Ubisoft maintains Beyond Good & Evil 2 still in production [update]

by Justin McElroy on Jan 14th 2010 12:45PM

Update: Ubisoft confirmed to G4TV that the translation was accurate and "Yes, Beyond Good & Evil 2 and I Am Alive are both still in development." Guess that answers that!

Because it will make the vagueness of today's rumor even more hilarious for you, we're going to walk you through the incredible history of Beyond Good & Evil 2 real quick:

May 2008: Ubisoft announces Beyond Good & Evil 2, with a trailer and everything, though not specifically naming it as such.
July 2009: Ubisoft North America's president Laurent Detoc says that while BG&E stuff is being worked on, it doesn't necessarily mean another game is on the way.
August 2009: Gamersyde says it's on hold, and Ubisoft won't comment one way or another.

And now, here we are in January of 2010. As spotted by VG247, Gamekult asked Ubisoft France boss Geoffroy Sardin about I Am Alive and BG&E 2 and was told, "Ils sont toujours en production tous les deux"; directly translated, "They're both always/still in production."

Alright, so which do you prefer: canceled and dead forever or always in production?

Source

Tags: beyond-good-and-evil, beyond-good-and-evil-2, bge2, Geoffroy-sardin, michel-ancel, Microsoft, ubisoft, ubisoft-france, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (57)

By Lincoln's ghost!

As in 'egads!', but not as in 'eureka!' like McDuck would say.

Im so tired of waiting so tired of false anticipation. Jus get it done.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 - The next Duke Nukem Forever?

I hope not - the first game was awesome, though a little short. A second game would be great.

Don't fucking jinx it...

That's ... kind of reassuring. Then again, people maintained DNF was "still in production" for about a decade.

There is too much franchise potential to let this become vaporware. And the mini-preview (and leaked trailer) looked pretty awesome. So I'm going to say it'll ship in 2011.

If I could make your post any whiter, it would be.

Gah, reply fail! Meant for the jerk below.

Not you! You're awesome!

I think shipping in 2011 is a generous guess, E3 2011 we'll see a trailer, then we get it 2012

What I don't understand is why it takes these people so long for it to come out. Take Duke Nukem for example, the game was most likely gonna be mediocre, admit it. Yet a fairly competetant studio can come out with a "decent" shooter in about a year and a half and a good one in about two years.

Sounds like a case of laziness to me.

And say Duke Nukem was gonna be the greatest game ever made. There's no fuckin way it would have been nearly ten years worth.

There's also the catch 22 of higher expectations the longer it takes for the game to be made. So if you take a year and a half to make a decent shooter, kudos! But if it takes you 3 or 4 years to put out the same quality people will be disappointed.

Laziness? What, do you think game companies hire people and just let them sit around not doing anything?

Most likely, it's a lack of dedicated staff on the project. The original game was supposed to be part of a trilogy. Due to lackluster sales however, they canned the remaining games, and left fans of the series hanging.

A year or so ago, they announced that they were finally working on a sequel, and since many people have since picked up the game from the bargain bin and enjoyed it, many more people were exited about it.

But Ubi is obviously a busy company, and if they don't have time to put this game together as priority #1, it's understandable, considering the game's history. I highly doubt laziness is part of the equation at all.

Creative endeavors are not merely a factor of time. Sometimes, ideas need time to gestate. Some popular, successful developers (after gaining the confidence of their publishing partners) claim to release a game "when it's done". They don't know when that is -- they just have a standard of quality that they wish to adhere to. And as Marty said, this quality standard is a moving target -- when other titles are released throughout a game's development, the consumer's expectations change, and some titles have to adjust with this.

Laziness is hardly ever the issue. Game development is simply unpredictable to an extent. When games fail to achieve certain development milestones, the developers can either try to push on, compromising features or quality, or adjust the budgeted time, often resulting in a delay in the game's release.

That actually translates to "They're both still in production". "Toujours" means both "still" and "always" depending on context.

If it is in production I would like to see more than the trailer... how about come concept art or another trailer or better yet give us a update on the project and tell us how far along they are.

Honestly, they shouldn't have announced it so early. Why do these companies keep doing that? Don't announce it until you have some sort of gameplay to show, not just an animated trailer!

Like nyah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0llKUBEwGo ?

I really hope to see this is in production still. Maybe with their recent statements about more serious titles and 360/PS3 focus they will take money from the awful shovelware departments and place it where it would do some good - in this title.

To be fair, it is unknown whether it would do that much more good there, for Ubisoft at least. The shovelware market hasn't been kind to them, but BG&E didn't really do all that well (though specific concerns of profitability are up for debate, since they spread it across every available platform).

Beyond Good & Evil 2 has always been the caretaker..

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Someone tell me if this is reassuring.

I can't tell.

Ubisoft is the new King of Broken Promises.....

Also.....

pigs or gtfo

There's no way this could live up to expectations if they keep treating it like a bastard stepchild.

Ubisoft, do it right or can it. Don't halfass it.

They did it right with the first game. It was an "artistic" success and a commercial flop. Can you blame them for half-assing?

Yeah, I can.

If Sony can continue to support Japan Studio in making The Last Guardian, despite the fact that Ico and Shadow of the Colossus were not smash successes, Ubisoft can at least give this series one more shot.

"Unfortunate timing of the release against other titles such as Ubisoft's own Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, as well as competition from proven sequels, led to disappointing sales, something that Laurent Detoc (CEO of Ubisoft North America) labeled as one of his worst business decisions. Jay Cohen, the former North American vice-president of publishing for Ubisoft, attributed the commercial failure of the game to a lack of marketing."

That doesn't look like they 'did it right the first time' to me.

