Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has once again confirmed that Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still in development, however, he seemed to indicate that it could be awhile before we see the game re-announced.
“I don’t give comments anymore on BG&E2,” Guillemot told Kotaku after the Playstation 4 event last week, “because I think … the next time next time we communicate we have to have something new.” Without specifically calling out any intended platforms, the CEO then simply added, “It’s coming.”
While it is always nice to get the latest “Beyond Good & Evil 2 is not canceled update”, it has certainly been a long wait for fans hoping to one day complete Jade’s adventure.
Ubisoft released the original Beyond Good & Evil way back in 2003 on the PS2, PC, Xbox, and GameCube. The game was always intended to have a sequel, but those plans were shelved after the title failed to register on sales charts, despite being generally well-received by critics.
Fast forward to Ubidays 2008 where, to the delight of the cult following that had built up around BG&E, the publisher revealed that a sequel was in the works by showing off a teaser trailer. After that brief announcement things got a little strange.
In 2009 Ubisoft claimed “some stuff was leaked” about the game (even though it was Ubisoft who showed off the trailer in 2008) and that the title was not “a sure thing“. The following year Ubisoft re-confirmed that it was “still in production”, and repeated the claim again that August.
It was then that Ubisoft decided the best thing to do with Beyond Good & Evil 2 would be to use it to promote the sales of other titles. This tactic started innocently enough, with Wang Xu (the producer for the HD port of Beyond Good & Evil) telling fans in February 2011 that they should “buy Beyond Good & Evil HD” to show support for the BG&E 2.
Later that year, Tony Key (Ubisoft’s VP of sales and marketing) took that tactic up a notch by telling fans in that buying Rayman Origins would give Michel Ancel “more leeway” to work on Beyond Good & Evil 2. This statement just happened to come about one month after the game was confirmed by Ancel to be in development for the next generation of consoles.
Then in November 2012 (about one year later) Yves Guillemot had the gall to admit that Ancel’s work on both Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends had “slowed the process on Beyond Good & Evil 2” — I guess all that support didn’t end up buying much BG&E 2 “leeway”.
So, that brings us to today and the news that Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still in development, but Ubisoft doesn’t want to talk about it. Perhaps if we buy enough pre-orders for Rayman Legends Guillemot will provide another update.
