21 July 2013

Watch_Dogs will become a franchise, limited edition announced for North America



According to Ubisoft, Watch Dogs will become a long-running series.

Ubisoft’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, Tony Key, said that the company won’t start a game unless it can turn it into a franchise. Key was asked if he wanted to see Watch Dogs become a franchise, to which he replied: “That’s what all our games are about; we won’t even start if we don’t think we can build a franchise out of it. There’s no more fire and forget – it’s too expensive.”

“We feel like we’re in a really good place with Watch_Dogs, but until we’re the biggest game of the year we’re not going to be satisfied. Last year we cleaned up at E3 because we were pretty much the only next-gen game around.”

“Watch_Dogs for us is really a franchise because we’re tapping into something people really care about, never more than when the NSA PRISM scandal broke.”

When asked how closely Watch Dogs was created with real-world surveillance scandals and strategies like PRISM in mind, Key added: “Absolutely. At one point in Watch Dogs, Aidan taps into the surveillance system of an apartment building and he’s looking at what everyone is doing.”

“We had a screen shot of this guy sitting in his apartment with a department store female mannequin sitting with him and he’s talking to it. When the PRISM story broke on Wednesday, we had that screen shot out on Friday on social media and said ‘You never know who’s watching.’ We were able to react very quickly, and that’s what social media brings.”

Ubisoft has also announced the Limited Edition for North America which will cost $130 and includes:

Collectible SteelBook case featuring art from DedSec
The official soundtrack
An 80-page hardcover art book
Aiden Pearce’s mask
A 9-inch statue of Aiden in action