Brad, he's talking about in terms of the gameplay. Obviously it wasn't marketed....well...AT ALL. But you know, I think it's going to play into their favor come the second game.

The first BG&E has turned into such a cult classic that the second one is just going thrive off of all that anticipation. The Marketing will take care of the rest.

BG&E2 would be the perfect game for Ubi to release during one of the dryer quarters.

No, he wasn't. He's just a troll. Look at his comment history.

I thought you were taking about production and development. Since you're talking about Ubisoft marketing, then I guess you're right there. Since you were taking about marketing the whole time, exactly what type of marketing did you want at present-time? All Ubisoft has is that trailer and probably some preliminary that they wouldn't show outsiders anyways.

By the way, Shadow of the Colossus sold well. It eventually even became a "Greatest Hits" in America.

"BG&E2 would be the perfect game for Ubi to release during one of the dryer quarters."

Of course, 2010 isn't poised to see a dry quarter =(

Now I see the misunderstanding. I was talking about Ubisoft's management of the game, not the developers.

Look, its either in production or its not, make up your minds ubi. Don't keep us hanging for no reason.

I never got around to playing the first one.
It's still in my stack of 200+ games I bought but haven't beaten.

Do yourself a favor and put it at the top and stand it upright so it's staring you in the face!

Yeah, but I'd rather get the Metroid Prime games out of the way first.

I can help you out. Just give 199 of those games to me and you'll get to Beyond Good and Evil MUCH sooner.

As i've said before, Ancel, the guy in charge of the original BG&E (as well as the creator of Rayman), had been working on the Wii game Rabbids Go Home, presumably through Q3 2009 (as the game launched in Q4). Presuming that the same studio would go on to tackle this, it's understandable that it might have been in limbo while the studio focused on something else.

hmm canceled. in production brings about too much hope and expectation that next year is the year more information will show up. canceled forever is too harsh for the game.

cancel has the hope they will pick it up someday minus the letdown of expecting it to show up every year

Dude..........always in production is better than dead forever. At least there's hope that we'll see Beyond Good & Evil 2. I still play the PS2 version of it and enjoy it to this day. It would suck not to know what happens to Jade and P'eyj because the ending of the first game left us hanging. It has to be by far one of the best underrated games of last generation. It would be a great shame if they didn't continue the franchise especially after seeing that supposed leaked footage. If the game looks and plays that good there's no doubt that people will be scrambling to pick it up! I know I will when it finally arrives. (crosses fingers and starts praying)

Agreed, the first one was so great! I was really a shame to see it didn't get the recognition it deserved. I, for more than one, hope this gets the chance it deserves. Here's hoping!!

YOU! YOU I don't like!

There was no mention of the infamous supposed game play footage of Jade running around through alleys and buildings. A lot of people thought it was pre-rendered footage made too look like actual gameplay. I was on the fence.

Now that I've played Uncharted 2, I can look back and honestly say it's possible that footage was real gameplay.

Looks like Ubisoft has already began its shift toward the real next gen consoles (PS3 & X360) ..

If the newer of the two "next gen" systems is 3 years old... can we at least stop calling it next gen? The damn things are current gen.

Sorry, pet peeve about some of the semantics.

This gen sucks for development time and delays.

spend 5+ years making a game
incur huge costs
cant regain costs through sales
studio becomes broke
said studio gets shut down
people get scared of making AAA games
the whole industry suffers as a whole

I really hope so, I recently played the first for the first time and I loved it (couldn't put it down).

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

Sorry, you must be logged in to leave a comment.

Breaking News

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days

Vita 'UMD Passport' won't be offered in US 221 comments
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning review: A tempting fate 153 comments
David Jaffe leaves Eat Sleep Play, layoffs hit developer [Update] 107 comments
Blizzard taking Valve to court over 'DOTA' trademark 96 comments
Don't call it a remake: Final Fantasy X is a 'remaster,' to be clear 95 comments

Beyond Good & Evil 2

Ubisoft maintains Beyond Good & Evil 2 still in production [update]

Reader Comments (57)

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:46PM MarkezJM said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:47PM MarkezJM said

Posted: Feb 18th 2010 9:45PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:46PM Faceless Troll said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:55PM FredFredrickson said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 5:19PM ch3burashka said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:47PM sindbad said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 2:35PM The Blank Mage Returns said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 2:36PM The Blank Mage Returns said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 3:31PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:52PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:54PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:00PM Petebot330 said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:02PM FredFredrickson said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:38PM FraGNeM said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:54PM Arreck said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:56PM Borzen said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:02PM Petebot330 said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 5:25PM clerkenwell said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:57PM Duke said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:28PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:57PM Jude said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:00PM Funkmaster General said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 12:59PM Funkmaster General said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:00PM StormEagle said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:01PM StormEagle said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:14PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:32PM 831 Son said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:34PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:38PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:45PM StormEagle said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:47PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:48PM 831 Son said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:50PM Granger said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:50PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:23PM Spunky Monkey 190906 said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:26PM Brunibrun said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:40PM StormEagle said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:47PM Brunibrun said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 3:15PM thisredengine Tweet me said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 1:29PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 2:15PM Ballistic3188 said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 2:21PM ShadowLordAriel said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 2:49PM jsilva93635 said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 2:36PM The Blank Mage Returns said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 2:38PM iceveiled said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 3:22PM Aziz S said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 7:34PM Octillus said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 3:23PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 14th 2010 4:37PM Vizruy said

Beyond Good & Evil 2 Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

Double Fine Kickstarter passes $1 million in under 24 hours, breaking yet another record

Featured Stories

The Joystiq Show - 024: Kingdoms of Double Fine

Shank 2 review: Refined brutality

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier brings information warfare to the front

The most popular postsin the last 7 days

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days