just develop some decent games to see if they have reached the techinal limits of this generation? As i find it very hard to believe that the limits have been reached.
TSBonyman
Mass Effect is already possible as we’ve all seen so i’m thinking the delay is because they still have a lot of work to do on story/location/design etc which will delay it until the next gen consoles are ready. Btw, I suppose they already have the full specs of the next gen consoles..?
Sympozium
Wii U launch title, wouldn’t surprise me
Lymmusic
Perhaps it is going to take another generation to learn how to invert the f-ing camera axis properly…
October91
what he means is that without saying it directly… He’s dicing microsoft… He wants to wait for the next generation basically because of a lack of storage space.. most notably the 360’s dvd format. Now I’m only guessing, but this reason seems totally practical to me. :p