Ubisoft's European managing director, Alain Corre has said that the console market is only supporting a small range of alternative titles.

Corre suggested to GamesIndustry.biz that only triple-A games were able to make money on consoles in the current market forcing publishers to move away from more varied projects to focus on the blockbusters.

He said: "The games that are not triple-A are not profitable anymore. And that's changed in the last 18 months. When you have a triple-A blockbuster it costs more money to develop, but at the end of the day there's also the chance of a good return on it because there's a concentration at the top of the charts. To a certain extent it becomes less risky to invest more in a single game or franchise than spreading your investment between three or four games. Because if those three or four games are not at the right quality level, you are sure to lose money."

"So the business model has changed and we're changing our way of making hardcore games," Corre continued. "With hardcore games that we're not sure are reaching the right level, we stop work on them. And that's why we concentrate more on key franchises, because that's what the market wants - something new with huge quality production behind it. The market is not supporting the full range of product that it used to anymore."

By Ewan Aiton